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In the last post on Fascism, you (Disinterested) talked about how there is a revisionist line about Stalin and the Terror/famines. Is there any decent histiography to it, or is it Stalinist apologetics?
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Apr 25, 2015 02:29
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Don't forget that without the Depression, there would be no Third Reich.
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Apr 25, 2015 02:59
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FAUXTON posted:So basically the Nazis leveraged existing anti-semitism and aimed that hatred at the German people's need to find a culprit for the loss in WWI?
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Apr 25, 2015 03:02
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" full stop.
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AceRimmer posted:There's quite a bit more to it than that. I was surprised to see my old professor give the presentation on the Battle of Kursk. Well, not that surprised since German military history is his bread and butter. Rent-A-Cop posted:Other than containing the capital Anatolia was a not particularly important part of a much larger dynastic empire lead by people who were not Turks and did not speak Turkish. This does not stop modern Turkey from hearkening back to great days of courageous deeds and etc, etc. As to why they get so worked up about the Armenian Genocide, imagine how people in England might react if you decided to get really honest about Richard the Lionheart and his status as a French king who only incidentally ruled England as the most backwards and worthless of his many possessions and was a baby-murdering crusader dickbag to boot. Wait, so who were the Ottoman sultans then?
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Apr 25, 2015 03:07
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brozozo posted:Wait, so who were the Ottoman sultans then?
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Apr 25, 2015 03:35
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Yeah I'm mad wrong on that one. I think I was thinking of some other empire. Most of the Ottoman leaders were Turkic. Ottoman Turkish was however pretty close to unintelligible to the majority of Turks due to it's heavy Arabic influence. Manchu? Mongol? Mughal?
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Apr 25, 2015 03:47
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sullat posted:Manchu? Mongol? Mughal? Mamluks also work
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Apr 25, 2015 03:56
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HEY GAL posted:Mamluks also work Weren't they native Egyptians that overthrew the Arabic Fatamids?
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Apr 25, 2015 04:10
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sullat posted:Weren't they native Egyptians that overthrew the Arabic Fatamids? nope, some were turkic and some were whiter 'n' mitt romney
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Apr 25, 2015 04:15
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Disinterested posted:I think Lenin is supposed to have remarked that it was a crying shame that Mussolini turned fascist because he'd have made a great communist leader. Fascism seems to attract a lot of people who are just trying to opportunistically seize power, and a lot of people who want to ride on their coat-tails. JaucheCharly posted:Mussolini is super weird. One dives into his biography and writing and you get an impression what strange and tumultous times these must have been. If you don't post the pic where he's barechested on skiiers, I will. A couple of things. Firstly:  Secondly, reading the Italian Fascist Manifesto, many of the points (universal suffrage, minimum wage, 8 hour day, etc) are fairly left wing in scope. Even the points regards the military seem fairly milquetoast (especially with the contemporary layperson's idea of what Fascism was about). Further, the mood of Italian fascism (from the snippets I've read in the past couple of days) seems to be one of hope rather than the reactionary nature that Nazism seems to have had. When did it turn right wing? Or am I missing something here? Or is this what you mean by a Faustian pact - Fascism (in Italy anyway) was not left OR right wing on its own, but only by association? I mean, looking at the Manifesto, if I were living then, before the word "fascism" had any baggage, I'd probably be thinking about voting for Mussolini. I'll qualify the second bit there by noting that my educational background is in fine arts and my entry to this is via the Futurists. I was always puzzled why a fairly avant garde Modern art movement would want to be attached to a right wing political organisation - a lot of Modern artists would have been starting to flirt with communism around this period. Marinetti, the founder of Futurism, wrote: The Futurist Manifesto (1909) posted:We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman. The Futurist Manifesto (1909) posted:We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd. I have so many questions about this, but have no idea where to begin! Basically: JaucheCharly posted:Mussolini is super weird.
