[Modern History] Guns Condoms and Electricity

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PawParole: Nov 16, 2019

https://twitter.com/Peter_Nimitz/status/1359409377686343681

another historical horror i had no idea about

# ? Feb 20, 2022 22:30

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# ? May 20, 2024 13:11

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

right but its not genocidal because they didnt say they hated the iranians and wanted them all to starve to death while they did it

# ? Feb 20, 2022 22:39

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

skimmed the wiki on the elgin marbles and found out UNESCO issued a ruling just five months ago urging the UK to return them to greece, which was promptly rejected by the UK gov

found this article and had a big ol' laugh

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/08/parthenon-marbles-return-would-be-a-lovely-jubilee-gesture

# ? Feb 21, 2022 03:07

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Takanago posted:

Pardon if this was asked or mentioned earlier, but what's good further reading on the Russian revolution/civil war/bolshevik history/etc. that would be useful for people listening to the Revolutions podcast?

vyelkin already mentioned Engelstein's "Russia in Flames", and I second the recommendation.

I'd also give out a strong recommendation to Neil Faulkner's "A People's History of the Russian Revolution"

# ? Feb 21, 2022 05:05

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

gonna toss in an anti-recommendation for A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes which is reactionary trash but highly esteemed in general for obvious reasons

# ? Feb 21, 2022 09:10

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

John Charity Spring posted:

gonna toss in an anti-recommendation for A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes which is reactionary trash but highly esteemed in general for obvious reasons

It isn�t by academics, it is well known Figes can�t read Russian and very little actual research was done for the book.

# ? Feb 21, 2022 12:05

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Ardennes posted:

It isn�t by academics, it is well known Figes can�t read Russian and very little actual research was done for the book.

afaik Figes can read Russian (maybe you're thinking of Anthony Beevor who can't?) but has done other dodgy academic dishonesty things like potentially faking citations and definitely publishing fake Amazon reviews of his rivals' books and then blaming his wife when he got caught. He used to be quite highly regarded because a couple of his early books (here specifically thinking of Peasant Russia, Civil War and Interpreting the Russian Revolution, the book he co-wrote with Boris Kolonitskii) were good contributions to the field but at least among younger generations of historians he now has a reputation as a weirdo who tanked his own academic reputation for no good reason.

# ? Feb 21, 2022 14:57

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Taken from "A People's History of the German Revolution", by William A. Pelz

quote:

Many of the problems German workers faced a century and more ago do not sound so remote or different to those that workers face today. One of the glaring omissions many make is to overlook the number of individuals working in the service industry. In an era before the almost countless mechanical devises that simplify everyday tasks, the better-off relied on servants to provide comfort in the form of meals, serving coffee, cleaning clothing and so on. These jobs were different from those in the factory or the mining pit but not necessarily better.

Doris Viersbeck, a cook and housemaid in Hamburg in the last decades of Imperial Germany, has detailed the systematic abuse she was subjected to in many wealthy homes. Although she had to rise at 6 a.m. every morning, Doris was repeatedly awoken in the middle of the night to prepare fresh coffee for her insomniac master. Cursed, threatened and bullied by employers, despite working in what may have appeared a welcome alternative to factory labor, she describes a hellish situation. In her autobiography, she pleads, �I just wanted to be treated like a human being.�3

The resentment felt among women �in service� sometimes expressed itself in peculiar ways. Responding to questions from a pastor in 1909, a woman we know only as �Frau Hoffmann� put forth an unusual theory on the difference between the rich and servants. �There are a lot more pretty faces among the servants than in the upper classes,� this retired maid argued, because the �upper classes don�t get out in the air enough and they don�t eat everything. Many of them have clumpy faces. Some have a nose like a fist.�4

Another woman, whose name we don�t know, went to work packing shoes in a factory where she found a co-worker who was pregnant with the unacknowledged child of a higher factory functionary. The man now rejecting his former lover, �was looking for another victim for his lust; his eyes fell on me, but he didn�t have much luck because I bluntly brushed him off.�5 As a result, she was fired and back on the streets looking for work.

Although it was difficult to organize female factory workers, it was far from impossible. While more conservative male workers confidently predicted that women would never become an important part of the work force, history has proven them wrong. Women remained neither completely marginal nor impossible to organize as the rapid expansion of female trade unions from under seven thousand in 1895 to over a million in 1919 shows.6

Returning to our example of the discharged woman above, she later decided to become a barmaid only to find that she was subject routinely to sexual harassment from male customers. �Often I cried bitterly after the customers were all gone because I had to put up with so much � [many asked] �where do you live? Can I come and visit you?� And then they would try to kiss me or otherwise fondle me.�7 That her situation was far from unique among barmaids was of scant comfort.

