Showing papers in "Journal of Contemporary History in 1998"

The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland: Reassessments and New Findings

Abstract: The overlapping crises in Hungary and Poland in the autumn of 1956 posed a severe challenge for leaders of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU). After a tense stand-off with Poland, the CPSU Presidium (as the Politburo was then called) decided to refrain from military intervention and to seek a political compromise. The crisis in Hungary was far less easily defused. For a brief while it appeared that Hungary might be able to break away from the communist bloc, but the Soviet army put an end to all such hopes. Soviet troops crushed the Hungarian revolution, and a degree of order returned to the Soviet camp. Newly-released documents from Russia and Eastern Europe shed valuable light on the events of 1956, permitting a much clearer and more nuanced understanding of Soviet reactions. This article will begin by discussing the way official versions of the 1956 invasion changed and formerly secret documents became available during the late Soviet period and after the Soviet Union disintegrated. It will then highlight some of the most important findings from new archival sources and memoirs. The article relies heavily on the so-called Malin notes and on new materials from East-Central Europe. Both the article and the documents will show that far-reaching modifications are needed in existing western accounts of the 1956 crises.

Redefining defence in the post-apartheid security imaginary: the politics of meaning-fixing

Abstract: All societies are faced with questions of identity. These questions are not explicitly posed and the answers given to them are not necessarily only in language, but also constituted through society's activities, its institutions and way of being. Stated differently, it is in their social doing that societies express their self-understanding in the form of embodied meaning. But, meanings are often contested and the fixing and reproduction of one set of meanings and not another are often political, i.e. they involve political struggle. From time to time a political struggle may seem to be won on such a grand scale that the process of re-fixing meanings and reconstructing realities based on new meanings, results in what is almost a traceable ripple effect through all aspects of society's doing.

Conscription and Equity in Western Democracies, 1940–75

Abstract: In the twentieth century, France, Britain and the USA all utilized a system of compulsory military service. The French had adopted conscription to sustain the revolution of 1789. The Americans and British embraced the system with more reluctance. In the American Civil War, a draft scheme was created mainly as a means of generating money and encouraging volunteers, but generated riots instead. When volunteers again failed to meet needs, President Wilson adopted a Selective Service Act in 1917. Although it worked better, the draft was still considered an aberration in a nation committed to individual freedom. When the war ended, so did the draft. In 1940, a group of civilian leaders again lobbied for conscription as a means of selectively managing manpower. Such a bill was adopted in 1940 and remained in force, with the exception of a short period, until 1973.1 The British introduced regular conscription during the first world war. After considerable resistance, the government was forced to adopt a draft because of manpower shortages on the Western Front. The system came too late to prevent confusion arising from volunteers rushing to fight while needed in essential civilian occupations. Some of Britain's best and brightest young men had become part of what General Haig called 'wastage' on the barbed wire of the Western Front.2 Like the USA, Britain quickly ended conscription after the war but had to reinstate it in 1939.

The Blackshirted Utopians

Abstract: By coining the word 'Utopia', Thomas More bequeathed to scholarship the means to describe the gaze of desire which looks at life as it is and then projects a picture of how it could be, resolved of its defects. This was a vision which was outopia, no-where in reality but potentially a powerful spur to action because it suggested what could be. More's island was also an eutopia, a good place. In contrast, fascism is synonymous with the dystopian hallmarks of oppression and misery. Nonetheless, it is the contention of this article that examining the British Union of Fascists (1932-40) as a utopian movement provides a valid and valuable insight into the ideology and motivations of Blackshirts.'