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Apr 25, 2015 05:31
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Yeah I'm mad wrong on that one. I think I was thinking of some other empire. Most of the Ottoman leaders were Turkic. Ottoman Turkish was however pretty close to unintelligible to the majority of Turks due to it's heavy Arabic influence. Not really that far off actually, a lot of the grand vezirs and pashas were basically running the country through a good chunk of the Ottoman history after Suleyman the Magnificent. Most of them were from Christian countries and brought up with the youth levy, but they weren't technically Turkish, more like Ottoman. edit: just to clarify, when the other European countries were going deep into instilling nationalist rhetoric into their people the Ottomans were on the losing end of a lot of wars and looked for some solutions to motivating people to actually care about the empire. One of the solutions was "Ottomanism", which was an attempt to appeal to the multi-ethnic and Muslim/Christian melange they ruled. It failed spectacularly. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Apr 25, 2015 |
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Apr 25, 2015 05:35
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Elissimpark posted:and in a country that did okay with WWI... World War 1 was an experience of unrelieved horror for the Italian soldier and Italy didn't get the reason they went to war out of it, which was territorial gains from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It left a lot of people pretty mad. http://www.amazon.com/The-White-War-Italian-1915-1919/dp/0465020372 Apologies for the Daily Mail link, but they're still finding bodies from that front, frozen in ice up in the mountains. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ies-fallen.html If you liked World War 1 you'll love World War 1...On Ice 
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Apr 25, 2015 05:40
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Speaking of which, how far DID Italian ambitions stretch during WW2? I get the impression that Mussolini was slightly more realistic than Hitler about what was achievable within his lifetime, for all his talk about a restored Roman Empire, but I was never entirely clear on what exactly Italy was hoping to get out of WW2 other than strips of the Adriatic and maybe North Africa, or what exactly they planned to do with those territories once they got them.
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Apr 25, 2015 06:19
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HEY GAL posted:Ah ha! Hahaha. Hahahahahahahaha. Okay, okay, I wasn't thinking too critically when I typed that - point taken. I was just thinking in terms of being on the winning* side. *Individual results may differ. e: Jesus, I completely forgot about Trieste and Cadorna. Elissimpark fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Apr 25, 2015 |
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Apr 25, 2015 07:13
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I appreciate literally any info ITT about the Italian front in WWI. The only knowledge I have is from Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.
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Apr 25, 2015 08:44
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Endman posted:I appreciate literally any info ITT about the Italian front in WWI. The only knowledge I have is from Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. It's basically the Western Front except with mountains. The Italians literally bled themselves dry trying to charge up the mountains and the British and French end up having to send a bunch of divisions to the Italian front just to fill out the line. That goes some way to explaining why Italy didn't get much from the table at the peace conferences.
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Apr 25, 2015 09:37
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Ofaloaf posted:There's also that there were many prominent Communist Jews during the chaos of the end of WWI-- Rosa Luxemburg, Kurt Eisner, and other prominent figures involved in the defeated German Revolution of 1918/9 were Jewish and socialist. Leon Trotsky, a prominent Bolshevik, was Jewish. It was super-easy for people already disposed to hating Communists and Jews to conflate things. Not to mention one Karl Marx. Of course it should be strange to no one that young persons belonging to a discriminated minority might become attracted to a radical ideology that promised equality, but in reality there weren't all that many Jews in the Soviet politburo - Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev come to mind. Of course this is ∞% more than in Tsar's government, but there were also ∞% more Georgians yet people don't talk about International Georgian Conspiracy. Or maybe they are just that good at suppressing the knowledge 
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Apr 25, 2015 09:50
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Yeah I'm mad wrong on that one. I think I was thinking of some other empire. Most of the Ottoman leaders were Turkic. Ottoman Turkish was however pretty close to unintelligible to the majority of Turks due to it's heavy Arabic influence. Russian and British Empires too had many monarchs who weren't locals and couldn't speak their peasant's language.
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Apr 25, 2015 10:01
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I was going to ask if Italy could have played this out differently, but realised that the real question bugging me is this: why was everyone in the early 20th century seemingly OBSESSED with obtaining territory? The Balkan wars almost read like a slap-fight in this respect. What would Italy have gained from the slivers of Croatia, Slovenia or whatever it was after?
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Apr 25, 2015 10:05
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Disinterested posted:Fascism III: Fascism with a Vengeance Elissimpark posted:Secondly, reading the Italian Fascist Manifesto, many of the points (universal suffrage, minimum wage, 8 hour day, etc) are fairly left wing in scope. I'm interested in this as well - are you going to touch upon what the (original) fascists themselves thought they were about in a future part? We have, in addition to the Manifesto, the Doctrine of Fascism and the Charter of Carnaro to work with, and to a non-political historian like myself the fascist Corporations seem awfully lot like syndicalism. I remember somebody brought up Russia and China, which both fit the popular image of fascism. At first glance particularly Russia also fits Eco's Ur-Fascism very well, but of course as a Soviet successor state Russian propaganda accuses the West of being multicultural gay nazis. Is there a more thought out component to this than a kneejerk our enemy = fascist?