The objection could be made that these accounts mainly came from women members of, or at least sympathetic to, German socialism. Yet, the culture of sexual predation that proletarian females suffered at the hands of the upper class is documented by middle-class, religious and anti-socialist sources. A social reformer and early bourgeois feminist, Minna Wettstein-Adelt spent three and a half months working in four different factories in Chemnitz, Saxony. She was shocked to find that working-class accusations against men of her class were justified.

The middle-class reformer noted the fanatical hatred of �ink wipers� as the factory women dubbed clerks and businessmen working in offices. As one 30-year-old woman told her, a proper factory girl �does not associate with any damned ink licker � better the direst, blackest worker than such a vile loafer and toady!� Working beside such women, Wettstein-Adelt came to share �their sentiments wholeheartedly.� It is young businessmen who �if a working girl refuses to give herself willingly to them, they use intrigue, slanderous remarks to the director, malicious suppression and harassment.� The conservative female author then sighs that this pushes working women into the arms of Social Democracy since these men treat the �girls better, more politely and more humanely than others.�8 Of note is the fact that the Social Democrats were also among the earliest advocates of the legalization of homosexuality.9

It would be mistaken to think that unsolicited sexual advances were only a female problem. Male food servers experienced this sort of unwanted sexual harassment as well. Franz Bergg, a waiter at an expensive restaurant and casino near Danzig at the end of the nineteenth century, recalls the �not infrequent� instances of sexual stalking of waiters by �men who in their public life held important offices and were considered pillars of religion and morality.�10 Moreover, he repeatedly speaks of the hunger of waiters while they were serving copious amounts of fine food to the rich since �we weren�t given at all enough to eat.�11 Of course, they were punished if caught eating the scraps left over by their well-fed customers.

Perhaps more surprising is the burning resentment Bergg felt for the system of tipping. His bitter complaint is worth quoting at length:

quote:
We�d actually sold ourselves, sold ourselves for tips! Oh, this custom! This jingling invitation to humiliation and subjection that suppresses a free humanity! It seduces the giver into arrogance and misanthropy; and it robs the receiver of the last vestiges of human dignity. Tips are not really wages for work performed; they are compensations for special services. First you have to show yourself worthy of this dog�s pay. We tried to do so by running, bowing, and fawning and with a thousand little attentions of look, manner and gesture.12

...

It was little better among rural farm workers. While many farm owners lived a comfortable life, this was rarely true for the large number of landless workers who were forced to work for them. Franz Rehbein, a farm worker in Pomerania until he lost a hand in a threshing machine in 1895, paints a sad portrait of the lot of farm workers after harvest:

quote:
None of the farmers had anything for us day laborers to do � With pent-up rage you see the prosperous farmers driving to their visits and amusements, unconcerned about the increasing misery of the day laborers � There you sit, a wretch who would gladly work; but the people for whom you�ve worked yourself to death for low wages in the summer are now shrugging their broad shoulders indifferently.13

Fritz Pauk grew up in a village that was deeply conservative. Social Democracy or any sort of radicalism was constantly attacked and turned into a monster to scare children. In fact, when he and his friends misbehaved as children, an aunt would say, �The Social Democrats are coming!� and the kids �ran away like rabbits.�14 Pauk later became less frightened of this particular ghost over time as life dealt him reasons to be less supportive of the status quo. At the age of ten, he worked for a farmer whose mistreatment cost him a foot.

He relates how around 1898�9, the winter came and �I froze in my ragged clothes. I didn�t have any decent socks anymore. All I had was a crummy pair of shoes given to me by one of the farmhands � Then one day my left foot got badly swollen � I couldn�t walk and had to stay in bed.�15 After four weeks, the farmer, at last, called a doctor and Fritz�s foot had to be amputated. This limited the boy�s future employment prospects and �for a long time my heart broke when I watched my chums playing, without being able to join in.�16

...

