I've got a ridiculous amount of material to cover by late January when I hope to take my comprehensive exams. The thought of figuring out the historiography and the narratives for my three fields is a daunting task - so daunting that I'd been having nightmares about comps. To deal with that stress, I finally sat down to figure out how to approach the task.
The first part was just figuring out what I needed to read. I'm still working on that for my Military and Naval History field, but the other fields are ready, and I've posted the lists. While I figure out the Military History field, I'm pressing on with studying. The first part of this was to find and download academic book reviews for as many of the books on the list as I could find. I tried to get three or four quality book reviews for each book, focusing on longer reviews like those found in Reviews in American History because a one-page review doesn't really have enough analysis to suit my purposes.
Once I had all the reviews, I started reading. My method for each book is to read the reviews, focusing on themes and historiography, highlighting the pertinent details. Then I use the grad student reading method: read the introduction and conclusion of the book first, check out the sources used, and then work on the stuff in the middle. I give myself around four hours per book, which is really not enough time to closely read the entire thing much of the time. While reading, I take notes for each book on a legal pad, again focusing on argument and historiography. Those notes end up as the content of the blog entry associated with that book. The idea is that by trying to come up with coherent entries, I process the material yet again.
This doesn't help with the narrative aspects, of course. For that, I've downloaded podcasts of lectures through iTunesU. Since I've been doing little other than sit on my butt reading and writing since I came back to Florida, I'll be listening to the lectures while riding the exercise bike at the apartment complex gym starting Tuesday. I'm hoping that the refresher will help me make sense of all the other stuff I'm reading. I'll also be skimming some general textbooks on each subject and creating chronologies later on in the process so I can create a solid framework.
The final part of the preparation involves individual questions provided by some of the faculty. I'll be creating outlines of the questions and discussing them with the committee members to ensure I'm on the right track. The thing is that they all expect something different. My Modern United States faculty members both focus on the narrative - they want examinees to show that they could teach a survey course in the field. One question from them asks you to trace the failure of the liberal consensus in the late-1960s and early 1970s. One of the Modern European faculty is primarily interested in historiography. One of the Military History faculty wants examinees to develop an upper level course in the field, complete with readings and defend the choices, while the other wants you to discuss whether there is an "American Way of War" (he loathes Russel Weigley's thesis on that subject).
I really can't wait to get this over with so I can start working on my dissertation and graduate already.
Historicus - Military History, books, and teaching
Sunday, October 9, 2011
The Sombre Years of France
Philippe Burrin, France Under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise (New York: The New Press. 1996), trans. Janet Lloyd.
Almost as soon as World War II ended, Charles de Gaulle developed and spread the myth that the vast majority of the French population had quietly fought German domination and eventually liberated France of the own accord. Only a few traitors really collaborated with Hitler, leaving the rest of France innocent of their crimes. This approach to explaining the Vichy regime and French collaboration with Germany during the occupation allowed France to recover from the war while maintaining stability, but also ignored anti-Semitism in France and allowed many of the Nazi's water carriers to regain a place in public life. This narrative survived unchallenged until the early 1970s, when Robert Paxton and Henry Rousso advanced the theory that most of the people in France either actively worked with the Germans, supported Vichy, or merely hunkered down and tried to survive. This provides two stark alternatives in viewing the fall of France: either it was the result of the political and social tensions inherent in the Third Republic, or the French were a patriotic people who fought Germany using any means and that Vichy was an aberration that was not truly French.
Fitting in with the trend of scholarship examining Vichy France as something other than a strange blip on the radar of French history, Phillipe Burrin analyses the ways that French people learned to live under German dominance. Rather than relying solely on the loaded term of "collaboration," Burrin argues that in order to survive the French people had to develop methods of "accommodation" with the Germans merely in order to survive. For him, the vast majority of the French were merely looking for a way to get through the occupation more or less intact. Despite this, some people went beyond the minimum needed to get by. These French, who raised their accommodation with the Germans to the level of politics were the collaborators, a class of people whose actions changed the very definition of the word collaboration from working together on a task to betrayal to the invader.
Burrin argues that Vichy bore its defeat so lightly was because they were ready for a change of mentalité in both internal and external policies due to widespread dissatisfaction with the culture and politics of the Third Republic. The shock of defeat and the already existing tensions led to almost unanimous support for the election of Marshal Pétain. Rather than outrage or fear, most French felt resigned to life as a defeated power, and merely wanted to survive the war. Even those few who would actively resist the Germans later in the war numbly accepted defeat during the summer and fall of 1940. Despite a growing resistance, most French settled for accommodation, or finding a way to live with German occupation.
Like Eugen Weber and Robert Paxton, Burrin finds the origins of French willingness to accommodate the Germans in the social and political tensions of the Third Republic after World War I. Especially during the 1930s, there was little social or cultural cohesion in France. Combined with pacifism rooted in fear of another war like that of 1914-1918, growing xenophobia and French cultural anti-Semitism, France was psychologically unprepared to resist the Nazis. In 1940, France did not have the shared ideology or identity needed to resist German demands after the defeat - the wide disparity of goals worked left individuals with room to find their own methods of accommodation with occupation.
Pétain's Vichy grew in this environment in which the French wanted to move away from the tensions of the Third Republic, and advocated a program that included many elements of nineteenth century nationalism that included a strain of authoritarian methods that spoke to French distaste for the parliamentary excesses of the Third Republic. Burrin contends that despite appeal to these elements, Vichy could only survive in the context of defeat and occupation. Desperate to remain in power, Pétain and his Vichy allies aspired to unrealistic policies that would preserve France as a German associated power, gain additional benefits for France, and maintain the Empire. To get these, the abetted the German economic exploitation of France and engaged on an authoritarian program of repression on their own - it was better to kill subversive elements like Communists and to persecute Jews in order to maintain a pretense of sovereignty that to allow the Germans to do so.
While the Vichy regime continued to tie its fortunes to supporting Germany even in 1942, believing that they had more to gain from Germany's continued existence than from an Allied victory, many of the French people began hoping the Allies would win as early as the fall of 1940. Even after two years of shooting hostages and conscripting the French for labor in Germany had discredited the idea of collaboration, between twenty and thirty percent of French supported forms of collaboration - even the decline in support did not turn into outward resistance because most Vichy and German oppression was aimed at Jews and Communists, This allowed the French to adopt an attitude of resigned acceptance of these issues.
Still, it is important to note that while the initial French impression of German soldiers was highly favorable - they were clean, polite, and cultured, those impressions soon gave way to a more realistic assessment of the invaders. Some French began to avoid the Germans, but French celebrities continued to socialize with German officials, and French women bore children for at least 50,000 German fathers. In 1941 denunciations indicate yet another form of collaboration with the German occupiers. Businesses also show a high level of accommodation, not just filling orders from Germans, but actively seeking contracts with the German military and political establishments in both occupied and unoccupied France. 10,000 Frenchmen became temporary managers in the 40,000 business taken from Jewish owners, and 200,000 French workers voluntarily went to work in Germany for firms that included I.G. Farben at Auschwitz. Almost 100,000 French students attempted to learn to speak German during the war years. Burrin argues that while this does not necessarily signal outright collaboration, it does show a method of accommodating the occupiers by learning to communicate with them on their own terms.
One of the most important elements of Burrin's work is his discussion of why the French did not do more to resist the German occupation. Resistance was the most likely way to unify the disparate parts of French society - Left, Right, and the Catholic Church could all support resistance. The Right was anti-German, the left anti-Fascit, and the Church anti-racist. A leader calling for resistance could unify these three elements, undoing that fractures evident during the 1930s. Those fractures became the reasons France did not mount effective resistance to he invaders. Burrin contends that opposition required a sense of brotherhood and faith in allies that held common values that simply did not exist in 1940. The 1930s had undermined the cohesion of French society, and the aftermath of World War I had undermined had undermined French stability. The expansion of the suburbs and growth of the proletariat combined with the Great Depression and accompanying devaluation of the Franc made the bourgeoisie feel less secure about their place in France.