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Apr 25, 2015 10:09
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Osama Dozen-Dongs posted:concerning Ya. I'll get there.
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Apr 25, 2015 10:11
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Hogge Wild posted:Russian and British Empires too had many monarchs who weren't locals and couldn't speak their peasant's language. A lot of people in countries like France or Britain would just barely understand the official language used by the ruling class anyway because they spoke their own regional languages and dialects.
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Apr 25, 2015 10:24
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Nenonen posted:A lot of people in countries like France or Britain would just barely understand the official language used by the ruling class anyway because they spoke their own regional languages and dialects.  has done a great job historically
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Apr 25, 2015 10:53
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FAUXTON posted:I still don't understand why Hitler singled out Jews as a class culpable for the defeat in WWI. I can see political groups/movements being attacked but Jews as an ethnicity? I don't see the link, unless there was a real ethnic boundary thing going on that rivaled white supremacist secessionists at their worst, which I have never seen evidence of. FAUXTON posted:So basically the Nazis leveraged existing anti-semitism and aimed that hatred at the German people's need to find a culprit for the loss in WWI? Antisemitism played a role in the early theoretical definition of the German nation. On the background of a politically (and culturally) splintered Germany in the early 19th century, german nationalism had to use another unifying principle than the French Republic. What makes you a German? History interjected. Instead of pledging allegiance to unifying principles á la Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, German intellectuals had to use something else to construct their definition of nationality. Initially, these values were greeted by german nationalists as they observed the French Revolution, but went quite fast over the plank with the (intellectual) fallout of Napoleon's occupation of Germany, and in turn made such a reference point a no-go. The answer to that theoretical problem was blood (in the racial sense). That's where the jews come in. If you use the definition of blood, heritage and homeland, you need a counter image of a people that you can ascribe the anti traits to. People without homeland who "don't farm the land". Fichte's work was quite influential in the german sphere and these ideas found new synergy with the rise of the hygiene movement and the popularity of social darwinism throughout the 19ths century. It is no accident that these ideas were especially virulent in the 1880s to the early 1900s in Vienna, which was 1.) ethnically diverse and riddled with all kinds of unresolvable nationalistic tension that you can imagine and 2.) a place of refuge for eastern jews fleeing the pogroms in Russia via Ruthenia. These eastern jews stuck out in the worst possible sense and were met with broad rejection throughout all social strata, by western and assimilated jews too. Stefan Zweig captured that situation very well in his works if you look for lighter reading. That's the time of Schönerer and Lueger, which are the molds that Hitler used for his own political persona. It is worth noting that safe for Lueger, who applied his antisemitism quite freely and managed to resonate with the electorate, Schönerer et al. never managed to reach a broader spectrum of voters (I really can't bother to elaborate why right now). Let's subsum it with a more populistic message, broader powerbase in traditional institutions and successful clientelism. Schönerer on the other hand was a stern anticlerical ("Los von Rom" Bewegung might be worth mentioning), anti-establishment, anti czech, anti socialdemocrat, etc. I think it is in one of his monologues with his friend Kubizek that the young Hitler says that the key to political success is, that you have to follow one axis of attack. He contrasts Schönerer and Lueger and why one was successful and the other not. The jews cover alot of these other bases, communists, socialdemocrats, capital, intellectuals etc. When he started his political career in Munich, he put this result of his analysis (which was also influenced by the writings of Le Bon) to work.