In the years before World War I, the life expectancy of average German citizens was roughly half of what it would become by the twenty-first century. In the first decade after German unification in 1871, a female at birth could look forward to only an average of 38.5 years while boy babies could expect even less with an average of 35.6 years. By 1914 this rose to 51 years for a girl baby at birth and 47 years for their male counterpart.18 During this same period, the average working week fell from 72 hours (with mainly 12-hour days) to a 54�60 hour working week (with 10-hour days).19

German common people felt alienated mainly in reaction to their own exploitation but also in reaction to the exploitation they witnessed of others. The injustice of the society towards others often caused revulsion. Otto Krille, later a factory worker in Dresden, recalled his short-lived career as a scribe in a real estate office. The work seemed easy and the owners regularly gave him a glass of wine. He soon realized that the freely flowing wine �was only there to put the buyer in a good mood for the fleecing.� The worst assignment for the young Krille was when he was dispatched to collect rent from a widow who had a little grocery store. �I quickly saw that she was very badly off, and when she made promises with tears in her eyes, I returned to the office empty-handed.� He was sent back with a more seasoned colleague who had her serve them wine and made promises to help with the boss. A few weeks later, they closed the widow�s store.20

Soon the real estate office also closed amid an economic downturn and Krille was out of work. He sought out employment at a textile factory, the first of many industrial jobs. His life experience had taught him a different lesson than that of the church or army. �The fate of an entire class of people was soon frighteningly clear to me,� Otto Krille remembered, �Day after day, week after week, year after year, always this monotonous life with no variety. For centuries, thousands of lives had just been unwinding, like the threads on my machine.�21

Nor was this the perception of workers alone. Krille�s dire picture of industrial life was validated by the famous social scientist, Max Weber. The scholar, who was in no sense a radical, described the modern German factory as functioning with �hierarchic authority structure, its discipline, its chaining of men to machines, its spatial aggregation and yet isolation of the workers � its formidable accounting system that reaches down to the simplest hand movement of the worker.�22 Naturally, there were important differences even within any given work place as more highly skilled workers had better wages and conditions. These better-off workers were often considered a �labor aristocracy.�23

...

If work life was scarcely a pleasure for most, neither was home life. Rural conditions had always been hard except for the better off, urban living proved to be little softer. Even if wages slowly rose in the latter part of the nineteenth century, urban housing was to remain tight. Crowded and expensive, working-class families were shoe-horned into tiny, typically depressing flats. Towns over 5,000 inhabitants witnessed over 70 percent of all apartments having three or less rooms in 1910. Berlin, the German capital, was even worse with perhaps as many as three out of every ten residents living five or more people to a room.25 A female investigator in 1913 found that Berliners not uncommonly had a home that consisted of �A living room and tiny kitchen; with two adults and three children, that means that everyone sleeps in the same room, all three children in one bed.�26

In 1891, a Christian organization, known as the Evangelical Workers� Association of Hamburg and Karlsruhe, reported on the condition of the average workers� housing. �The landlord supplies only the essential materials and the worker then repairs the defects, without any compensation,� a report from Hamburg noted; �as a rule, two families use one toilet, in some cases four to five families have to make do with one.�27 In these flats, another report from Karlsruhe commented, there is little decoration beyond some landscape art reproductions and �quite often a portrait of Lassalle [an early German Socialist leader] or [Karl] Marx, but also the first German Emperor � [among more religious workers] pictures of saints in Catholic households�Luther portraits among Protestants.�28

Significantly, by this period, over 99 percent of Germans were classified as literate by the government.29 This gave commoners easy access to the radical ideas spread by socialist newspapers and booklets. Still, such miserable housing drove men to drink, women to despair and most everyone to anger. It meant that couples often found normal sexual relations difficult, if not impossible.30 All this combined with unsatisfactory, sometimes horrific, work lives meant many families became dysfunctional with domestic violence, child neglect and all the familiar urban disorders one would suspect. The average people in Imperial Germany also changed jobs with frequency in hopes of finding a kinder boss or higher wages. In some instances this helped, usually it did not.

...

In Germany, the cult of sobriety was never as pervasive as in English speaking societies. This did not suggest constant intoxication, rather it was seen as one of the good things in an otherwise difficult life.32 It was an outlet for all the many frustrations that average Germans faced. One scholar went so far as to contend that �alcohol was one of the indispensable foundations of the modern social order. Without it, contemporary social and political conditions would long since have become intolerable.�33

Another reaction to the misery of life in Imperial Germany was to engage in petty theft. The idea of getting some of �their own back� by pilfering goods was widespread. In Hamburg, as employers ignored trade union warnings that only a living wage would prevent stealing, the docks became the source of an unofficial, and unlawful, wage supplement for many poorly paid laborers. According to Hamburg police records, the number of goods in transit that were illegally expropriated by dock workers soared from 906 in 1900 to 3,217 in 1913.34 This is doubtlessly a severe undercount, as it does not include thefts from railroads or other means of transport. Nor would it include small amounts of food that workers ate immediately and may never have been reported.