Fear of social change also weakened the French ability to resist the occupation. Radical electoral victories in the 1924 and 1932 elections provoked politicians on the Right , which the Popular Front made worse. The threat of radical change posed by the Popular Front created additional dissension in France. The result was that the politics of the 1930s left pockets of resentment among the French that limited their ability to come together to defend the nation. Beyond mere resentment, French society was further weakened by pacifism born out of the destruction of World War I and a more general economic and social exhaustion.
All of this meant that France entered the war with fragile social cohesion. The French also had confused views of the relative threats and merits of England and Germany. They were shocked by the defeat because they had expected a war similar to that of World War I. Indeed, trench warfare and fixed positions dominated French military plans. France had equivalent arms and equipment, even tanks, being deficient only in the number of bombers she possessed in comparison to the Germans. The disparity between France and Germany lay in the quality of their high commands, the flexibility of their tactics, and their social cohesion. The short war meant that the French were not mentally ready to deal with the occupation, and memories of life in occupied areas during World War I had vanished. The French were left with no model for behavior as a defeated nation.
Almost as soon as World War II ended, Charles de Gaulle developed and spread the myth that the vast majority of the French population had quietly fought German domination and eventually liberated France of the own accord. Only a few traitors really collaborated with Hitler, leaving the rest of France innocent of their crimes. This approach to explaining the Vichy regime and French collaboration with Germany during the occupation allowed France to recover from the war while maintaining stability, but also ignored anti-Semitism in France and allowed many of the Nazi's water carriers to regain a place in public life. This narrative survived unchallenged until the early 1970s, when Robert Paxton and Henry Rousso advanced the theory that most of the people in France either actively worked with the Germans, supported Vichy, or merely hunkered down and tried to survive. This provides two stark alternatives in viewing the fall of France: either it was the result of the political and social tensions inherent in the Third Republic, or the French were a patriotic people who fought Germany using any means and that Vichy was an aberration that was not truly French.
Fitting in with the trend of scholarship examining Vichy France as something other than a strange blip on the radar of French history, Phillipe Burrin analyses the ways that French people learned to live under German dominance. Rather than relying solely on the loaded term of "collaboration," Burrin argues that in order to survive the French people had to develop methods of "accommodation" with the Germans merely in order to survive. For him, the vast majority of the French were merely looking for a way to get through the occupation more or less intact. Despite this, some people went beyond the minimum needed to get by. These French, who raised their accommodation with the Germans to the level of politics were the collaborators, a class of people whose actions changed the very definition of the word collaboration from working together on a task to betrayal to the invader.
Burrin argues that Vichy bore its defeat so lightly was because they were ready for a change of mentalité in both internal and external policies due to widespread dissatisfaction with the culture and politics of the Third Republic. The shock of defeat and the already existing tensions led to almost unanimous support for the election of Marshal Pétain. Rather than outrage or fear, most French felt resigned to life as a defeated power, and merely wanted to survive the war. Even those few who would actively resist the Germans later in the war numbly accepted defeat during the summer and fall of 1940. Despite a growing resistance, most French settled for accommodation, or finding a way to live with German occupation.
Like Eugen Weber and Robert Paxton, Burrin finds the origins of French willingness to accommodate the Germans in the social and political tensions of the Third Republic after World War I. Especially during the 1930s, there was little social or cultural cohesion in France. Combined with pacifism rooted in fear of another war like that of 1914-1918, growing xenophobia and French cultural anti-Semitism, France was psychologically unprepared to resist the Nazis. In 1940, France did not have the shared ideology or identity needed to resist German demands after the defeat - the wide disparity of goals worked left individuals with room to find their own methods of accommodation with occupation.
Pétain's Vichy grew in this environment in which the French wanted to move away from the tensions of the Third Republic, and advocated a program that included many elements of nineteenth century nationalism that included a strain of authoritarian methods that spoke to French distaste for the parliamentary excesses of the Third Republic. Burrin contends that despite appeal to these elements, Vichy could only survive in the context of defeat and occupation. Desperate to remain in power, Pétain and his Vichy allies aspired to unrealistic policies that would preserve France as a German associated power, gain additional benefits for France, and maintain the Empire. To get these, the abetted the German economic exploitation of France and engaged on an authoritarian program of repression on their own - it was better to kill subversive elements like Communists and to persecute Jews in order to maintain a pretense of sovereignty that to allow the Germans to do so.
While the Vichy regime continued to tie its fortunes to supporting Germany even in 1942, believing that they had more to gain from Germany's continued existence than from an Allied victory, many of the French people began hoping the Allies would win as early as the fall of 1940. Even after two years of shooting hostages and conscripting the French for labor in Germany had discredited the idea of collaboration, between twenty and thirty percent of French supported forms of collaboration - even the decline in support did not turn into outward resistance because most Vichy and German oppression was aimed at Jews and Communists, This allowed the French to adopt an attitude of resigned acceptance of these issues.
Still, it is important to note that while the initial French impression of German soldiers was highly favorable - they were clean, polite, and cultured, those impressions soon gave way to a more realistic assessment of the invaders. Some French began to avoid the Germans, but French celebrities continued to socialize with German officials, and French women bore children for at least 50,000 German fathers. In 1941 denunciations indicate yet another form of collaboration with the German occupiers. Businesses also show a high level of accommodation, not just filling orders from Germans, but actively seeking contracts with the German military and political establishments in both occupied and unoccupied France. 10,000 Frenchmen became temporary managers in the 40,000 business taken from Jewish owners, and 200,000 French workers voluntarily went to work in Germany for firms that included I.G. Farben at Auschwitz. Almost 100,000 French students attempted to learn to speak German during the war years. Burrin argues that while this does not necessarily signal outright collaboration, it does show a method of accommodating the occupiers by learning to communicate with them on their own terms.
One of the most important elements of Burrin's work is his discussion of why the French did not do more to resist the German occupation. Resistance was the most likely way to unify the disparate parts of French society - Left, Right, and the Catholic Church could all support resistance. The Right was anti-German, the left anti-Fascit, and the Church anti-racist. A leader calling for resistance could unify these three elements, undoing that fractures evident during the 1930s. Those fractures became the reasons France did not mount effective resistance to he invaders. Burrin contends that opposition required a sense of brotherhood and faith in allies that held common values that simply did not exist in 1940. The 1930s had undermined the cohesion of French society, and the aftermath of World War I had undermined had undermined French stability. The expansion of the suburbs and growth of the proletariat combined with the Great Depression and accompanying devaluation of the Franc made the bourgeoisie feel less secure about their place in France.
Fear of social change also weakened the French ability to resist the occupation. Radical electoral victories in the 1924 and 1932 elections provoked politicians on the Right , which the Popular Front made worse. The threat of radical change posed by the Popular Front created additional dissension in France. The result was that the politics of the 1930s left pockets of resentment among the French that limited their ability to come together to defend the nation. Beyond mere resentment, French society was further weakened by pacifism born out of the destruction of World War I and a more general economic and social exhaustion.
All of this meant that France entered the war with fragile social cohesion. The French also had confused views of the relative threats and merits of England and Germany. They were shocked by the defeat because they had expected a war similar to that of World War I. Indeed, trench warfare and fixed positions dominated French military plans. France had equivalent arms and equipment, even tanks, being deficient only in the number of bombers she possessed in comparison to the Germans. The disparity between France and Germany lay in the quality of their high commands, the flexibility of their tactics, and their social cohesion. The short war meant that the French were not mentally ready to deal with the occupation, and memories of life in occupied areas during World War I had vanished. The French were left with no model for behavior as a defeated nation.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Vichy as a French Creation
Vichy France: Old Guard, New Regime, 1940-1944. By Robert O. Paxton (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972).