Discipline and the Death Penalty in the British Army in the War against Germany during the Second World War

Abstract: On 3 August 1943, General George S. Patton, commander of the US 7 Army, visited 15th Evacuation Hospital in Sicily. While touring the hospital he met Private Charles H. Kuhl, who had recently been evacuated from 1 Division suffering from battle fatigue. Patton was incensed, called the soldier a coward and ordered him to leave the tent. When he sat motionless, the general slapped him with his gloves and personally ejected him from the tent. That evening he wrote in his diary that men like Kuhl should be shot. A week later, while visiting a second field hospital, he encountered another private suffering from battle fatigue whom he also slapped, telling him, 'You ought to be lined up against a wall and shot. In fact, I ought to shoot you myself right now, god damn you.'1 These incidents nearly wrecked Patton's career. He was compelled to make a public apology for his actions and only Eisenhower's support made it possible for him to be given command of the US 3 Army in time for the Normandy campaign. There is no recorded instance of a senior British general acting in a similar manner. On the contrary, it is now sometimes assumed that, following their own experiences of front-line service during the first world war and the publication in 1922 of the report of the War Office Enquiry into 'Shell-Shock', senior British officers during the second world war adopted a more compassionate policy towards the victims of 'battle fatigue'. The literature on discipline and the death penalty in the British army in the twentieth century stops in 1930, in the belief that, with the abolition of the death penalty for desertion, capital punishment for purely military offences ceased to be an issue which concerned the army.2 Far from equating 'battle fatigue' with cowardice, Research for this article was made possible by a Small Personal Research Grant from the British Academy. I am grateful to the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London, for permission to refer to material in which they own the copyright. Crown copyright material appears by kind permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office. I have not been able to trace the copyright holder of the papers of E.P. Danger. I apologize to them and to anyone else whose copyright I may inadvertently have infringed.

Cattle Plagues Past and Present: The Mystery of Mad Cow Disease:

Abstract: Bubonic plague has erupted on a global scale a number of times in the past two millennia, in Europe most dramatically in the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Its impact then was profound for two predominant reasons. It killed between a third and a half of the population and its origins and dissemination were mysteries which persisted for centuries.' The impact of bubonic plague was so great as to lead to a second, popular definition of plague 'an affliction, calamity, evil, a "scourge"'. In other words, a plague is a highly dramatic disaster which combines widespread devastation with mystery as to its origins and spread. This conception of plague remains potent. Folk memories of the great influenza pandemic immediately following the first world war invest it with the title of plague (in Australia at least). More recently, Aids has reawakened acute anxieties previously stilled by the progress of modern medicine, and has achieved plague status.2 Epizootics can also be plagues. The term 'rinderpest', German for 'cattle plague', testifies to its devastating impact; the panzootics of rinderpest which swept Europe in the eighteenth century are estimated to have killed 200 million head of cattle. Rinderpest also destroyed millions in southern Africa at the end of the last century, devastating societies in which cattle were the major form of wealth.3 As for its incursion into Great Britain between 1865 and 1867, this was the most dramatic episode in nineteenth-century British agricultural history.4 No other single event has had the same impact on public consciousness until the present epizootic of Mad Cow Disease, of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). After 130 years, a livestock disease has again become the prime focus of public concern in Britain.

The Arendt Cult: Hannah Arendt as Political Commentator:

Abstract: Hannah Arendt (1906-75) was a woman of many parts. She was philosopher, historian, sociologist and also journalist; she wrote poetry but also on technology; she had an interest in theology but also reviewed Kafka, Benjamin and Brecht. The following reflections do not refer to her life's work but merely one, albeit central, aspect that of a political analyst and commentator. No twentieth-century philosopher and political thinker has at the present time as wide an echo. The Library of Congress Catalogue lists more than 50 books written about her, including those comparing her with fellow thinkers such as Margaret Duras, Camus, J. Habermas, Leo Strauss and others. There are books on topics such as 'Hannah Arendt and the Philosophy of Natality' and 'Hannah Arendt, Hegel and Marx'. Altavista, the Internet engine, registers 3156 hits concerning Hannah Arendt, another search engine only 2965; the number of articles about her in scholarly journals is probably in excess of 1000. Dr Caroline Kealey has written a basic paper on Hannah Arendt in Cyberspace, dealing with topics such as the Arendtian model of the Net. On another Internet site we find 'Hannah in 3 D'; the German railway runs an Intercity Express Hannah Arendt from Karlsruhe to Hannover and back, the German postal services have a Hannah Arendt stamp (DM 1.70) and there are Hannah Arendt streets, for instance, in Marburg, even though'the connection between her and that city was tenuous she studied there for less than a year. There are Hannah Arendt Vereine and the University of Bremen bestows an annual Hannah Arendt award. Not to be outdone, neighbouring Hamburg has another Hannah Arendt prize for DM 300.000, one of the highest in Europe; the Leo Baeck award, in comparison, is for a mere DM 25.000, but then it is donated by the Jewish communities, in contrast to the Hamburg award. There is another Arendt institute in Saxony. In the Great Synagogue in Essen there is a semi-permanent exhibition devoted to Hannah Arendt. All of which tends to show that Hannah Arendt has been more successful than any other German philosopher, living or dead. There is, to the best of my knowledge, no Max Weber Express on the German railways nor is one of the Lufthansa airplanes named after Schopenhauer, Nietzsche or Hegel. (There are many Kantstrassen, however.) On the Internet there are various Arendt lists, including an elaborate Japanese one by Mr Nakayama. Those who write in report that they have 'passionate' feelings about Hannah Arendt and that reading her works has