This slide into illegality was in no way unique to Hamburg or dockworkers since crime against property was more closely related to poverty than poor morals. In a study looking at the connection between rye prices (rye was an important part of the German diet) and crimes against property in Bavaria, largely Catholic in the south, researchers found a correlation. The higher rye prices went, the more crimes against property rose.35 A few years later, a follow up study looking at the German provinces of Prussia, largely Protestant in the north, employed this same methodology of looking at grain prices and crime rates. The result was that based on the �data for the years 1882�1910, we find a significantly positive effect of poverty on property crime.�36 In other words, neither confessional belief nor region changed the relation between poverty and property crimes.

In the decades before World War I, the German common people lived, loved, had children (legitimate or not), formed friendships and engaged in social activity. Most were straight, many were gay. Some women remained passive but many became active and resisted the old male-dominated system. They were typical humans living their lives in a myriad of ways. Some were avid revolutionaries; most were looking forward to the hope of a gradual improvement of their conditions. They were diverse in any number of ways: gender, region, religion and occupation. What they had in common, increasingly, was a shared hatred for the capitalist system in which they labored. This would result in an explosion during the pressure cooker of world war. Some must have known the verse by German poet Goethe:

quote:
You must conquer and rule

Or serve and lose,

Suffer or triumph,

Be the anvil or the hammer.37

Increasingly, common people decided they would rather be the hammer.

gradenko_2000 has issued a correction as of 06:50 on Feb 22, 2022

# ? Feb 22, 2022 06:45

Teriyaki Hairpiece: Dec 29, 2006; I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

What if all the countries of Europe were partially democratic constitutional monarchies? And what if every one of those monarchs was related to every other monarch? And what if there was a very free, although not entirely free, flow of goods and people between all those European countries? And two unbreakable systems of alliances that would make a war between every country impossible? How would this cause a war? How could these deep ties be broken?? What kind of bullshit could ever cause these people to pick up guns and murder their fellows?

# ? Feb 23, 2022 04:13

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

what if you really hate Cousin Nicky

# ? Feb 23, 2022 05:57

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

vyelkin posted:

afaik Figes can read Russian (maybe you're thinking of Anthony Beevor who can't?) but has done other dodgy academic dishonesty things like potentially faking citations and definitely publishing fake Amazon reviews of his rivals' books and then blaming his wife when he got caught. He used to be quite highly regarded because a couple of his early books (here specifically thinking of Peasant Russia, Civil War and Interpreting the Russian Revolution, the book he co-wrote with Boris Kolonitskii) were good contributions to the field but at least among younger generations of historians he now has a reputation as a weirdo who tanked his own academic reputation for no good reason.

Figes specifically had a reputation for being completely reliant on assistants to do archival work. That is at least the scuttlebutt.

I don�t know about Beevor but he is more a general European historian anyway.

# ? Feb 23, 2022 11:09

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

hey whats the best current book about the buildup to ww1? asking for reasons

# ? Feb 24, 2022 17:58

Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

sleepwalkers how europe went to war

or if you're the most british tory to have ever tory'd: max hasting's catastrophe 1914 which is all about how glorious england was entirely justified in fighting the dreadful huns who started the war

# ? Feb 24, 2022 18:14

Teriyaki Hairpiece: Dec 29, 2006; I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

StashAugustine posted:

hey whats the best current book about the buildup to ww1? asking for reasons

Just watch that one scene from Blackadder

# ? Feb 24, 2022 18:53

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Raskolnikov38 posted:

sleepwalkers how europe went to war

or if you're the most british tory to have ever tory'd: max hasting's catastrophe 1914 which is all about how glorious england was entirely justified in fighting the dreadful huns who started the war

actually there's an even more comedy option than that:

# ? Feb 24, 2022 19:11

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

is this the largest military maneuver since the Chinese civil war?

# ? Feb 24, 2022 19:12

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

gradenko_2000 posted:

actually there's an even more comedy option than that:

cspam should be a niall ferguson free zone

# ? Feb 24, 2022 19:24

Stairmaster: Jun 8, 2012

i say swears online posted:

is this the largest military maneuver since the Chinese civil war?

i think the iran iraq war was still the biggest

# ? Feb 24, 2022 19:28

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

Stairmaster posted:

i think the iran iraq war was still the biggest

i thought about that but dunno if operation nasr is bigger than this. i'm talking about one operation or maneuver; the tet offensive only had 100k troops! chinese civil war, korea and iran-iraq were my contenders

# ? Feb 24, 2022 20:09

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

i say swears online posted:

i thought about that but dunno if operation nasr is bigger than this. i'm talking about one operation or maneuver; the tet offensive only had 100k troops! chinese civil war, korea and iran-iraq were my contenders

The combined Egyptian assault on Suez and Syrian assault on the Golan Heights in 1973 might be comparable? I don't know the exact numbers involved.