For the twenty-five years following the end of World War II, explanations of the development and policies of Vichy France focused on the discontinuities between the Third Republic and the Vichy regime. Robert Paxton argues against this trend, insisting that Vichy policies and ideology originated from within French traditions, not those of the Nazi conquerors. The desire to find someone to blame for France's difficulties infused both Vichy and the post-war reaction to its policies. After Liberation, opponents charged Vichy leaders with wanting Germany to defeat France in 1940, while in the immediate aftermath of the defeat, Vichy leaders had blamed the Popular Front's alliance of the the Catholic Left, Communists, Masons, and Jews for weakening France, and then leading her into an ideological war. For its part, the Left blamed profascist politicians and officers for the defeat, while those on the right blamed the panic of militia units drawn from Paris on May 13 for allowing the Germans to cross the Meuse at Sedan.
The French Army of 1940, though, was the product of French society of the late Third Republic. no conspiracies were needed to explain its collapse in the face of the German onslaught of the Spring of 1940. Paxton argues that the new regime was not a cabal bent on overthrow, nor was it based on German or Italian policies, alliances or ideals. The Vichy government began with popular support and the participation of the same groups of elites as the Third Republic. In order to understand both the creation of Vichy and the French origins of its programs, you have to examine the domestic political and economic tensions that plagued the Third Republic.
The last government of the Third Republic was formed on constitutional grounds to request an armistice with Germany on June 16, 1940. The new government was headed by Marshal Pétain, who convened a cabinet in the style of the Third Republic by including both conservatives and socialists. Only those opposed to an armistice were excluded. This led to both elite and public support of the Vichy government, which prepared to continue to fight from North Africa even while asking for an armistice. Hitler feared a French government in exile using the French Empire and its resources to fight alongside Great Britain, and chose the option of a relatively lenient armistice. On the French side, because there as no charismatic leader arguing against the armistice and no positive decision to continue to fight Germany, Paxton contends that the armistice happened almost by default. No active choice for an armistice was made.
Most of the French public and leadership viewed those few who wanted to continue to fight as a threat to national survival. In any case, war to the end made little strategic sense because there was no reason to believe that Great Britain would survive the war. British ground forces in France had already withdrawn through Dunkirk after a less than stellar performance. The resolve shown during the Battle of Britain was nowhere in evidence during the defense of France, so the French believed that a final peace would occur in weeks rather than years.
The result of the armistice was a fragmenting of French society. The real fear was not of the Germans, but that the war would weaken Germany enough that it could not oppose Stalin in the East. The French also still held the painful memory of the lost generation of World War I, and feared that another 20 million casualties would completely destroy France. Fear of revolution, as had occurred after the end of the Franco-Prussia War in 1871, also confronted French military and civilian leaders. Restoring and maintaining order became the key concern. Petain addressed this concern by promising order and stability, and contrasting it to the negative aspects of a continued war: reprisals, full occupation by Germany, guerrilla warfare, and hardship. So soon after the end of fighting, it was hard for the French people to contemplate starting again. Paxton believes that the quick collapse meant that the people were psychologically unready to resist - a long campaign like that of World War I would have stripped away the mental and physical comforts of life, and given people the wherewithal to fight. He cites USAF analysis of the effects of bombing on German cities that found that they became more productive after significant damage than they had been beforehand because ephemeral parts of life vanished.
Saving the state became a positive good on its own. To do this, Pétain needed to maintain order to ensure the survival of France. Collaboration was a key component of this effort, because by continuing to administer France, he was able to maintain its sovereignty. His goal to ensure France's continued Sovereignty worked well with Hitler's initial goals for an easy armistice, and played upon the French desire to return to normalcy. To do this required first a level of collaboration with the Germans that sometimes became an active partnership in the war effort. The goals of the varying levels of cooperation with German desires were always to ensure France's sovereignty, to maintain the overseas empire, and to regain administrative control over occupied France.
In addition to these core goals of maintaining order and ensuring the continuation of French sovereignty, the Vichy regime also embarked on a revolution of institutions and values. The Third Republic had lost its last remaining shreds of legitimacy by losing the war. Defeat was an addition to the self-doubt that France had suffered since the 1890s, which had only increased after the tragedy of World War I. The French worried about their national vitality, especially the low birth rate, and suffered under the comments of German soldiers who claimed that their farms seemed old-fashioned and inefficient. Clearly, France needed something different.
While prosecutors later blamed Pierre Laval for leading a conspiracy to end the Third Republic and establish a pro-fascist regime in France, Paxton dismisses this as incoherent and contradictory. Petain chose Laval as Deputy Prime Minister because he was a prominent Third Republic politician and would help sell the new constitution to the National Assembly. When presented with a new constitution, the decision to end the Third Republic was almost unanimous - a 25 to 1 decision among the French electorate. This level of agreement hardly points to a cabal at work.
Contrary to many arguments, Paxton contends that Vichy initially strove for an early peace treaty with Germany and strict neutrality toward the belligerents. Most importantly, Paxton argues that Vichy was not passive in promoting its interests, in courting German favor, or in establishing its own restrictive laws regarding Jews. The idea that Vichy was passive, or that its actions were forced on it by Germany was an invention of Pétain's defense in court after Liberation. According to Paxton, Pétain was only half true in this because it obscures Vichy's actions taken in the absence of German pressure. This is the core of Paxton's argument. His goal is to restore Vichy's initiatives to the record. Especially during the first hundred days, Vichy operated virtually without German control. Germany vetoed Vichy plans, but did not impose policy or officials. This changed only after the Resistance began assassinating Germans during the summer of 1941.
Collaboration, then, was not imposed by the German victors, but a French proposal that was repeatedly rejected by Hitler who wanted a passive France that he could use to attack Great Britain, not an equal partner. France's location and resources were all he wanted - that, and to impose a harsh peace on France in revenge for the Versailles Treaty that so harshly punished Germany after the end of World War I. Vichy's continued efforts to come to an accommodation with Hitler in its efforts to preserve the Empire and France's sovereignty rested entirely on Hitler's perception of whether he needed something from France. When it became obvious that invading England would not work, and Hitler turned East, Vichy found itself pursuing an uninterested suitor.
Petain sent Hitler a constant stream of requests, first as a neutral, and later seeking alliance. Hitler was tempted to allow France more freedom and a larger military role in the fall of 1940 and in May 1941 when it appeared useful, but ultimately saw the armistice, negotiations, and collaboration as just cheap ways to keep France docile. When England didn't fall the the Germans, the full terms of the armistice were enforced, including a 20 milliion Reichsmark daily fee to pay for the occupation. France had to pay the occupation fee at the artificially high exchange rate of 20:1 - a third higher than market exchange rates. Rather than releasing French POWs, they were sent to German stalags for the duration of the war.
Economics an the impossibility of gains in Europe forced Vichy to focus on its empire. French goals were to maintain the integrity of the Empire in the face of advances by both Axis and Allied powers, especially Italy and de Gaulle. As its price for assisting Hitler, Vichy expected colonial gains, not just in maintaining the Empire, but in colonies seized from Great Britain. Germany wanted the use of bases in French North Africa to attack British interests in the Middle East and to provide support for Rommel. The broad negotiations on its status that France expected in return never materialized.
After the Liberation, Vichy's ministers were prosecuted for collaboration with the Germans. The first trial ended in the execution of Pierre Pucheu. Other executions and imprisonments followed. In part, the trials were meant to strike the legacy of Vichy from history, an aim of Liberation writers. Paxton argues that not only that did this not happen, but that building on the foundation of Vichy was unavoidable. To show this, he focuses on the continuity of Third Republic trends in Vichy, and then Vichy trends after Liberation. Examples include that Pétain's defense attorney was elected to parliament in 1951, the general amnesty of 1953, and return of Vichy officials to office from 1953-58.