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Apr 25, 2015 11:07
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Tomn posted:Speaking of which, how far DID Italian ambitions stretch during WW2? I get the impression that Mussolini was slightly more realistic than Hitler about what was achievable within his lifetime, for all his talk about a restored Roman Empire, but I was never entirely clear on what exactly Italy was hoping to get out of WW2 other than strips of the Adriatic and maybe North Africa, or what exactly they planned to do with those territories once they got them. Bear in mind Italy already had Ethiopia as a colony in 1939. They invaded and would probably have liked to hang on to Greece, and got a bit of territory from France. I imagine he'd be quite happy with a France-sized Empire and 'their place in the sun' and all that, and it wasn't clear until the war actually happened that the Italian military was a bit crap/obsolete and not actually capable of delivering that. (Seriously, when Greece of all countries kicks the poo poo out of you you're not looking good in the superpower stakes unless your name Is Xerxes)
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Apr 25, 2015 11:11
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The traditional nationalist anti-semitic objection (including from 19th century liberals) to the Jew has two parts: 1) The Jew as luftmensch 2) The Jew as other In (1) the Jew is attacked for not having any true roots in any nation or organic community, instead being internationalist and cosmopolitan. In (2) the Jew is attacked for being deeply rooted in an organic community - but not the right one - the nation - and instead a separate and exclusive religious and ethnic community of Judaism. Jews are therefore on either perspective not true Germans, or whatever. Hardcore anti-semites often use both at the same time even though they're somewhat paradoxical. As always I recommend Marx: The Jewish Question, which is a real tour de force of early Marx: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/
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Apr 25, 2015 11:15
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The Italian front is a month and a day from juddering ungainlyly (ahem) into action, and we have all kinds of political bullshit from Salandra to wade through before we can get there. 100 Years Ago The next couple of days are so busy that I'm splitting them across two enormous posts. I am not looking forward to summer 1916 with Brusilov/Verdun/Somme all going off at once! So on the one hand we have the Gallipoli landings. You'll probably not be surprised to hear that almost none of the first-day objectives have been taken and a golden opportunity to make significant progress is entirely blown, right? On the other hand, there is one gently caress-up that probably turned out for the best, they've not yet been thrown into the sea (although the water at V Beach has by mid-afternoon turned entirely red with blood), and they do have tenable positions from which to push on tomorrow. Meanwhile, in the rest of the war. The RNAS aviators in Africa succeed in locating Konigsberg's latest hidey-hole. Grigoris Balakian and chums are transported out of Constantinople. And General Smith-Dorrien once again comes into conflict with Sir John French by suggesting they get their blokes out of the Ypres salient while they still can. FAUXTON posted:Oh, so it was just the continuing "they're different and therefore the bogeyman" bullshit that had been in fashion since literally forever. Various combinations of Russians and Austro-Hungarian-governed ethnicities are even now in WWI happily conducting local pogroms against their Jews and blaming them fulsomely (since they often happen to be merchants) for the various shortages of everything. (This is on the list of "when finished filling the 1914 gap, go back and shade in around the edges of 1915".)
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Apr 25, 2015 12:20
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Disinterested posted:Ya. I'll get there. are you going to be writing about d'annunzio because he's even weirder than mussolini before il Duce came Il Vate, and he was super cool in a lot of important ways and mad lovely in a lot of others
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Apr 25, 2015 15:42
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V. Illych L. posted:are you going to be writing about d'annunzio because he's even weirder than mussolini I dunno, depends how in depth I elect to go!
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Apr 25, 2015 15:48
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Endman posted:I appreciate literally any info ITT about the Italian front in WWI. The only knowledge I have is from Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. I recommend The White War. "In May 1915, Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire. Nearly 750,000 Italian troops were killed in savage, hopeless fighting on the stony hills north of Trieste and in the snows of the Dolomites. To maintain discipline, General Luigi Cadorna restored the Roman practice of decimation, executing random members of units that retreated or rebelled." "Hundreds of thousands of men are fed into a meat grinder in futile charges against entrenched positions; opposing armies are forging a weird sense of camaraderie as they fraternize during lulls in the slaughter; and rows of rotting corpses are scattered over a bleak, pockmarked landscape. But this isn’t the familiar western front in France. Rather, these stark images are part of a stunning and emotionally wrenching account of war between Austria and Italy over the disputed terrain they both claimed. Although the struggle was recounted in the writings of Ernest Hemingway, the Italian front was regarded as a sideshow by many European journalists as well as Allied war planners. Whatever the strategic value of the campaign, Thompson illustrates that this was a massive, epic struggle that may have cost a million lives. He crafts a narrative rich in detail and which does not shrink from describing the horrors of a war that began, on the Italian side, in a spasm of wild nationalistic fervor but quickly degenerated into resigned cynicism." http://www.amazon.com/The-White-War-Italian-1915-1919/dp/0465020372
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Apr 25, 2015 16:02
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Decimation in the 20th Century? Jesus Christ.