Either way earlier today I saw somebody say it was the largest military maneuver since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was nearly 200,000 troops from the US alone.

# ? Feb 24, 2022 20:13

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

oh weird i always had 120k in my mind for iraq 2003. that's big then

# ? Feb 24, 2022 20:15

birdstrike: Oct 30, 2008; i;m gay

vyelkin posted:

cspam should be a niall ferguson free-fire zone

# ? Feb 24, 2022 21:45

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

sleepwalkers how europe went to war

or if you're the most british tory to have ever tory'd: max hasting's catastrophe 1914 which is all about how glorious england was entirely justified in fighting the dreadful huns who started the war

thanks, currently reading about how the primary cause of ww1 was the Austrian chief of staff trying to bang a married woman

# ? Feb 25, 2022 00:33

R. Mute: Jul 27, 2011

vyelkin posted:

cspam should be a niall ferguson free zone

the world should be a niall ferguson free zone

# ? Feb 25, 2022 01:31

Teriyaki Hairpiece: Dec 29, 2006; I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

R. Mute posted:

the world should be a niall ferguson free zone

# ? Feb 25, 2022 02:53

Peggotty: May 9, 2014

Raskolnikov38 posted:

sleepwalkers how europe went to war

Is that some sort of joke I'm not getting or are you honestly recommending Christopher Clark?

# ? Feb 25, 2022 10:13

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

was looking up steam ships and just found out that the first one was american, not british. what the gently caress, limeys??

seriously though why don't i know this

# ? Feb 26, 2022 07:58

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Peggotty posted:

Is that some sort of joke I'm not getting or are you honestly recommending Christopher Clark?

ooh ooh history fight!

# ? Feb 26, 2022 20:00

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

i say swears online posted:

was looking up steam ships and just found out that the first one was american, not british. what the gently caress, limeys??

seriously though why don't i know this

First successful one. That said, it makes sense that the British would not be spearheading this line of research, given that a leap in naval technology would mean having to rebuild their entire navy. Sort of like how America probably wouldn't want to invent an entirely new type of dominant ship type, because it'd devalue its current lead. (The MIC might gently caress with that logic though.)

# ? Feb 26, 2022 20:43

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

i never really considered the british military to be stodgy and resistant to change before 1812 but it makes sense

# ? Feb 26, 2022 20:57

Tankbuster: Oct 1, 2021

i say swears online posted:

was looking up steam ships and just found out that the first one was american, not british. what the gently caress, limeys??

seriously though why don't i know this

No one cares about steam ships.

# ? Feb 26, 2022 21:01

R. Mute: Jul 27, 2011

StashAugustine posted:

hey whats the best current book about the buildup to ww1? asking for reasons

the great class war by jacques r. pauwels, by the way. it's a bit broader in scope than just the build-up, but it's good

# ? Feb 26, 2022 22:06

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1497723113517182976

# ? Feb 27, 2022 01:29

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

Just watch that one scene from Blackadder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBqD7UHncVo

# ? Feb 27, 2022 04:23

sullat: Jan 9, 2012

i say swears online posted:

was looking up steam ships and just found out that the first one was american, not british. what the gently caress, limeys??

seriously though why don't i know this

IIRC he even offered to build them for the French, but they turned him down as well.

# ? Feb 27, 2022 04:29

Dreylad: Jun 19, 2001

vyelkin posted:

cspam should be a niall ferguson free zone

seconded.

# ? Feb 27, 2022 04:34

Polgas: Sep 2, 2018; With one hand he saves gebs. With the other he commits goblin genocide. A true neutral.

The mostly anti semitism episode of the revolutions podcast just released.

# ? Mar 1, 2022 03:55

Teriyaki Hairpiece: Dec 29, 2006; I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

There's nothing worse than Euro-centric historians, amateur or professional. The murderous assholes back then weren't brutal military strongmen, they were KINGS. They didn't crouch down in forts, they REIGNED in CASTLES. They didn't stab people with long knives, they CLEAVED THE FOE WITH SWORDS.

It's all complete bullshit and it's depressing as gently caress

# ? Mar 2, 2022 05:20

Teriyaki Hairpiece: Dec 29, 2006; I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

Again a castle is a fort, a sword is a knife, and a King is the same thing as a military dictator.

# ? Mar 2, 2022 05:21

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 20, 2024 13:11

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Nobility is oligarchs.

# ? Mar 2, 2022 09:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Modern History] Guns Condoms and Electricity

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