Punishment of alleged collaborators was uneven, and fell most heavily on propagandists, intellectuals, and leaders of the Vichy regime. Businessmen, experts, technicians, and bureaucrats mostly escaped punishment. In contrast, the officials of the Third Republic continued to be rejected by the French public after liberation. The vacancies created in government ministries by post-war purges were mostly filled from below by career bureaucrats that carried out Vichy policies. Paxton argues that this happened because like their Vichy predecessors, Liberation leaders wanted control and order, not revolution. To these ends, most of the judiciary survived both trials and purges. The main exceptions were the members of the Special Section of the Paris Court of Appeals who punished French citizens for the assassination of Germans. More than half of the diplomatic corps continued to work for the French government - two-thirds served both Vichy and the Fourth Republic.
Similarly, Liberation did not do away with all Vichy laws. A list of laws attached to the 9 August 1944 ordnace were repealed, but most Vichy legislation was maintained in order to preserve order. These included the old age pension la of 1941, allowances for large families, and limits on consumption of alcohol by minors in bars. Vichy measures in public administration, modernization, and planning all survived Liberation. These measures included rationing and price controls, which continued through the late 1940s. Experts gained ground over politicians in civil service, especially in the budgetary process. Liberation also maintained the Vichy move toward regional, not department, organization for administrative purposes, and increased central authority.
The post-war period also continued the Vichy technicians' vision of a more urban, planned, productive, and impersonal society that developed during the war economy. The techs survived the post-war purges and built on their ideas of a managed economy, paternal state, and planned economic expansion. They viewed the United States and Soviet Union as threats and try to build France's industrial economy to compete.
Paxton bases his analysis on contemporary documents and diaries, arguing that post-war memoirs can't be trusted because they include too many excuses for collaboration born out of the need to protect the authors from post-war prosecution. It was common for memoirists to claim that they new that Hitler would not last, and that they were just playing for time in their collaboration. While some people undoubtedly did this, it was not the case with high officials like Pétain.
For the twenty-five years following the end of World War II, explanations of the development and policies of Vichy France focused on the discontinuities between the Third Republic and the Vichy regime. Robert Paxton argues against this trend, insisting that Vichy policies and ideology originated from within French traditions, not those of the Nazi conquerors. The desire to find someone to blame for France's difficulties infused both Vichy and the post-war reaction to its policies. After Liberation, opponents charged Vichy leaders with wanting Germany to defeat France in 1940, while in the immediate aftermath of the defeat, Vichy leaders had blamed the Popular Front's alliance of the the Catholic Left, Communists, Masons, and Jews for weakening France, and then leading her into an ideological war. For its part, the Left blamed profascist politicians and officers for the defeat, while those on the right blamed the panic of militia units drawn from Paris on May 13 for allowing the Germans to cross the Meuse at Sedan.
The French Army of 1940, though, was the product of French society of the late Third Republic. no conspiracies were needed to explain its collapse in the face of the German onslaught of the Spring of 1940. Paxton argues that the new regime was not a cabal bent on overthrow, nor was it based on German or Italian policies, alliances or ideals. The Vichy government began with popular support and the participation of the same groups of elites as the Third Republic. In order to understand both the creation of Vichy and the French origins of its programs, you have to examine the domestic political and economic tensions that plagued the Third Republic.
The last government of the Third Republic was formed on constitutional grounds to request an armistice with Germany on June 16, 1940. The new government was headed by Marshal Pétain, who convened a cabinet in the style of the Third Republic by including both conservatives and socialists. Only those opposed to an armistice were excluded. This led to both elite and public support of the Vichy government, which prepared to continue to fight from North Africa even while asking for an armistice. Hitler feared a French government in exile using the French Empire and its resources to fight alongside Great Britain, and chose the option of a relatively lenient armistice. On the French side, because there as no charismatic leader arguing against the armistice and no positive decision to continue to fight Germany, Paxton contends that the armistice happened almost by default. No active choice for an armistice was made.
Most of the French public and leadership viewed those few who wanted to continue to fight as a threat to national survival. In any case, war to the end made little strategic sense because there was no reason to believe that Great Britain would survive the war. British ground forces in France had already withdrawn through Dunkirk after a less than stellar performance. The resolve shown during the Battle of Britain was nowhere in evidence during the defense of France, so the French believed that a final peace would occur in weeks rather than years.
The result of the armistice was a fragmenting of French society. The real fear was not of the Germans, but that the war would weaken Germany enough that it could not oppose Stalin in the East. The French also still held the painful memory of the lost generation of World War I, and feared that another 20 million casualties would completely destroy France. Fear of revolution, as had occurred after the end of the Franco-Prussia War in 1871, also confronted French military and civilian leaders. Restoring and maintaining order became the key concern. Petain addressed this concern by promising order and stability, and contrasting it to the negative aspects of a continued war: reprisals, full occupation by Germany, guerrilla warfare, and hardship. So soon after the end of fighting, it was hard for the French people to contemplate starting again. Paxton believes that the quick collapse meant that the people were psychologically unready to resist - a long campaign like that of World War I would have stripped away the mental and physical comforts of life, and given people the wherewithal to fight. He cites USAF analysis of the effects of bombing on German cities that found that they became more productive after significant damage than they had been beforehand because ephemeral parts of life vanished.
Saving the state became a positive good on its own. To do this, Pétain needed to maintain order to ensure the survival of France. Collaboration was a key component of this effort, because by continuing to administer France, he was able to maintain its sovereignty. His goal to ensure France's continued Sovereignty worked well with Hitler's initial goals for an easy armistice, and played upon the French desire to return to normalcy. To do this required first a level of collaboration with the Germans that sometimes became an active partnership in the war effort. The goals of the varying levels of cooperation with German desires were always to ensure France's sovereignty, to maintain the overseas empire, and to regain administrative control over occupied France.
In addition to these core goals of maintaining order and ensuring the continuation of French sovereignty, the Vichy regime also embarked on a revolution of institutions and values. The Third Republic had lost its last remaining shreds of legitimacy by losing the war. Defeat was an addition to the self-doubt that France had suffered since the 1890s, which had only increased after the tragedy of World War I. The French worried about their national vitality, especially the low birth rate, and suffered under the comments of German soldiers who claimed that their farms seemed old-fashioned and inefficient. Clearly, France needed something different.
While prosecutors later blamed Pierre Laval for leading a conspiracy to end the Third Republic and establish a pro-fascist regime in France, Paxton dismisses this as incoherent and contradictory. Petain chose Laval as Deputy Prime Minister because he was a prominent Third Republic politician and would help sell the new constitution to the National Assembly. When presented with a new constitution, the decision to end the Third Republic was almost unanimous - a 25 to 1 decision among the French electorate. This level of agreement hardly points to a cabal at work.
Contrary to many arguments, Paxton contends that Vichy initially strove for an early peace treaty with Germany and strict neutrality toward the belligerents. Most importantly, Paxton argues that Vichy was not passive in promoting its interests, in courting German favor, or in establishing its own restrictive laws regarding Jews. The idea that Vichy was passive, or that its actions were forced on it by Germany was an invention of Pétain's defense in court after Liberation. According to Paxton, Pétain was only half true in this because it obscures Vichy's actions taken in the absence of German pressure. This is the core of Paxton's argument. His goal is to restore Vichy's initiatives to the record. Especially during the first hundred days, Vichy operated virtually without German control. Germany vetoed Vichy plans, but did not impose policy or officials. This changed only after the Resistance began assassinating Germans during the summer of 1941.
