Twentieth-century History Research Articles

« Sous un sour silence »

Dans un monde astreint au silence, tel que l’était la prison au xixe siècle, les bruits prennent une signification particulière. L’interdiction de parler agit sur les sociabilités et le quotidien dans les maisons centrales de femmes du Sud de la France aux xixe et début xxe siècles. L’atmosphère sonore se caractérise par les bruits volontairement introduits par la pénitentiaire à des fins disciplinaires – tout comme le silence – mais aussi par ceux, transgressifs, que ce cadre normatif proscrit et génère. Ils sont l’expression de l’acharnement avec lequel les prisonnières rusent pour communiquer entre elles, avides de rompre ce silence étouffant, matérialisation de leur esseulement. Certains sonnent le signal de la rébellion, individuelle ou collective. Mais, plus souvent, les cris, et leur alter ego les larmes, ne sont que l’écho de la souffrance emmurée, à travers laquelle s’esquisse un vécu de l’incarcération d’ordinaire insaisissable. L’approche sensorielle offre par ailleurs un nouvel angle de lecture de la généalogie de la pensée pénale dans laquelle s’inscrit l’injonction de se taire.

'Containment, delay, mitigation': waiting and care in the time of a pandemic.

In this paper we take up three terms - containment, delay, mitigation - that have been used by the UK Government to describe their phased response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the terms refer to a political and public health strategy - contain the virus, flatten the peak of the epidemic, mitigate its effects - we offer a psychosocial reading that draws attention to the relation between time and care embedded in each term. We do so to call for the development of a form of care-ful attention under conditions that tend to prompt action rather than reflection, closing down time for thinking. Using Adriana Cavarero's notion of 'horrorism', in which violence is enacted at precisely the point that care is most needed, we discuss the ever-present possibility of failures withinacts of care. We argue that dwelling in the temporality of delay can be understood as an act of care if delaying allows us to pay care-ful attention to violence. We then circle back to a point in twentieth-century history - World War II - that was also concerned with an existential threat requiring a response from a whole population. Our purpose is not to invoke a fantasised narrative of 'Blitz spirit', but to suggest that the British psychoanalytic tradition born of that moment offers resources for understanding how to keep thinking while 'under fire' through containing unbearable anxiety and the capacity for violence in the intersubjective space and time between people. In conditions of lockdown and what will be a long and drawn-out 'after life' of COVID-19, this commitment to thinking in and with delay and containment might help to inhabit this time of waiting - waiting that is the management and mitigation of a future threat, but also a time of care in and for the present.

Fortress Farming in Western Australia? The Problematic History of Separating Native Wildlife from Agricultural Land through the State Barrier Fence

Abstract The Western Australia (WA) State Barrier Fence stretches 2,023 miles (3,256 kilometres) and divides Australia’s largest state. The original ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ fence was built from 1901–1907 to stop the westbound expansion of rabbits into the existing and potential agricultural zone of Western Australia. Starting as a seemingly straightforward, albeit costly, solution to protect what was considered a productive landscape, the fence failed to keep out the rabbits. It was subsequently amended, upgraded, re-named and used to serve different purposes: as Vermin Fence and State Barrier Fence (unofficially also Emu Fence or Dog Fence) the fence was designed to exclude native Australian animals such as emus, kangaroos and dingoes. In the Australian ‘boom and bust’ environment, characterised by extreme temperatures and unpredictable rainfall, interrupting species movement has severe negative impacts on biodiversity – an issue aggravated by the fact that Australia leads in global extinction rates (Woinarski, Burbidge and Harrison, 2015). The twentieth century history of the fence demonstrates the agrarian settlers’ struggle with the novelty and otherness of Western Australia’s ecological conditions – and severe lack of knowledge thereof. While the strenuous construction, expensive maintenance and doubtful performance of the fence provided useful and early environmental lessons, they seem largely forgotten in contemporary Australia. The WA government recently commenced a controversial $11 million project to extend the State Barrier Fence for another 660 kilometres to reach the Esperance coast, targeting dingoes, emus and kangaroos – once again jeopardising habitat connectivity. This paper examines the environmental history, purposes and impacts of the State Barrier fence, critically discusses the problems associated with European farming and pastoralism in WA, and touches on alternative land-use perspectives and futures.