The Guardian of the 'Sacred Flame': The Failed Political Resurrection of Sir Oswald Mosley after 1945

Abstract: The message of encouragement, in difficult times, with which Mosley raised the morale of embattled members of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1938, is still remembered as a clarion call by the 'Friends of OM', the last flickering ember of the sacred flame. At no time was it more needed by the faithful than in 1945, but the full story behind Mosley's return to politics, and the extent to which he remained within a fascist perspective, has still to be written. The release of Home Office files on Mosley's political activities between 1945 and 1948, and the papers of Robert Saunders at the University of Sheffield, however, have provided much interesting new material to assess Mosley's attempted political resurrection after the second world war.1 John Hope has argued that the Union Movement acted as a transmission belt between preand postwar British fascism. He points to the significance of the internment camps in the second world war, from which new leaders emerged, who were to play an important role in the revival of neo-fascism in Britain after 1945.2 This is an interesting argument, but fascism was an interwar phenomenon and many were devastated by internment. Only the most committed wished to revive the tradition in a new form of nostalgic, mimetic or neo-fascism after the war.3 Why Mosley tried to adapt his fascism to the new realities, in a political climate well symbolized by the deep freeze of the winter of 1947, is the main focus of this article. The key to Mosley's return to politics, despite his realization that he would be regarded as a political flat-earther, was provided in an interview he gave to

Insiders, Outsiders and the Dynamics of Change in the City of London since 1900:

Abstract: '. . the great strength of the City is based on the fact that we've always welcomed newcomers. People sometimes ask "Aren't you worried that many of the big investment banking firms today are owned by European and American parents?" I say, well, what would you have said in the 19th century with the Rothschilds, the Barings and the Schroders and the Samuel Montagues they were all European families who came over here and built up immensely successful City businesses so what's changed?" (John Kemp-Welch, Chairman, London Stock Exchange [formerly Joint Senior Partner, Cazenove & Co.] interviewed by Michael Burt, 1996).

The Struggle for Modernity: Echoes of the Dreyfus Affair in Italian Political Culture, 1898-1912:

Abstract: During the last two years of the nineteenth century, Italy underwent a serious economic, social and political crisis, which seemed to threaten the existence and progress of a liberal democracy in the making. In spring 1898, while Italian public opinion was deeply immersed in the Dreyfus Affair, the government used military force to suppress widespread popular protest which culminated in violent rioting, during which more than a hundred demonstrators died. Politicians and journalists both extreme left-wing democrats and right-wing Catholics who were considered to have instigated the agitation, were arrested and given severe sentences. The Conservatives thought that in this way they would halt the progress of democracy, in order to defend the state from the potential danger of a socialist revolution and a reaction from the Church. In 1899, the government, led by General Luigi Pelloux, a member of the liberal left, tried to introduce reforms to limit constitutional liberties in the name of the Reason of State, but the parliamentary opposition of socialists, radicals and left-wing liberals caused his plans for the restoration of an authoritarian regime to fail. At the very beginning of the twentieth century, Italy renewed its march towards democracy, while in France the victory of Dreyfus's supporters ushered in an era of radical government. In Italy, also, a new period of liberal politics began, characterized by the parliamentary hegemony of Giovanni Giolitti, who was head of government, with only short breaks, from 1903 to 1914. The so-called 'Giolitti era' represented an epoch of economic progress, civil modernization, cultural renewal and democratic reforms that favoured the ascent of the popular classes and the formation of a modern and productive bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, to many contemporaries and especially to the young, Giolitti's long parliamentary supremacy was a reflection of political corruption, a crisis of state, a weakening of the nation and serious moral decay of individual and collective conscience.'