Collaboration, then, was not imposed by the German victors, but a French proposal that was repeatedly rejected by Hitler who wanted a passive France that he could use to attack Great Britain, not an equal partner. France's location and resources were all he wanted - that, and to impose a harsh peace on France in revenge for the Versailles Treaty that so harshly punished Germany after the end of World War I. Vichy's continued efforts to come to an accommodation with Hitler in its efforts to preserve the Empire and France's sovereignty rested entirely on Hitler's perception of whether he needed something from France. When it became obvious that invading England would not work, and Hitler turned East, Vichy found itself pursuing an uninterested suitor.
Petain sent Hitler a constant stream of requests, first as a neutral, and later seeking alliance. Hitler was tempted to allow France more freedom and a larger military role in the fall of 1940 and in May 1941 when it appeared useful, but ultimately saw the armistice, negotiations, and collaboration as just cheap ways to keep France docile. When England didn't fall the the Germans, the full terms of the armistice were enforced, including a 20 milliion Reichsmark daily fee to pay for the occupation. France had to pay the occupation fee at the artificially high exchange rate of 20:1 - a third higher than market exchange rates. Rather than releasing French POWs, they were sent to German stalags for the duration of the war.
Economics an the impossibility of gains in Europe forced Vichy to focus on its empire. French goals were to maintain the integrity of the Empire in the face of advances by both Axis and Allied powers, especially Italy and de Gaulle. As its price for assisting Hitler, Vichy expected colonial gains, not just in maintaining the Empire, but in colonies seized from Great Britain. Germany wanted the use of bases in French North Africa to attack British interests in the Middle East and to provide support for Rommel. The broad negotiations on its status that France expected in return never materialized.
After the Liberation, Vichy's ministers were prosecuted for collaboration with the Germans. The first trial ended in the execution of Pierre Pucheu. Other executions and imprisonments followed. In part, the trials were meant to strike the legacy of Vichy from history, an aim of Liberation writers. Paxton argues that not only that did this not happen, but that building on the foundation of Vichy was unavoidable. To show this, he focuses on the continuity of Third Republic trends in Vichy, and then Vichy trends after Liberation. Examples include that Pétain's defense attorney was elected to parliament in 1951, the general amnesty of 1953, and return of Vichy officials to office from 1953-58.
Punishment of alleged collaborators was uneven, and fell most heavily on propagandists, intellectuals, and leaders of the Vichy regime. Businessmen, experts, technicians, and bureaucrats mostly escaped punishment. In contrast, the officials of the Third Republic continued to be rejected by the French public after liberation. The vacancies created in government ministries by post-war purges were mostly filled from below by career bureaucrats that carried out Vichy policies. Paxton argues that this happened because like their Vichy predecessors, Liberation leaders wanted control and order, not revolution. To these ends, most of the judiciary survived both trials and purges. The main exceptions were the members of the Special Section of the Paris Court of Appeals who punished French citizens for the assassination of Germans. More than half of the diplomatic corps continued to work for the French government - two-thirds served both Vichy and the Fourth Republic.
Similarly, Liberation did not do away with all Vichy laws. A list of laws attached to the 9 August 1944 ordnace were repealed, but most Vichy legislation was maintained in order to preserve order. These included the old age pension la of 1941, allowances for large families, and limits on consumption of alcohol by minors in bars. Vichy measures in public administration, modernization, and planning all survived Liberation. These measures included rationing and price controls, which continued through the late 1940s. Experts gained ground over politicians in civil service, especially in the budgetary process. Liberation also maintained the Vichy move toward regional, not department, organization for administrative purposes, and increased central authority.
The post-war period also continued the Vichy technicians' vision of a more urban, planned, productive, and impersonal society that developed during the war economy. The techs survived the post-war purges and built on their ideas of a managed economy, paternal state, and planned economic expansion. They viewed the United States and Soviet Union as threats and try to build France's industrial economy to compete.
Paxton bases his analysis on contemporary documents and diaries, arguing that post-war memoirs can't be trusted because they include too many excuses for collaboration born out of the need to protect the authors from post-war prosecution. It was common for memoirists to claim that they new that Hitler would not last, and that they were just playing for time in their collaboration. While some people undoubtedly did this, it was not the case with high officials like Pétain.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
"We Were Wrong, Terribly Wrong..."
Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam. By Frederick Logevall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara summed up Frederik Logevall's assessment of America's escalation of the Vietnam War perfectly in his 1995 memoir - that America's leaders were horribly wrong in their decision to escalate the war in Vietnam. Why the "Awesome Foursome" of President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, chose to focus on war rather than diplomacy is Logevall's primary concern, followed closely by could they have avoided escalation in Southeast Asia. His conclusion is the predictable one that LBJ and his primary advisors made a conscious choice to increase American involvement in Vietnam despite the availability of other options, and over the objections of key American allies, prominent newspapers, and Democratic Senators.
Logevall argues that by the end of what he terms the "Long 1964," the period from August 1963 to March 1965, LBJ had already determined that war was the proper policy choice in Vietnam. Choice is the important term here, for Logevall believes that the United States had other ways to seek a resolution in Indochina short of direct military intervention. This is a stark contrast to most other histories of the Vietnam War, which portray the Americanization of the war as inevitable due to either the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, or by Johnson's need to protect his Great Society programs in Congress. Both of these issues play an important role in Logevall's analysis, but he assigns them different importance than other historians (such as Dallek, Gardner, and Herring).
The coup that resulted in Diem's death was the first sponsored by the United States, which sought to remove any South Vietnamese officials that it believed might agree to a bilateral agreement with North Vietnam. Logevall contends that this, not Diem's ineffectiveness as President, was the reason that he and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were removed from power. As a result of the United States' resistance to negotiations in Vietnam, the coup did not mean that the United States had taken responsibility for events in Vietnam, but preserved American freedom of action since President John F. Kennedy had not come to a decision for or against escalation.
An important difference between Logevall and other histories of the early years of the war is his international approach, which draws on diplomatic archives in the United States, France, Great Britain, and Sweden. This approach underlies his argument that American allies and opponents both supported a negotiated settlement to the war in Vietnam prior to escalation in 1965. Charles de Gaulle called for a neutralized Vietnam in August 1963, arguing that Indochina would be a never-ending entanglement for the United States. Great Britain quietly supported de Gaulle's view, but had already agreed not to push for a diplomatic solution in public. Logevall argues that British concerns were muted by England's need for American support of Malaysia against an aggressive Indonesia and England's increasing status as an American client. The Soviet Union also favored a diplomatic solution to the conflict as a means of stabilizing the region.
In the United States, Dean Rusk opposed escalation, but allowed hawks like McNamara and Bundy more sway in discussions because he believed that the State Department's real work would start after the end of the conflict. Similarly, Undersecretary of State George Ball, along with many of the mid-level bureaucrats in the State Department and at the CIA were against the war. Logevall asserts that their opposition was muted, like that of Canadian and British diplomats. The problem was that while many called for neutralization of Vietnam along the lines of Laos in 1961, none could offer a vision for how it would work.
The question then, is why did LBJ Americanize the war? Logevall argues that Johnson chose war over diplomacy primarily due to personal factors, but that it fit within long term currents in American culture and Foreign Policy ideology. Along with Michael H. Hunt, Logevall argues that American belief in national greatness, a racial hierarchy based on white superiority, and fear of revolutions provide the cultural context for American decision-making related to Vietnam. In addition to these factors, Americans were simply not comfortable with the realist considerations inherent in European-style diplomacy. The "Awesome Foursome" also believed that the Soviets were fanatics about spreading Communism, and that negotiating with fanatics was futile. Because Communists worked to spread their government and economic doctrines to people who did not want them, America was morally obligated to oppose them. The problem, Logevall contends, with structural arguments like these is that they don't relate much to the decisions made in the real world - the Truman Doctrine, after all, didn't mean that the United States actually opposed Communism everywhere, or that it always resorted to military means in its opposition.