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Apr 25, 2015 16:05
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago Bloody hell. The landings at Normandy got really, really lucky, didn't they?
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Apr 25, 2015 16:06
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^^^ Only in the sense of, the planners had the experience of Gallipoli and Operation Avalanche to learn from. Most of the things that went right in 1943 and 1944 went right in large part because they'd had nearly 30 years to learn the blindingly obvious lessons of Gallipoli and they'd have wanted shooting if they couldn't have learned them.V. Illych L. posted:are you going to be writing about d'annunzio because he's even weirder than mussolini I would love to know more about D'Annunzio, incidentally; he's a fascinating figure, but somewhat outwith the scope of the books I'm reading. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Apr 25, 2015 |
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Apr 25, 2015 16:07
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Trin Tragula posted:^^^ Only in the sense of, the planners had the experience of Gallipoli and Operation Avalanche to learn from. Most of the things that went right in 1943 and 1944 went right in large part because they'd had nearly 30 years to learn the blindingly obvious lessons of Gallipoli and they'd have wanted shooting if they couldn't have learned them. I'm still completely aghast that someone should find themselves with their flanks secured, weak opposition if any to the front, and then decide to dig in and wait for new orders. If they were all pinned down at the beach I'd understand, but if you land unopposed and then simply fail to push you ought to be shot pour encourager les autres.
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Apr 25, 2015 16:45
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Although a note on me and fascism: my training is primarily in the history of ideas, so don't expect the regular narrative history bit to be any good 
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Apr 25, 2015 16:53
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Family history has my great-grandfather at Gallipoli with the Hampshire Regiment. Lost a leg.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:04
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I found out the other day that I had a great-grandfather with the ANZACs, who survived Gallipoli and then died on the Somme somewhere between Pozieres and Thiepval. (We also know of one Territorial subaltern who survived three years from 1915 to 1918 in the trenches, a grand-uncle in a submarine, and one conscientious objector who eventually agreed to join the Non-Combatant Corps.)ArchangeI posted:I'm still completely aghast that someone should find themselves with their flanks secured, weak opposition if any to the front, and then decide to dig in and wait for new orders. If they were all pinned down at the beach I'd understand, but if you land unopposed and then simply fail to push you ought to be shot pour encourager les autres. Are we talking about X or Y Beach, or both, here? Because for me, both of the local commanders had pretty good reasons for not trying to push on Krithia without orders or reinforcements, which should have been taken care of above them. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Apr 25, 2015 |
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Apr 25, 2015 17:05
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The whole 'failing to push' thing was also levelled at British troops during the D-Day landings. There were a lot of complaints from senior commanders and Americans that British troops would get off the beach and consider their job done, instead of plowing inland as fast as possible while the enemy is at their most disorganised. Regarding the Italians in WWI, I think the most telling thing about their combat performance is that they tried to attack across the Isonzo river 11 times and never succeeded. Then the Austro-Hungarians, not know for their great performance in the war, came across in the other direction and took the Italian positions on their first try. quote:I found out the other day that I had a great-grandfather with the ANZACs, who survived Gallipoli and then died on the Somme somewhere between Pozieres and Thiepval. (We also know of one Territorial subaltern who survived three years from 1915 to 1918 in the trenches, a grand-uncle in a submarine, and one conscientious objector who eventually agreed to join the Non-Combatant Corps.) One of my ancestors had Wilfred Owen levels of lovely luck in WWI - he was captured in 1918 by the Germans and starved to death in a POW camp in Belgium...after the war had ended. That part of the family were celebrating at the armistice thinking he survived then got the telegram a week later 
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Apr 25, 2015 18:04
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Trin Tragula posted:The Italian front is a month and a day from juddering ungainlyly (ahem) into action, and we have all kinds of political bullshit from Salandra to wade through before we can get there. Obligatory  passage:quote:And so the second wave tries to land on V Beach, and most of them are cut down before they get within spitting distance of the beach. A few make it ashore, and then fall in front of the barbed wire. The brass hats are supposed to be going in with this wave. An officer who’s found temporary safety aboard the River Clyde watches incredulously as General Napier and his staff sail forward with the men.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:35
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He was seriously brave, if nothing else, that man
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Apr 25, 2015 18:37
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