Valerii Chkalov: Soviet Pilot as New Soviet Man:

Abstract: Historians in the West have written a great deal about Stalin and Stalinism. In the first two decades after Stalin's death in 1953, when the survival of the Soviet Union appeared certain, and its potential for further growth quite considerable, western historians writing about Stalin generally emphasized how adept he was at mobilizing the coercive institutions he inherited from Lenin to modernize Russia's economy; the fact that Stalin was able to preserve his own political security at the same time seemed further proof of his superiority as a politician, and of the durability of the Soviet system as a whole.' Largely because Soviet power in the 1950s and 1960s was so much greater than it had been when the Bolsheviks originally came to power, it seemed only natural to stress the emergence of the Soviet Union as a global power, and to ascribe to Stalin primary responsibility for the policies, principally industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture, that made this transformation possible. However, as the Soviet Union in the 1970s began to stagnate, and thus to resemble a more 'western' political system than it appeared to be when it was engaged in these vast projects of social engineering, many historians in the West interpreted Brezhnev's regime, and even Stalin's, in terms of categories and concepts borrowed from western political science and sociology; by describing the Soviet system as a collection of competing interest groups, and collectivization and the Terror as a consequence of pressures from constituencies within and outside the Communist Party, these historians significantly diminished Stalin's role in these events, and in Soviet history generally.2 But in the late 1980s, even as historians in the West still stressed the 'pluralism' in Soviet society, their counterparts in the Soviet Union uncovered all sorts of

Monarchy and Democracy: The Political Role of King Juan Carlos in the Spanish Transition:

Abstract: Almost all portrayals of Spain's transition from dictatorship to democracy stress the importance of structural aspects: the economy and society, the army and the workforce, the Church and political parties, international relations and super-national pressures. Only a few studies examine the role of individual personalities. This article on the role of the king will not attempt to analyse all aspects of the dialectical problem of personality and structure in the transicion process. But the king's political career, his basic beliefs regarding morality as well as their practical political impact, should be examined. The king, who assumed an important institutional and political position as the new head of state, is seen in the context of his time and it is in this context that his actions should be understood.

‘The Blessings of War’: The Depiction of Military Force in Edwardian Newspapers:

Abstract: In his 'Reflections on the First World War', Michael Howard suggests that historians examining the origins of the war would do well to consider what he calls its 'real' causes. He recommends that they 'look beyond' diplomatic documents, Great Power rivalries, invasion scares and naval arms races, and study the works of military thinkers, pre-war editorials, speeches at prize awards and contemporary military literature. In doing so, historians would learn 'far more about the causes of the First World War than in a lifetime of reading diplomatic documents'. 1 Howard states that though 'the elder statesmen did their feckless best to prevent war... the youth of the rival countries were howling impatiently at their doors for immediate war'. It is this 'howling' which needs to be examined and the means by which youth 'had been taught to howl'.' A study of this nature will contribute to our understanding of the origins of the first world war, for it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to wage war without the active support, or at least the acquiescence, of the civilian population who either became soldiers themselves or encouraged others to volunteer. It is, as James joll states, attitudes which make war possible, and therein lies the explanation for the origin of the war,' While Howard recognizes that this sort of study would be difficult to undertake, a particularly fruitful way to discern the attitudes of those who supported war in 1914 is through a study of the way in which actual warfare was imagined in the years leading up to the outbreak of the war. Howard's suggestion that pre-war editorials should be examined points to a deeper study of war-reporting and representations of wars fought before 1914. This is not simply a call to investigate the perspective of individual newspaper titles, or the owners and editors who condemned or condoned particular wars seeking to 'manipulate' readers for political gain. Rather, it is an appeal to examine the imagery employed to convey the idea of warfare to readers, representing their 'reality' of war and the way that they vicariously experienced it.