The best long term explanation for American escalation in Vietnam is our involvement there for fifteen years. That provided a momentum to events, that predisposed American leaders toward war, but did not inexorably lead to war. The deciding factors were the personalities of Johnson, Rusk, Bundy, and McNamara. Logevall argues that they did not support the war for the reasons most frequently provided: to defend a free people from aggression because the United States so often undermined Vietnamese self-determination through its support for coups and sabotage of bilateral negotiations.
The key concern in American decision-making regarding Vietnam was that of credibility, both personal and national. Kennedy worried that "losing" Vietnam to the Communists would damage his chances of reelection in 1964. Johnson's concerns about credibility went deeper than Kennedy's. Johnson worried so much about his lack of foreign policy expertise that he avoided foreign leaders and did not debate foreign affairs with his own staff.
The issue of credibility, prestige, and reputation came up frequently in meetings on Vietnam during the Long 1964. Logevall divides the discussion into three parts: national leadership, partisan politics, and careerism. LBJ dominated Vietnam policy from the beginning of his administration. His main concerns were his domestic agenda and his historical reputation. This still doesn't explain why LBJ so vehemently rejected diplomatic solutions. The desire to protect the Great Society programs is not sufficient because the lack of public or Congressional support for a war meant that LBJ could have withdrawn from Vietnam and found ways to save his domestic agenda. Vietnam was worth winning for its own sake.
Logevall emphasizes Johnson's personality as the main driver for escalation in his analysis. Because of his insecurity, Johnson saw attacks on his policies as personal attacks on him. This was enhanced by his tendency to conflate his personal credibility with that of the United States. He favored military action as a test of manhood, which had personal and national effects. Despite his own bullying style, Johnson believed that he couldn't back down to a bully like the Communists. To retreat or withdraw was not possible because it was cowardly, and LBJ saw diplomatic solutions in Vietnam as running from a fight, even while acknowledging that it might not be possible to win.
Unfortunately, Logevall does not include Vietnamese archives in his analysis, nor does he assign much agency to North Vietnam, assuming that only the American decision on escalation matters. In one respect this approach makes sense because Logevall is concerned with American decision-making, not Vietnamese decision-making. However, it ignores both Chinese and North Vietnamese pronouncements which denounced Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's approach of seeking peaceful co-existence with the West. North Vietnam also decided to expand its support for the insurgency in South Vietnam during 1963 due to a significant power shift in its leadership in which more moderate leaders such as General Vo Nguyen Giap and Party Secretary Truong Chinh faced a militant group headed by Le Duan and Le Duc Tho. Giap's proteges were purged from PAVN in early 1964 after Giap was accused of accepting Khrushchev's policy of co-existence.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara summed up Frederik Logevall's assessment of America's escalation of the Vietnam War perfectly in his 1995 memoir - that America's leaders were horribly wrong in their decision to escalate the war in Vietnam. Why the "Awesome Foursome" of President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, chose to focus on war rather than diplomacy is Logevall's primary concern, followed closely by could they have avoided escalation in Southeast Asia. His conclusion is the predictable one that LBJ and his primary advisors made a conscious choice to increase American involvement in Vietnam despite the availability of other options, and over the objections of key American allies, prominent newspapers, and Democratic Senators.
Logevall argues that by the end of what he terms the "Long 1964," the period from August 1963 to March 1965, LBJ had already determined that war was the proper policy choice in Vietnam. Choice is the important term here, for Logevall believes that the United States had other ways to seek a resolution in Indochina short of direct military intervention. This is a stark contrast to most other histories of the Vietnam War, which portray the Americanization of the war as inevitable due to either the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, or by Johnson's need to protect his Great Society programs in Congress. Both of these issues play an important role in Logevall's analysis, but he assigns them different importance than other historians (such as Dallek, Gardner, and Herring).
The coup that resulted in Diem's death was the first sponsored by the United States, which sought to remove any South Vietnamese officials that it believed might agree to a bilateral agreement with North Vietnam. Logevall contends that this, not Diem's ineffectiveness as President, was the reason that he and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were removed from power. As a result of the United States' resistance to negotiations in Vietnam, the coup did not mean that the United States had taken responsibility for events in Vietnam, but preserved American freedom of action since President John F. Kennedy had not come to a decision for or against escalation.
An important difference between Logevall and other histories of the early years of the war is his international approach, which draws on diplomatic archives in the United States, France, Great Britain, and Sweden. This approach underlies his argument that American allies and opponents both supported a negotiated settlement to the war in Vietnam prior to escalation in 1965. Charles de Gaulle called for a neutralized Vietnam in August 1963, arguing that Indochina would be a never-ending entanglement for the United States. Great Britain quietly supported de Gaulle's view, but had already agreed not to push for a diplomatic solution in public. Logevall argues that British concerns were muted by England's need for American support of Malaysia against an aggressive Indonesia and England's increasing status as an American client. The Soviet Union also favored a diplomatic solution to the conflict as a means of stabilizing the region.
In the United States, Dean Rusk opposed escalation, but allowed hawks like McNamara and Bundy more sway in discussions because he believed that the State Department's real work would start after the end of the conflict. Similarly, Undersecretary of State George Ball, along with many of the mid-level bureaucrats in the State Department and at the CIA were against the war. Logevall asserts that their opposition was muted, like that of Canadian and British diplomats. The problem was that while many called for neutralization of Vietnam along the lines of Laos in 1961, none could offer a vision for how it would work.
The question then, is why did LBJ Americanize the war? Logevall argues that Johnson chose war over diplomacy primarily due to personal factors, but that it fit within long term currents in American culture and Foreign Policy ideology. Along with Michael H. Hunt, Logevall argues that American belief in national greatness, a racial hierarchy based on white superiority, and fear of revolutions provide the cultural context for American decision-making related to Vietnam. In addition to these factors, Americans were simply not comfortable with the realist considerations inherent in European-style diplomacy. The "Awesome Foursome" also believed that the Soviets were fanatics about spreading Communism, and that negotiating with fanatics was futile. Because Communists worked to spread their government and economic doctrines to people who did not want them, America was morally obligated to oppose them. The problem, Logevall contends, with structural arguments like these is that they don't relate much to the decisions made in the real world - the Truman Doctrine, after all, didn't mean that the United States actually opposed Communism everywhere, or that it always resorted to military means in its opposition.
The best long term explanation for American escalation in Vietnam is our involvement there for fifteen years. That provided a momentum to events, that predisposed American leaders toward war, but did not inexorably lead to war. The deciding factors were the personalities of Johnson, Rusk, Bundy, and McNamara. Logevall argues that they did not support the war for the reasons most frequently provided: to defend a free people from aggression because the United States so often undermined Vietnamese self-determination through its support for coups and sabotage of bilateral negotiations.
The key concern in American decision-making regarding Vietnam was that of credibility, both personal and national. Kennedy worried that "losing" Vietnam to the Communists would damage his chances of reelection in 1964. Johnson's concerns about credibility went deeper than Kennedy's. Johnson worried so much about his lack of foreign policy expertise that he avoided foreign leaders and did not debate foreign affairs with his own staff.
The issue of credibility, prestige, and reputation came up frequently in meetings on Vietnam during the Long 1964. Logevall divides the discussion into three parts: national leadership, partisan politics, and careerism. LBJ dominated Vietnam policy from the beginning of his administration. His main concerns were his domestic agenda and his historical reputation. This still doesn't explain why LBJ so vehemently rejected diplomatic solutions. The desire to protect the Great Society programs is not sufficient because the lack of public or Congressional support for a war meant that LBJ could have withdrawn from Vietnam and found ways to save his domestic agenda. Vietnam was worth winning for its own sake.
