Enriching Knowledge Series:
Compulsory Part (1) (Theme B)Seminar on the First World War Centenary (New)
WWI: NATIONAL
UNITY AND SOCIAL
DIVISION
Ricardo K. S. Mak
Department of History
Hong Kong Baptist University
CDI020150479
31.10.2014
1
New Trends in History
• New Cultural History:The co-existence of different
traditions, “ Not all people exist in the same Now. They
do so only externally, through the fact that they can
only be seen today.” (Ernst Bloch)
• History from Below: History from below seeks to take as
its subjects ordinary people, and concentrate on their
experiences and perspectives, contrasting itself with
the stereotype of traditional political history and its
focus on the actions of 'great men'. It also differed from
traditional labour history in that its exponents were
more interested in popular protest and culture than in
the organisations of the working class. (London
University)
• Micro-history
• Carlo Ginzburg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That
I Know about It, ” Critical Inquiry 20, 1 (1993): 10-35.
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343946?seq=5
• Three trends, one result: challenging grand narration
2
The Unified Germany
• An Appeal to the Civilized World
• “As representatives of German scholarship and art, we hereby protest
to the entire civilized world against the lies and calumnies with which
our enemies are trying to stain the honor of Germany in the grave
struggle for existence that has been forced upon the country…It is
not true that Germany is guilty of causing this war. Neither the people,
nor the government, nor the Kaiser wanted it. The German side did its
utmost to prevent it. Documentary evidence of this truth is available
for the world to see. During the twenty-six years of his reign, Wilhelm
II has often enough shown himself to be the protector of peace, and
even our opponents have often enough acknowledged this fact…It is
not true that the life and property of a single Belgian citizen have
been infringed upon by our soldiers, unless the most desperate selfdefense made it necessary…”
3
• “It is not true that our troops have wreaked brutal havoc in Louvain.
They were compelled reluctantly to bring a sector of the city under
fire, in order to retaliate against raging inhabitants who had
treacherously attacked them here…It is not true that our waging
war disregards international law. It knows no undisciplined cruelty.
But in the east, the earth is drinking the blood of women and
children who were butchered by wild Russian hordes, and in the
west, dumdum bullets mutilate the breasts of our soldiers…It is not
true that the struggle against our so-called militarism is not a
struggle against our culture, as our enemies hypocritically claim it to
be. Were it not for German militarism, German culture would long
ago have been eradicated. For the protection of German culture,
militarism arose in a land that had for centuries been plagued like
no other by predation.”
4
Among them were…
•
Rudolf Eucken, Professor of
Philosophy, Jena; Ernst Haeckel,
Professor of Zoology, Jena; Karl
Lemprecht, Professor of History,
Leipzig; Max Planck, Professor of
Physics, Berlin; Gustav von
Schmoller, Professor of National
Economy,
Berlin;
Wilhelm
Windelband,
Professor
of
Philosophy, Heidelberg; Wilhelm
Wundt, Professor of Philosophy,
Leipzig.
• https://www.google.com.hk/sear
ch?hl=zh-TW&rlz=1T4WQIB_zhTWHK594HK596&biw=960&bih=
499&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=Wilhelm
+Wundt&oq=Wilhelm+Wundt&gs
_l=img.3..0j0i24l9.13221.13221.0.13
782.1.1.0.0.0.0.67.67.1.1.0.msedr..
.0...1c.1.60.img..0.1.66.h3RG5X4js
3g#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=DLK
d7UK8notrM%253A%3BekkiEuEiOuaCn
M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.
quotessays.com%252Fimages%252
Fwilhelm-wundt3.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fw
ww.quotessays.com%252Fbio%25
2Fwilhelmwundt.html%3B439%3B600
5
Why?
• The decline of the German Middle
Classes
• The Rise of SPD
• The German University Traditions
• Gerhart Hauptmann: “War is war!”
• Thomas Mann: Civilization vs
Culture
6
The French Counter-Attack
• The five leading institutions: Académie
française (French Academy, concerning the
French language); Académie des inscriptions
et belles-lettres (Academy of Humanities) ;
Académie des sciences (Academy of
Sciences);
Académie
des
beaux-arts
(Academy of Fine Arts); Académie des
sciences morales et politiques (Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences)
• University of Paris
• The response on 3 November 2014
• https://www.google.com.hk/se
arch?q=French+Academy&hl=z
h-TW&rlz=1T4WQIB_zhTWHK594HK596&source=lnms
&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=M8mYVP_
VC8KvuQT8yYKYCg&ved=0CAg
Q_AUoAQ&biw=960&bih=499#
facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=6qNA
sGOUBWrN7M%253A%3BzyYHO
b8T0gikBM%3Bhttp%253A%252F
%252Fupload.wikimedia.org%25
2Fwikipedia%252Fcommons%252
Fd%252Fd1%252FInstitut_de_Fra
nce__Acad%2525C3%2525A9mie_fran
%2525C3%2525A7aise_et_pont_
des_Arts.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252
F%252Fen.wikipedia.org%252Fwi
ki%252FAcad%2525C3%2525A9mi
e_fran%2525C3%2525A7aise%3B2
125%3B1445
7
The War on Kultur which was out of Control
• Fichte was to blame
• “Hence, the noble-minded man will be
active and effective, and will sacrifice
himself for his people. Life merely as
such, the mere continuance of changing
existence, has in any case never had any
value for him, he has wished for it only as
the source of what is permanent. But this
permanence is promised to him only by
the
continuous
and
independent
existence of his nation. In order to save
his nation he must be ready even to die
that it may live, and that he may live in it
the only life for which he has ever wished”
(Addresses to the German Nation, 1807)
• http://en.wikisour
ce.org/wiki/Index:
Addresses_to_the
_German_nation.