Opinion Polling in Central and Eastern Europe under Communism

Abstract: Whilst political opinion polling occupies a well-entrenched position within contemporary capitalist political systems, the same cannot be said for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. This article focuses primarily on the development of political opinion polling in these countries in the period prior to the collapse of communist regimes at the end of 1989. Polling was a feature of these communist-led societies, although it was limited in terms of its activities, the scope of issue coverage, and its ability to measure public opinion effectively. The major focus of the discussion concentrates on the methodological issues and problems confronting opinion pollsters in these societies during this time. Although it is generally considered that public opinion polls were not carried out in the Soviet Union and other Central and East European countries until the 1950s,' documentary evidence does exist which suggests that polling activities can be traced as far back as 1945 in both Hungary2 and in Czechoslovakia.3 For instance, the Hungarian Institute of Public Opinion Research (HIPOR) was set up in August 1945 as a branch of the Hungarian Press Agency, 'organized after the manner of the American Institute of Public Opinion'.4 It conducted research into how public opinion reacted to a variety of political events and issues, and how it perceived political parties, leaders, policies and programmes. At the general election in 1945, it accurately forecast the levels of support for the five main parties with an average error of less than 2 per cent per party. In the immediate aftermath of the second world war, the liberation from nazi occupation in Czechoslovakia ushered in a series of conditions necessary for the establishment of opinion polling in any country. These conditions were:

The Problem with Generals: Military Observers and the Origins of the Intervention in Russia and Persia, 1917-18:

Abstract: It is a commonplace to write that modern armies were among Europe's first and most complete bureaucratic systems; and like most commonplaces, it is generally ignored. With relatively few honourable exceptions, what is also generally overlooked is that, as such, armies do not always produce strategic prescriptions based solely on a dispassionate examination of threats and capabilities. All too often, the national advantage, the institutional preference and the personal prospects and prejudices of the general formulating the strategy in question are forced into an amalgam sometimes bearing little resemblance to the strategy which a perfectly objective observer acting in isolation might have produced. All of this is, of course, to say that we too often forget that generals are human, that armies are composed of people, and that an army is, therefore, as apt as any other human organization to act and argue with an eye to its corporate preference, while generals are as likely as any other bureaucratic managers to confuse national interest with personal inclination. This article will examine briefly one case in which generals and the military establishment seemed to distort a nation's regional strategy to an unusual degree namely, the British intervention in Russia and Persia in the last years of the first world war. It will argue that bureaucratic impulses and the ambitions of local military commanders, initially dispatched as observers, combined with the grand strategy produced by Britain's War Cabinet to transform what began as a tentative reconnaissance into Russia and Central Asia, aimed at containing the victorious Germans, into a rather reckless intervention directed at crushing the Bolsheviks. While the responsibility for the British intervention in Russia has generally been set squarely on the shoulders of political figures notably Churchill, Amery and Milner loud in their denunciations of the new order in Moscow, an examination of the correspondence relative to the first movements into Russia makes it quite clear that the initial policy of the government was rather more vacillating than might have been expected, given what followed, and that the driving force behind the movement of British troops into conflict with the Bolsheviks was almost always a British general on the ground, invariably pursuing a policy of his own devising and rejoicing in only tenuous communications with London. The real decision to intervene, that is, was made mainly by the generals in place rather than by London. Intervention was justified, at