Logevall emphasizes Johnson's personality as the main driver for escalation in his analysis. Because of his insecurity, Johnson saw attacks on his policies as personal attacks on him. This was enhanced by his tendency to conflate his personal credibility with that of the United States. He favored military action as a test of manhood, which had personal and national effects. Despite his own bullying style, Johnson believed that he couldn't back down to a bully like the Communists. To retreat or withdraw was not possible because it was cowardly, and LBJ saw diplomatic solutions in Vietnam as running from a fight, even while acknowledging that it might not be possible to win.
Unfortunately, Logevall does not include Vietnamese archives in his analysis, nor does he assign much agency to North Vietnam, assuming that only the American decision on escalation matters. In one respect this approach makes sense because Logevall is concerned with American decision-making, not Vietnamese decision-making. However, it ignores both Chinese and North Vietnamese pronouncements which denounced Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's approach of seeking peaceful co-existence with the West. North Vietnam also decided to expand its support for the insurgency in South Vietnam during 1963 due to a significant power shift in its leadership in which more moderate leaders such as General Vo Nguyen Giap and Party Secretary Truong Chinh faced a militant group headed by Le Duan and Le Duc Tho. Giap's proteges were purged from PAVN in early 1964 after Giap was accused of accepting Khrushchev's policy of co-existence.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Modern Europe, the Cold War and Vietnam Reading List
This is the list from the second faculty member for my Modern Europe field. The emphasis is definitely Cold War and Vietnam, with some other major topics thrown in for good measure. The emphasis here is on historiography and debates in the field, which I find significantly more difficult than creating a narrative response.
Modern Europe
Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood
Mayer, Arno, Politics & Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Security in Versailles
-----, Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War
Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization
David Blackbourn, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Ferdinand Braudel, History of Civilization
Robert Conquest, The Great Terror
Robert Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War
Eley, Geoff, Forging Democracy: the history of the left in Europe
Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War
Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924
Paul Fussell, The Great War in Modern Memory
Peter Gay, Weimar Culture
Richard F. Hamilton & Holger H. Herwig, eds. The Origins of World War I
Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Revolution
-----, The Age of Extremes
John G. Ikenberry, After Victory
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers
Thomas Laquer, Making Sex
Charles Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilisation in Europe after WW1
Arnor Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final Solution in History
Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century
Normal Naimark, The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe 1944-1949
Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany
Sidney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760-1970
Edwaid Said, Orientalism
Carl Schorske, Fin-de-siecle Vienna
Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763-1848
James Scott, Hidden Transcripts: Domination and the Arts of Resistance
David Stevenson, Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Strategy
Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight
Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: the Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution
James Young, The Texture of Memory
Cold War and Vietnam
Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena
James Cronin, The World the Cold War Made
Robert Dean, Imperial Brotherhood
Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture
Alexander Fursenko, Krushchev's Cold War
_______. One Hell of a Gamble: Krushchev, Castro, and Kennedy
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
Ilya V. Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War
-----, Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy toward the Indochina Conflict, 1954-1963
James L. Gormly. From Potsdam to the Cold War: Big Three Diplomacy
Michael Hogan, Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations
Kristen Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood
Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made
Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War
Judt, Tony. Postwar
Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination
Wallter La Feber, America, Russia, and the Cold War
Vojteck Mastny, The Soviet Union and the Cold War
Thomas McCormick, America's Half-Century: American Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After
Douglas Pike, The Making of Detente: Soviet-American Relations in the Shadow of VietnamJeremy Suri, Power and Protest
Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace
Reinhold Wagnleitner, CoCo-colonization and the Cold War
Vietnam and the Soviet Union: Anatomy of an Alliance
Wexler, Imanuel, The Marshall Plan Revisited: The European Recovery Program in Economic Perspective
Vladislav Zubok, Constantine V. Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War : From Stalin to Khrushchev
European Integration
William I. Hitchcock, The Struggle for Europe: the turbulent history of a divided continent, 1945 to the present
Tony Judt, A Grand Illusion? An essay on Europe
John Gillingham, Coal, steel, and the rebirth of Europe, 1945-1955. The Germans and French from Ruhr conflict to Economic Community
Peter Gowan and Anderson, Perry, The Question of Europe
Vietnam
Mark Philip Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919-1950
David Hunt, Vietnam's Southern Revolution
Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden
Robert McMahon, Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War
Modern Europe
Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood
Mayer, Arno, Politics & Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Security in Versailles
-----, Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War
Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization
David Blackbourn, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Ferdinand Braudel, History of Civilization
Robert Conquest, The Great Terror
Robert Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War
Eley, Geoff, Forging Democracy: the history of the left in Europe
Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War
Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924
Paul Fussell, The Great War in Modern Memory
Peter Gay, Weimar Culture
Richard F. Hamilton & Holger H. Herwig, eds. The Origins of World War I
Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Revolution
-----, The Age of Extremes
John G. Ikenberry, After Victory
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers
Thomas Laquer, Making Sex
Charles Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilisation in Europe after WW1
Arnor Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final Solution in History
Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century
Normal Naimark, The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe 1944-1949
Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany
Sidney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760-1970
Edwaid Said, Orientalism
Carl Schorske, Fin-de-siecle Vienna
Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763-1848
James Scott, Hidden Transcripts: Domination and the Arts of Resistance
David Stevenson, Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Strategy
Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight
Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: the Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution
James Young, The Texture of Memory
Cold War and Vietnam
Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena
James Cronin, The World the Cold War Made
Robert Dean, Imperial Brotherhood
Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture
Alexander Fursenko, Krushchev's Cold War
_______. One Hell of a Gamble: Krushchev, Castro, and Kennedy
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
Ilya V. Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War
-----, Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy toward the Indochina Conflict, 1954-1963
James L. Gormly. From Potsdam to the Cold War: Big Three Diplomacy
Michael Hogan, Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations
Kristen Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood
Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made
Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War
Judt, Tony. Postwar
Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination
Wallter La Feber, America, Russia, and the Cold War
Vojteck Mastny, The Soviet Union and the Cold War
Thomas McCormick, America's Half-Century: American Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After
Douglas Pike, The Making of Detente: Soviet-American Relations in the Shadow of VietnamJeremy Suri, Power and Protest
Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace
Reinhold Wagnleitner, CoCo-colonization and the Cold War
Vietnam and the Soviet Union: Anatomy of an Alliance
Wexler, Imanuel, The Marshall Plan Revisited: The European Recovery Program in Economic Perspective
Vladislav Zubok, Constantine V. Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War : From Stalin to Khrushchev
European Integration
William I. Hitchcock, The Struggle for Europe: the turbulent history of a divided continent, 1945 to the present
Tony Judt, A Grand Illusion? An essay on Europe
John Gillingham, Coal, steel, and the rebirth of Europe, 1945-1955. The Germans and French from Ruhr conflict to Economic Community
Peter Gowan and Anderson, Perry, The Question of Europe
Vietnam
Mark Philip Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919-1950
David Hunt, Vietnam's Southern Revolution
Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden
Robert McMahon, Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Modern Europe Reading List
With some individual exceptions, we get individual reading lists from each faculty member we sit Ph.D comprehensive exams with. My fields are Military and Naval History, Europe since 1815, and United States since 1877. Since we usually have two faculty members per field, we get six lists of books to read. The total will ultimately be around 450 books.