Environmental Journalism? Radio Free Europe, Charter 77 and the Making of an Environmental Agenda

Abstract The primary aim of this paper is to outline concisely the history of environmental journalism in Czechoslovakia and to compare it to the development of Radio Free Europe's environmental agenda. This comparison can help us better understand how important a role society - and by extension social constructivism - played in twentieth-century environmental history. An explanation for these discrepancies can, in my opinion, be found not only in the internal discussions at RFE and among dissidents but also in the international context. Upon greater scrutiny, the simple question of why and how RFE's environmental agenda emerged, and why certain environmental topics but not others were covered in RFE's broadcasts and reports, appears to be multi-layered, and, if we attempt to answer it, can reveal how and why environmental issues become socially and politically relevant.

Anthropogenically induced subsidence in Thessaly, central Greece: new evidence from GNSS data

We combine almost 10 years of continuous GNSS observations at four permanent stations with groundwater and rainfall data to investigate subsidence patterns in the region of Thessaly, central Greece. Thessaly is a key area for studying anthropogenic versus tectonic subsidence in Greece because it is (a) characterized by overexploitation of groundwater reservoirs since the 1980s and (b) has a Twentieth-century history of shallow, normal-slip earthquakes with M > 6. We infer that anthropogenic subsidence continues at southeast Thessaly (Karla reservoir region) up to autumn of 2017 because the vertical time-series data of station STEF (Stefanovikio) reach a cumulative value of 55 cm and show a “ramp-flat” pattern that correlates with neighboring borehole data. The geodetic data from other three examined regions (city of Larissa, city of Karditsa and Klokotos) indicate ground stability. The GNSS stations in Karditsa (KRDI) and Larissa (LARM) show correlation with groundwater-level fluctuations but no subsidence. Station KLOK (Klokotos) shows a small subsiding trend (− 0.38 mm/yr) with no correlation to either groundwater levels or to rainfall patterns; therefore, its seasonal periodicity may reflect geodynamic (plate) motions.

Public History and Contested Heritage

This article presents a case study of a collaborative public history project between participants in two countries, the United Kingdom and Italy. Its subject matter is the bombing war in Europe, 1939-1945, which is remembered and commemorated in very different ways in these two countries: the sensitivities involved thus constitute not only a case of public history conducted at the national level but also one involving contested heritage. An account of the ways in which public history has developed in the UK and Italy is presented. This is followed by an explanation of how the bombing war has been remembered in each country. In the UK, veterans of RAF Bomber Command have long felt a sense of neglect, largely because the deliberate targeting of civilians has not fitted comfortably into the dominant victor narrative. In Italy, recollections of being bombed have remained profoundly dissonant within the received liberation discourse. The International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive (or Archive) is then described as a case study that employs a public history approach, focusing on various aspects of its inclusive ethos, intended to preserve multiple perspectives. The Italian component of the project is highlighted, problematising the digitisation of contested heritage within the broader context of twentieth-century history. Reflections on the use of digital archiving practices and working in partnership are offered, as well as a brief account of user analytics of the Archive through its first eighteen months online.

The spectacle frame, the broken nail, and the concrete sample – materials telling histories of change

ABSTRACT Inspired by researchers’ observations of the increased use of things in modern society, discussions about non-human actors, and the author Georges Perec’s interest in what happens when nothing seems to happen, this article explores how a collection of materials originally used for educating engineers can be used to study the history of everyday life. Changes in everyday life are investigated through the lens of three objects from the collection: a broken nail moulded in zinc during World War I; a piece of concrete from an experiment performed in 1980; and spectacle bows made of titanium. Through these objects, the article examines what twentieth-century history looks like when we take non-humans seriously in history writing and use such objects as starting points, inspiration, and sources. It also suggests the concepts of ‘non-things’ and ‘taken-for-granted things’ as a way of paying more attention to objects that are central to our daily life but usually go unnoticed. Using the history of concrete and titanium as cases, the article becomes a history of the many changeable materials that form the mostly unnoticed and seemingly stable background of everyday life. In affluent society, these materials have contributed to both predictability, comfort, and environmental problems.