Marching under the swastika? Ernst Jünger and National Socialism, 1918-33

Abstract: war relationship with National Socialism. The controversy has flared up repeatedly in recent decades and climaxed in 1995, when the author celebrated his hundredth birthday. In television programmes, books and a Festschrift, in countless newspaper articles and editorials, even on the stage, opponents and critics of Junger fought out a new round of the conflict, armed with a large supply of rival quotations from his many works. Junger’s critics have consistently maintained that the author was not only a warmonger who shared many of the beliefs of the nazis. They have also charged him with contributing directly to nazi ideology. His work, they have claimed, laid out a blueprint for the nazi state.’ They view Junger as partly responsible for the crimes of the Third Reich. Immediately after the war, he was accused of having preached the ’gospel of Auschwitz’, of having ’written millions into their deaths’, and of being one of Germany’s ’major war criminals’.’ As late as 1995, a serious academic work alleged that Junger had committed ’desktop political murder’.3 In sharp contrast to such hostile views, his admirers have denied any parallels between nazism and Junger, and more generally down-played his role as a political ideologue. In his new biography, Thomas Nevin argues that J3nger’s writings ’put him at an unimpeachable remove from the Nazis’.’ Junger’s partisans often focus on his literary talent, claiming that he was the most exceptional figure of postwar German literature and even arguing that he should have been awarded the Nobel Prize for

The Appointment of Sir Nevile Henderson, 1937 - Design or Blunder?:

Abstract: Nevile Henderson has had a bad press. He was described by Sir Lewis Namier, the doyen of anti-appeasement historians, as 'un homme nefaste'1 and the 'Beau Brummel of diplomacy'2 in the 1940s, and his reputation has not improved since. The literature about him is thin. He appears in some general analyses of appeasement as a significant, albeit disastrous, player in the events of the late 1930s, but in others he is virtually ignored.3 The received wisdom has been that Sir Nevile's appointment was a catastrophic blunder because he 'misrepresented Britain to Hitler and Hitler to Britain'.4 Part of the unrelentingly negative image created of Henderson by historians focuses on the allegation that somehow his appointment was a mistake, and that the Foreign Office did not know what it was getting. This version of events appears in Eden's memoirs published in 1962 when Sir Nevile's appointment was described as 'an international misfortune',5 and was endorsed in the published diaries of his private secretary, Oliver Harvey, who was disturbed, like his master, by Henderson's behaviour on taking up his appointment in April 1937 and observed that Henderson's new post

The Finnish Communists and the Winter War

Abstract: were the most basic questions: the identity and fate of a small nation beside its immense and incalculable neighbour,' the direction and utopias of popular movements, and life and death. In both cases, the consequences were farreaching, and intertwined. As a result of the 1918 Red experience and social conditions, communism had a strong appeal in Finland, both among industrial workers and the poor rural population in the north. Many defeated Red Guards found a haven in nearby Soviet Russia, which was considered the second, and sometimes even the first, fatherland of the Finnish communists. These mixed loyalties were tested in 1939 when war broke out between Finland and the Soviet Union, but by then mentalities had been deeply changed by developments in the two countries since 1937. In 1937, the Agrarians and the Social Democrats formed the first common government of former civil war enemies. Authoritarian right-wing tendencies abated, trade unions recovered, social reforms paved the way for a Nordic welfare state. The Communist Party (SKP) remained prohibited, but communist supporters saw themselves as the left flank of the government front and exploited new favourable conditions. At the same time, the SKP leadership in Moscow was destroyed in the Stalinist terror, as was the Finnish Red emigrant culture in the Soviet Union. Only a tiny group around Comintern Secretary Otto Kuusinen survived, perhaps by accident. This was held in reserve only, direct contacts to or activity in Finland being banned.2

Deconstructing quiet diplomacy : pinning down the elusive concept

Abstract: The purpose of diplomacy has traditionally been to avoid military action Diplomacy is vitally important in preventing war and maintaining peace because skilful negotiation can deter violence from being used in an effort to settle an argument Should war break out regardless, negotiation is still crucial if peace can eventually be achieved Diplomacy also seeks to persuade or compel through the conveyance of threats, promises, codes and symbols

Too Serious a Matter to Be Left to the Generals? Parliament and the Army in Wartime Portugal, 1914-18

Abstract: The conflict between national assemblies and army high commands was common feature of the political landscape of most belligerent countries during the first world war. There were, of course, variations to this conflict, the power balance between parliaments, governments and military commands differed from country to country. After having conceded powers to the executive branch and having exercised restraint over the military handling of the war, due to the general belief that the war would be national assemblies began to reassert their authority. The reason was simple military stagnation and a succession of failed offensives led parliamentarians to attempt to regain control of the war effort, to reform it through criticism and new ideas. Clemenceau's witticism, 'War is too serious a business to to the Generals', captures this new mood perfectly...