Here's the first of the European lists:
Core France
Philippe Burrin, France under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise
Ronald Schechter (ed) The French Revolution
Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen : The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914
Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944
Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France (English translation, 1996)
Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France
Gérard Noiriel, The French Melting Pot
Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14-18: Understanding the Great War
Michael Sutton, France and the Construction of Europe, 1944-2006
Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat
France
Henri Barbusse, Under Fire
Françoise Gaspard, A Small City in France: A Socialist Mayor Confronts Neofascism
Andrew Feenberg and Jim Freedman (eds.,) When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968
Charles Sowerwine, France since 1870: Culture, Politics, and Society
Isser Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators
Martyn Lyons, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution
David Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It
Maurice Agulhon, The Republican Experiment
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Mark Traugott, Armies of the Poor : Determinants of Working-Class Participation in the Parisian Insurrection of June 1848
Ronald Aminzade, Ballots and Barricades. Class Formation and Republican Politics in France, 1830-1871
Maurice Agulhon, The Republic in the Village
Roger V. Gould, Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune
Jill Harsin, Barricades: The War of the Streets in Revolutionary Paris, 1830-1848
Ruth Harris, Lourdes. Body and Spirit in the Secular Age
Caroline Ford, Divided Houses: Religion and Gender in Modern France
Robert J. Soucy, French Fascism; the Second Wave 1933-1989
Kevin Passmore, From Liberalism to Fascism: The Right in a French Province
Geoff Watkins, “Recent Work on France and the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 37 (2002): 637-47
Pierre Laborie, “1940-1944: Double Think in France,” in Sarah Fishman et al., France at War: Vichy and the Historians
Philippe Roger, The American Enemy: A Story of French Anti-Americanism.
Helga Haftendorn et al., The Strategic Triangle: France, Germany, and the United States in the Shaping of the New Europe
Frances Lynch, “France and European Integration: From the Schuman Plan to Economic and Monetary Union,” Contemporary European History 13 (2004): 117-21.
James J. Sheehan, “The Problem of Sovereignty in European History,” American Historical Review vol. 111 (February 2006): 1-15
Francois Furet, The Passing of an Illusion…
Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934-1938
Eugen Weber, Action Francaise: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth Century France
Rene Remond, The Right Wing in France from 1815 to de Gaulle
Robert Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War
Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews
Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944
History and Theory (optional)
Michel de Certeau, “History: Science and Fiction” in Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, 1986), 199-207, 214-221
William Sewell, "The Concept(s) of Culture," in ed. Victoria Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, Beyond the Cultural Turn (Berkeley, 1999), 35-61
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979, orig. 1975)
Foucault, "Two Lectures," in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 by Michel Foucault, ed. Colin Gordon (NY,1980), 78-108
Edward Said, Orientalism
Pierre Bourdieu, "Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power," in Culture/Power/History, 155-199
France and Empire
Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire. America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe
Kristen Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies
Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization. The Algerian War and the Remaking of France
Eric Jennings, "Conservative Confluences, 'Nativist' Synergy: Reinscribing Vichy's National Revolution in Indochina," French Historical Studies, vol 27, no. 3 (Summer 2004)
Gavin Bowd, Daniel Clayton, "Tropicality, Orientalism, and French Colonialism in Indochina: The Work of Pierre Gourou 1927-1982," French Historical Studies, vol 28, no. 2 (Spring 2005)
Benjamin C. Bower, A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France's Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844-1902
Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of the Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France
Stephen A. Toth, The End of Empire in French West Africa: France's Successful Decolonization?
Herman Lebovics, Bringing the Empire Back Home: France in the Global Age
Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930
David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bone, 1970-1920
Gender
Joan Scott, The Politics of the Veil
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution
Judith Surkis, Sexing the Citizen: Morality and Masculinity in France, 1870-1920
Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man
Mary Louise Roberts, Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in fin-de-siecle France
Whitney Chadwick and Tirza Latimer, eds., The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars
Ann Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power
Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England
Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: Introduction
Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London
Edward Cohen, Walk on the Wilde Side: Toward a Genealogy of a Discourse on Male Sexualities
Erica Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Gender and the Making of London’s West End
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Here's the first of the European lists:
Core France
Philippe Burrin, France under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise
Ronald Schechter (ed) The French Revolution
Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen : The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914
Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944
Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France (English translation, 1996)
Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France
Gérard Noiriel, The French Melting Pot
Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14-18: Understanding the Great War
Michael Sutton, France and the Construction of Europe, 1944-2006
Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat
France
Henri Barbusse, Under Fire
Françoise Gaspard, A Small City in France: A Socialist Mayor Confronts Neofascism
Andrew Feenberg and Jim Freedman (eds.,) When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968
Charles Sowerwine, France since 1870: Culture, Politics, and Society
Isser Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators
Martyn Lyons, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution
David Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It
Maurice Agulhon, The Republican Experiment
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Mark Traugott, Armies of the Poor : Determinants of Working-Class Participation in the Parisian Insurrection of June 1848
Ronald Aminzade, Ballots and Barricades. Class Formation and Republican Politics in France, 1830-1871
Maurice Agulhon, The Republic in the Village
Roger V. Gould, Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune
Jill Harsin, Barricades: The War of the Streets in Revolutionary Paris, 1830-1848
Ruth Harris, Lourdes. Body and Spirit in the Secular Age
Caroline Ford, Divided Houses: Religion and Gender in Modern France
Robert J. Soucy, French Fascism; the Second Wave 1933-1989
Kevin Passmore, From Liberalism to Fascism: The Right in a French Province
Geoff Watkins, “Recent Work on France and the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 37 (2002): 637-47
Pierre Laborie, “1940-1944: Double Think in France,” in Sarah Fishman et al., France at War: Vichy and the Historians
Philippe Roger, The American Enemy: A Story of French Anti-Americanism.
Helga Haftendorn et al., The Strategic Triangle: France, Germany, and the United States in the Shaping of the New Europe
Frances Lynch, “France and European Integration: From the Schuman Plan to Economic and Monetary Union,” Contemporary European History 13 (2004): 117-21.
James J. Sheehan, “The Problem of Sovereignty in European History,” American Historical Review vol. 111 (February 2006): 1-15
Francois Furet, The Passing of an Illusion…
Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934-1938
Eugen Weber, Action Francaise: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth Century France
Rene Remond, The Right Wing in France from 1815 to de Gaulle
Robert Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War
Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews
Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944
History and Theory (optional)
Michel de Certeau, “History: Science and Fiction” in Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, 1986), 199-207, 214-221
William Sewell, "The Concept(s) of Culture," in ed. Victoria Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, Beyond the Cultural Turn (Berkeley, 1999), 35-61
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979, orig. 1975)
Foucault, "Two Lectures," in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 by Michel Foucault, ed. Colin Gordon (NY,1980), 78-108
Edward Said, Orientalism
Pierre Bourdieu, "Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power," in Culture/Power/History, 155-199
France and Empire
Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire. America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe
Kristen Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies
Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization. The Algerian War and the Remaking of France
Eric Jennings, "Conservative Confluences, 'Nativist' Synergy: Reinscribing Vichy's National Revolution in Indochina," French Historical Studies, vol 27, no. 3 (Summer 2004)
Gavin Bowd, Daniel Clayton, "Tropicality, Orientalism, and French Colonialism in Indochina: The Work of Pierre Gourou 1927-1982," French Historical Studies, vol 28, no. 2 (Spring 2005)
Benjamin C. Bower, A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France's Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844-1902
Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of the Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France
Stephen A. Toth, The End of Empire in French West Africa: France's Successful Decolonization?
Herman Lebovics, Bringing the Empire Back Home: France in the Global Age
Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930
David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bone, 1970-1920
Gender
Joan Scott, The Politics of the Veil
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution
Judith Surkis, Sexing the Citizen: Morality and Masculinity in France, 1870-1920
Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man
Mary Louise Roberts, Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in fin-de-siecle France
Whitney Chadwick and Tirza Latimer, eds., The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars
Ann Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power
Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England
Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: Introduction
Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London
Edward Cohen, Walk on the Wilde Side: Toward a Genealogy of a Discourse on Male Sexualities
Erica Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Gender and the Making of London’s West End
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
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