The Contraceptive Pill in Ireland c.1964-79: Activism, Women and Patient-Doctor Relationships.

The twentieth-century history of men and women's attempts to gain access to reproductive health services in the Republic of Ireland has been significantly shaped by Ireland's social and religious context. Although contraception was illegal in Ireland from 1935 to 1979, declining family sizes in this period suggest that many Irish men and women were practising fertility control measures. From the mid-1960s, the contraceptive pill was marketed in Ireland as a 'cycle regulator'. In order to obtain a prescription for the pill, Irish women would therefore complain to their doctors that they had heavy periods or irregular cycles. However, doing so could mean going against one's faith, and also depended on finding a sympathetic doctor. The contraceptive pill was heavily prescribed in Ireland during the 1960s and 1970s as it was the only contraceptive available legally, albeit prescribed through 'coded language'. The pill was critiqued by men and women on both sides of the debate over the legalisation of contraception. Anti-contraception activists argued that the contraceptive pill was an abortifacient, while both anti-contraception activists and feminist campaigners alike drew attention to its perceived health risks. As well as outlining these discussions, the paper also illustrates the importance of medical authority in the era prior to legalisation, and the significance of doctors' voices in relation to debates around the contraceptive pill. However, in spite of medical authority, it is clear that Irish women exercised significant agency in gaining access to the pill.

When the World Shrinks: Chinese Concepts of Culture, Identity and History in the Early Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT Chinese pre-nationalist, culturalist concepts of world order and of self and other have remained a powerful part of Chinese nationalist conceptualisations of the world, self and other. Here, I analyse Chinese concepts regarding the challenge of including non-Chinese peoples into the Chinese nation-state. Carrying critiques of Levenson’s ‘culturalism-to-nationalism thesis’ forward, I demonstrate how culturalist concepts of the world became merged with nationalist concepts. Nationalist objectives made it necessary to adjust culturalism to new functions. I analyse how culturalism became a handy tool used by nationalist thinkers Liang Qichao, Zhang Taiyan and Sun Yat-sen to match the general nationalist ideal of a nation’s homogeneity with the Chinese nationalist ideal of the Chinese nation-state’s multi-ethnic territory. Culturalist arguments helped to undermine the right to build own nation-states for non-Chinese peoples, by putting this right into relation with certain qualities of peoples – culture, history, and population size. The Chinese inner-state ‘other’, the non-Chinese peoples, have been conceptualised as inferior in every of these qualities to deny them the right to build nation-states and instead legitimate their inclusion into the Chinese nation-state. Nevertheless, non-Chinese peoples will never be full members of the nation-state, but remain in ‘exclusive inclusion’ like Agamben’s homo sacer.

Seeing the four sacred mountains: Mapping, landscape and Navajo sovereignty

In 1968, photographer Laura Gilpin published The Enduring Navaho, which intentionally juxtaposes colonialist cartography with an immersive understanding of landscape. This article situates Gilpin’s project within the broader historical trajectory of traditional Navajo spatial imaginaries, including the work of contemporary Navajo artist Will Wilson. Euramerican settler-colonist maps of the Navajo Nation at mid-century were tools for Native displacement, revealing the transnational dilemma of the Navajo people. Their twentieth-century history was one of continual negotiation; on a pragmatic level, it often entailed the cultivation and education of Euramerican allies such as Gilpin. For her, landscape photography offered an alternative indexical authority to colonial maps, and thus had the potential to redefine Navajo space in the Euramerican imagination – in terms that were closely aligned with Navajo ideology. Without escaping the contradictions inherent in her postcolonial situation, Gilpin sought a political space for Navajo epistemology, and thus for Navajo sovereignty.