Rehabilitation and Frustration: The Experience of Marseille Police Officers after the Liberation

Abstract: The Marseille police force, weakened and unpopular in the aftermath of the nazi occupation which had left a legacy of hatred, appalling living conditions, high crime rates, public order difficulties, concerns over national security and a desire to punish those who had compromised themselves by complicity with the enemy, was faced with considerable difficulties. In this context, forces both within and outside the police conjoined to assure a relatively rapid rehabilitation of the institution, a rehabilitation which ultimately failed to overcome certain frustrations in both the personal and professional domains.

Tumult in Syria's Hama in 1925: The Failure of a Revolt

Abstract: French-fashioned 'smaller' Syria had never known an independent existence prior to 1921, except for a brief period under Amir Faisal in 1920. It had not even existed as a separate region, per se. Cut off from its natural surroundings by colonialist border gerrymandering, it had been composed of several states (all included in the far larger geographical expression known as Greater Syria) which had had little to do with each other, had been part of the Ottoman empire, and all looked to Istanbul for laws, guidance and governance. The French forcefully united a number of these states in a manner that they had never hitherto experienced and called them the Syrian Mandate. As a result, Syria was now ruled by a new imperialist power which happened to be Christian. In addition, many elements in these forcefullyfederated states remained as displeased with the French as they had been with the Ottomans and their discontent was reflected in anti-French rebellions. This is not to say that these rebellions were nationalist in character, for the idea of nationalism was far too complicated for the illiterate majority, but that they reflected continued dissatisfaction with the status quo. There were a number of these rebellions; few were little more than the actions of a disorganized mob, e.g. the Hauran Rebellion of 1921. Others were far more serious, e.g. the Salih'Ali, Ibrahim Hananu, the Hama, the Druze' and the Damascus rebellions. They failed, first because most of them took place in isolation, i.e. in one of the former Ottoman states in what became Syria, and had little help with the exception of the Damascene revolt from others in the former states of the same region. Second, there was paralysing dissension among the participants of each revolt, e.g. the Hama revolt, which, buffeted by opportunism, divisions, poor co-ordination and planning, plus the resources of the French empire, lasted for four days.2

The True Glory and the Failure of Anglo-American Film Propaganda in the Second World War

Abstract: In an effort to promote an image of Allied unity on the eve of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Western Europe, a Joint Anglo-American Film Commission was established with the goal of making a series of short documentaries on the liberation of the continent. Unfortunately, despite the prior planning, the plans for a series of joint films fell victim to competing ideologies about how to showcase the allied campaign. In an effort to salvage the situation the American film maker George Stevens was brought in to make a single long documentary, highlighting the campaign from D-Day to VE-Day. The resulting film, The True Glory, won an Oscar for best documentary of 1945, but in fact was the result of a failure of Allied film propaganda policy.

The Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli of Milan

Abstract: The Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli of Milan is the most important centre of contemporary historical documentation and research in Italy, and one of the world's leading institutions concerned with the history of socialism and the international labour movement in Europe. The aim of this article is to provide a summary overview of the nature of the Fondazione, the history of its origin and its present position.' A member of the International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI), it will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its birth as the Biblioteca Giangiacomo Feltrinelli at the end of this century. Over 140,000 works in more than ten different languages are kept in its library, most of which are rare and valuable editions, many of them unique. There are also more than several hundred thousand issues of 10,000 periodicals, most of which were published by organizations and groups of the left all over the world. Its archive houses significant documentary files on figures of cultural and political prominence, both Italian and international, and microfilms or xeroxcopies of documents from files that are kept by other archives in Italy and abroad. A significant section of this huge documentary depository contains books about the Chartist movement, the French and Italian Enlightenment and Jacobinism,2 the Paris Commune,3 the European revolutionary movement