The Writings of Sir Lewis Namier

Sir Lewis Namier (1888–1960) was not only a major twentieth-century historian, a pioneer of ‘scientific history’ who gave his name to a particular form of history-writing, but an important public intellectual. He played a significant role in public affairs, as an influential adviser to the British Foreign Office during the First World War and later as an active Zionist. This article offers a new perspective on his life and work by providing, for the first time, as comprehensive a bibliography as is currently possible of his voluminous writings: books, scholarly articles and contributions to periodicals and newspapers, including many hitherto unknown, and some published anonymously. The annotation includes not only bibliographical information but explanations and brief summaries of the content. The introduction gives an account of Namier’s life and an assessment of his significance as a historian and thinker.

The Gallic Singularity and the Royal Mistress

The relationship of the French king and royal mistress, complementary but unequal, embodied the Gallic singularity; the royal mistress exercised a civilizing manner and the soft power of women on the king’s behalf. However, both her contemporaries and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians were uncomfortable with the mistress’s political power. Furthermore, paradoxical attitudes about French womanhood have led to analyses of her role that are often contradictory. Royal mistresses have simultaneously been celebrated for their civilizing effect in the realm of culture, chided for their frivolous expenditures on clothing and jewelry, and excoriated for their dangerous meddling in politics. Their increasing visibility in the political realm by the eighteenth century led many to blame Louis XV’s mistresses—along with Queen Marie-Antoinette, who exercised a similar influence over her husband, Louis XVI—for the degradation and eventual fall of the monarchy. This article reexamines the historiography of the royal mistress.

The Image of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in Czech History Textbooks

Abstract The analysis of the content of Czech history textbooks regarding Poland-Lithuania focuses on the origins of the freedoms enjoyed by the aristocracy under the Commonwealth, then moves to identifying references to the Polish kings and other major figures from the mid-fifteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, key events during this period and specifically to the sections of the textbooks describing the demise of the Commonwealth. The use and function of written, iconographic, and graphic sources in presenting these topics was also taken into account. The textbooks do not devote as much attention to the Commonwealth of Poland as they do to the early beginnings of Polish statehood (which were closely associated with the Czech nation). Nor does this period in Polish history attract as much attention as the country’s twentieth-century history. Nevertheless, the textbooks do contain some key information—and in some cases more information than might be expected—on Polish history.

Soviet Colonial Modernity and the Everyday in Twenty-First Century Latvian Literature

This paper intends to discuss the case of Latvia in comparison with other European postcolonial situations and to trace the problems which determine the complexity of self-consciousness of the inhabitants of the country from postcolonial and post-Soviet perspective. The focus of this investigation is on the series of novels which deal with twentieth-century history and memory in Latvia. Due to the fact that the chosen texts attempt an evaluation of the Soviet past, an attention is paid to those aspects of representation of the everyday which considerably distinguish contemporary fiction from literary works created during the period of socialist realist dominance. The importance of history and of different everyday practices in forming specific features of national identity is also seen in the context of the attempts of contemporary authors to discover and define themselves as part of today’s global community as they try to position themselves within world literature. In this perspective, the contemporary as well as the historical experience of the Baltic nations testifies to the common roots of European society helping to build bridges between different ethnic and social groups and their members.

Nelson Mandela’s “Show Trials”: An Analysis of Press Coverage of Mandela’s Court Appearances

ABSTRACT The figure of Nelson Mandela looms large in twentieth-century history. Beloved by celebrities around the globe, critics have noted his unique charisma—referred to as “Madiba magic” —and his ability to enchant audiences. Despite this, there have been few analyses of his construction as a celebrity politician, most likely because of celebrity’s association with frivolity and lack of substance—which sits poorly with our sense of Mandela. There have been particularly few examinations of his portrayal prior to imprisonment, when the seeds of the Mandela myth were sown. This paper examines some of the early press coverage, focusing on Mandela’s “performances” in court. The paper argues that Mandela, helped by others, had a canny ability to pre-empt reactions to his appearance, and worked hard to direct his own image for political purposes. In addition, while Madikizela-Mandela’s role in raising awareness of her husband’s fate is well known, the paper shows how, even at this early stage, Mandela’s prominence and machismo depended on her feminine visibility. Mandela’s famed speech from the dock also founded a new moral tradition of protest and set the stage for his resurrection as the symbol of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Finding Marlene Dietrich: An Object Lesson

Finding Marlene Dietrich: An Object Lesson Sandra Spanier From the outset of our work on Volume 5 of the Cambridge Edition of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway (spanning 1932-May 1934), there was one image I knew we had to include among our illustrations: the Ernest Hemingway paper doll. The full-page color illustration by Constantin Alajálov appeared in the March 1934 issue of Vanity Fair, captioned “Ernest Hemingway, America’s own literary cave man; hard-drinking, hard-fighting, hard-loving--all for art’s sake.” The central figure of Hemingway sporting a leopard-skin loincloth (“ERNIE, THE NEANDERTHAL MAN”) is flanked by costumes capturing his various public personae: wounded veteran of war, wine-guzzling writer of the “Lost Generation,” big game fisherman, and bull-fight aficionado. The caricature of Hemingway and his wardrobe of guises perfectly captures his multi-faceted nature—these facets and many others are revealed in his letters of this period. What I had not fully realized before poring through its pages is how perfectly the magazine itself emblematizes Hemingway’s prominent place in the context of his times. The March 1934 Vanity Fair presents a freeze-frame view of twentieth-century history and culture in the making. As I noted in my General Editor’s Introduction to Volume 5 of the Letters, the issue also features articles about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first presidential term, the lifting of the U.S. ban on James Joyce’s Ulysses, a color reproduction of a painting by Pablo Picasso (No. 10 in Vanity Fair’s Series of Modern Painters), and photo portraits by Edward Steichen of such celebrated figures as Sinclair Lewis (who in 1930 became the first U.S. Nobel Laureate in Literature), journalist Dorothy Thompson, actress Mary Pickford, and German-born singer and screen star Marlene Dietrich (“the Teuton siren”). The web of connections to Hemingway is striking. He knew Joyce, Picasso, and Lewis, and would famously become a close friend of Dietrich. In fact, I wrote: [End Page 93] Shortly after the issue of Vanity Fair with his paper doll caricature appeared on newsstands, Hemingway would meet Marlene Dietrich aboard the S.S. Paris as he returned from an African safari, marking the start of what would become a platonic but passionate lifelong friendship and correspondence. Although Dietrich eluded the press when the ship docked in New York on 3 April 1934, Hemingway’s return was chronicled in the New York papers. The news photos show him grinning broadly, leaning against the ship’s rail, his wife, Pauline, at his side. That Hemingway and Dietrich would meet aboard a luxury liner crossing the Atlantic at the same time they were featured in the same issue of Vanity Fair is a wonderful story. Except it is not true. I discovered this, to my great chagrin, in the month after Volume 5 was published in June 2020. The 19th Biennial International Hemingway Conference, to be held in Wyoming and Montana in July 2020, was to have featured a plenary session focusing on the latest volume of the Letters. The session would be moderated by Hemingway Letters Project Associate Editor Verna Kale with presentations by Miriam B. Mandel and me as Volume 5 co-editors, and by graduate research assistant Katie Warczak, a Ph.D. candidate at Penn State. Then came Covid-19, and the conference had to be postponed. We were invited to present a Letters webinar as one of three in the Hemingway Society’s first-ever webinar series, “Houseguest: Hemingway.” On 21 July, Hemingway’s birthday, I received an email query from a scholar who had watched our webinar three days earlier. He was polishing a paper he planned to submit for publication about the Hemingway-Dietrich relationship, and one detail in my presentation had stood out. His own research indicated that the two met in 1934 aboard the Ile de France, not the Paris. He cited his sources for the Ile de France: Hemingway biographers Carlos Baker and Bernice Kert, friend A.E. Hotchner, and Dietrich biographer Steven Bach. Only James R. Mellow, in Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences, identified the passenger liner as the Paris, he said. (One could also...

Výstavní politika oddělení novodobých českých dějin v letech 1973–1989

The National Museum started increasingly to engage in exhibitions devoted to twentieth-century history, subsequent to the foundation of the Department of modern Czech history. Until then, it had left this subject area to the Party museums in Prague. Individual exhibitions were particularly devoted to anniversaries marking the emergence of KSČ (the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia), the Slovak national uprising, the end of the War, the year 1948 and building socialism. They varied in standard, and were based on ideas from the document “Lessons from the evolution of the crisis in the party and society after the 13th KSČ congress of 1970” and on the associated museological methodologies. However, at the same time they were conceived in a manner that reflected the acquisition conception of the Department, and sought to present political as well as cultural, economic and social topics. They also endeavoured to portray everyday life. All these exhibitions may thus be considered a preparatory stage that culminated in the permanent exhibition on the history of the twentieth century.

Reframing, Rethinking, and Remembering: Considering the Digital Harrisburg Project

ABSTRACT The Digital Harrisburg Initiative, with its electronic resources and webpages dedicated to the city's early twentieth-century history, represents some of the best contemporary work in digital humanities. This study of Harrisburg highlights the power of place over time and emblazons the minds of modern people with important findings and models for action gleaned from the past.

West Germany and Israel: Foreign Relations, Domestic Politics, and the Cold War, 1965–1974 by Carole Fink

Reviewed by: West Germany and Israel: Foreign Relations, Domestic Politics, and the Cold War, 1965–1974 by Carole Fink Andrea Wiegeshoff West Germany and Israel: Foreign Relations, Domestic Politics, and the Cold War, 1965–1974. By Carole Fink. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 349. Paper $29.99. ISBN 978-1107428287. Forty years after formal diplomatic ties were established between Israel and West Germany, the Israeli author Amos Oz, reflecting on the relationship between both countries, concluded that it was "intense, deep and broken, complicated and multilayered." Normal relations were "not possible and not appropriate" (Israel und Deutschland: Vierzig Jahre nach Aufnahme diplomatischer Beziehungen, 2005, 7). In her new book, Carole Fink, a well-published expert on German, European, and international twentieth-century history, traces the initial years of this complex relationship. She focuses on the period from the exchange of ambassadors in 1965 up to 1974, the year in which both Golda Meir and Willy Brandt left office. Displaying an intimate knowledge of various mutual contacts, her account draws on an impressive array of primary sources, notably archival material from six countries. Fink paints a nuanced, yet forceful picture of a period characterized by a constant, shifting battle over the definition of the relationship's nature and terms. While the Israeli side emphasized the legacy of the Nazi past that marked all contacts as special, its West German counterpart strove to overcome the past and normalize bilateral relations. Fink describes the occasionally turbulent, sometimes tense, and often complicated relations in ten chronologically arranged chapters, focusing on high-level politics and decision makers. Though such an approach would seem conventional at first glance, the bilateral history of West Germany and Israel is embedded in the wider contexts of both global politics and the domestic factors—social, cultural, and economic—that inevitably influenced foreign policy. For instance, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the policy toward Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union preoccupied West German politicians and diplomats. Moreover, Bonn's diplomacy centered around the Arab world. Fink shows how the competition with the GDR and concerns about energy supplies led to efforts to repair strained relations with Middle Eastern countries. Naturally, the repercussions were strongly felt in Israel. West Germans were anxious to avoid the appearance of favoring Israel over the Arab world. Some contacts, such as the exchange of intelligence information and weapon sales, were therefore kept secret from the outside world. Moreover, the West German administration always went to great lengths to strike a balance between their relationship with Israel and the rest of the Middle East. For instance, foreign minister Walter Scheel traveled to Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon immediately before Willy Brandt visited Israel for the first time in 1973. [End Page 202] Israeli politicians grew increasingly impatient with Bonn's refusal to support the country more openly and its insistence on neutrality in times of military conflict. After the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel had emerged as a regional power, but increasingly faced isolation and international criticism because of the Palestinian refugee crisis and the occupation regime. At the same time, the country's borders remained insecure, violent conflicts and terrorist attacks occurred frequently, and military expenditures hampered economic development. In such precarious circumstances, the government appealed repeatedly to Germany's moral and historical obligation to stand by the Jewish state. Though many Germans shared this view, opposition to this claim grew stronger. Fink highlights not only the constant resistance by certain institutions, above all the West German foreign office, but also the confident stance taken by the new government under Brandt that saw itself unburdened by the Nazi past and thus freer to negotiate with Israel. Given the prominent place that former supporters of the NSDAP still occupied in the Federal Republic, as well as Israel's need for financial and military support, tensions between the governments increased. Matters were only made worse by the terrorist attack on Israel's team at the 1972 Munich Olympics and the subsequent (failed) German rescue mission, but also by recurring antisemitic incidents in the Federal Republic. Yet Fink also points to the stubborn persistence of the relationship. For instance, both sides valued their ongoing...

When It Happened Here: Michigan and the Transnational Development of American Fascism, 1920-1945

The Michigan Historical Review 46:1 (Spring 2020): 29-67©2020 Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved When It Happened Here: Michigan and the Transnational Development of American Fascism, 1920-1945 By Salaina Catalano In his 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis urged readers to appreciate America’s susceptibility to the influence of fascism. In the novel, Bishop Prang, a clergyman with a national radio broadcast, throws the weight of his organization, the League of Forgotten Men, behind Buzz Windrip, guaranteeing Windrip’s presidential victory and eventually his fascist dictatorship. Lewis’s book was fiction, but he based his characters on real-life right-wing demagogues. The inspiration for Bishop Prang was Father Charles Coughlin, the “Radio Priest” from Royal Oak, Michigan. Coughlin’s power, according to Lewis, was potentially fatal for democracy. As one of many contemporary observers of the proliferation of American right-wing extremists in the 1930s, Lewis warned readers about the threat of an American brand of fascism. It would be neither an outgrowth of American “nativist” sentiment, nor a purely foreign import of European fascism, but rather a combination of the two that would spell the downfall of American democracy.1 While fascism pervaded Europe from the 1920s through the 1940s, hundreds of right-wing extremist groups operated in the United States, primarily in Midwestern states like Michigan. Was the simultaneous occurrence of these two phenomena purely coincidental? How did American right-wing extremists conceptualize themselves in relation to a global fascist ideology? In what ways did European fascist regimes support and view right-wing activities in the United States? How can the interwar apogee of nativism—defined as hostility to immigration—be explained? This essay argues that a distinct brand of fascism developed in the United States from the 1920s to the 1940s by means of a transnational ideological network embracing native-born Americans, immigrants from 1 Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1935). 30 The Michigan Historical Review European fascist countries, and officials of European fascist regimes. The network was based on the transnational movement of ideas, people, and resources. An analysis of this exchange reveals how right-wing extremists on both sides of the Atlantic combined traditional American nativism with European fascism, creating a hybrid ideology to propagate to the American public.2 In a time of mass unemployment and the apparent inefficiency of democracy, this American brand of fascism resonated with many people. Michigan was fertile ground for American fascists because of the state’s diverse immigrant population, advanced industrial economy, and active left-wing movements. Fascism did not operate in a national vacuum; instead, it was a global ideology that took different forms in the various countries where it existed. An analysis of the interaction between American right-wing extremism and European fascism could easily comprise the whole of twentieth-century history in both North and South America. However, some geographical and temporal limits are required. Here the geographical scope is confined to Michigan and Germany. Michigan was a hotbed of American fascist sentiment, hosting dozens of nationallyknown , extreme right-wing individuals and organizations. Together, these served as a representative sample of each “type” of American fascist; including industrialists (Henry Ford), anti-communist crusading clergymen (Father Coughlin and Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith), militarized secret societies (Black Legion), and immigrant veterans’ and fascist groups (Steel Helmet, Friends of New Germany, and German American Bund).3 While connections with Italian fascism were present, Nazi Germany was the ideal fascist type, as supported by the conclusions of leading scholars of fascism like Stanley G. Payne and Robert O. Paxton, 2 Historians of American right-wing extremism have attached the term “hybrid” to individual groups operating during the 1930s, particularly the Black Legion, but never to describe the transnational movement as a whole. See Peter H. Amann, “Vigilante Fascism: The Black Legion as an American Hybrid,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 25, no. 3 (July 1983): 490-524 and David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 247-248. 3 For...