djvu
• Hegel
8
Sustaining Unity
• “It is a commonplace that modern
warfare is not a conflict of armies so
much that of societies. Defeat can come
so much from collapse of the home
front as from military failure. The
maintenance of a nation’s will to fight is
as important as its physical ability to
continue the struggle…Lack of military
success can easily give rise to dissent on
the home front, which, taking the form
of industrial unrest, may deprive the
army of t hose things it requires to
prevent new and greater defeats.”
• Britain vs Italy, Russia and Germany.
• http://www.amazon.co.u
k/Managing-DomesticDissent-BritainPolitics/dp/0714681059
9
Pacificism vs Patriotism
• The Split of the Labour
• Ramsay MacDonald
• The Formation of the
Union of Democratic
Control
• A Hopeless Minority
before 1915
• http://ehistory.osu.edu/biogr
aphies/james-ramsaymacdonald
10
A Mere Intellectual Issue
• The Liberal Party
• Charles Trevelyan
• Sir Arthur Ponsonby’s: “Falsehood of Wartime: War is, in itself, an atrocity.
Cruelty and suffering are inherent in it. Deeds of violence and barbarity
occur, as everyone knows. Mankind is goaded by authority to indulge
every elemental animal passion, but the exaggeration and invention of
atrocities soon becomes the main staple of propaganda. Stories of
German “frightfulness” in Belgium were circulated in such numbers as to
give ample proof of the abominable cruelty of the German Army and so to
infuriate popular opinion against them. A Belgian commission was
appointed, and subsequently a commission, under the chairmanship of
Lord Bryce, who was chosen in order that opinion in America, where he
had been a very popular ambassador, might be impressed. Affidavits of
single witnesses were accepted as conclusive proof. At best, human
testimony is unreliable, even in ordinary occurrences of no consequence,
but where bias, sentiment, passion, and so-called patriotism disturb the
emotions, a personal affirmation becomes of no value whatsoever.
11
New Liberalism in Practice: David Hobson
• Imperialism: A Study (1902)
• Underconsumption and colonies
• Parasites of Imperialism: Militarists, Chauvinists, Descendants of the
Gentry
• https://archive.org/details/imperialismastu00goog
12
The Sharp Turn in 1916
• The internal division of the laboring class
• Conscription and Anti-Conscription
• Age
• Gender
• Professions
13
The Confrontation
• National Union of Dock Laborers
• Birmingham Workers
• British Workers’ National League
• National Alliance of Employers and Employed
14
The Split of a Family
• Emmeline and Sylvia Pankhurst
• The mother for the war:
• Why the woman who said this supported the war? “I do not come here as an advocate, because
whatever position the suffrage movement may occupy in the United States of America, in England
it has passed beyond the realm of advocacy and it has entered into the sphere of practical politics.
It has become the subject of revolution and civil war, and so to-night I am not here to advocate
woman suffrage. American suffragists can do that very well for themselves. I am here as a soldier
who has temporarily left the field of battle in order to explain--it seems strange it should have to
be explained--what civil war is like when civil war is waged by women. I am not only here as a
solider temporarily absent from the field of battle; I am here-- and that, I think, is the strangest
part of my coming--I am here as a person who. according to the law courts of my country, it has
been decided, is of no value to the community at all; and I am adjudged because of my life to be a
dangerous person, under sentence of penal servitude in a convict prison. So you see there is some
special interest in hearing so unusual a person address you. I dare say, in the minds of many of
you--you will perhaps forgive me this personal touch--that I do not look either very like a soldier or
very like a convict, and yet I am both. . . .Now, I want to say to you who think women cannot
succeed, we have brought the government of England to this position, that it has to face this
alternative; either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote. I ask American men in
this meeting, what would you say if in your State you were faced with that alternative, that you
must either kill them or give them their citizenship,--women, many of whom you respect, women
whom you know have lived useful lives, women whom you know, even if you do not know them
personally, are animated with the highest motives, women who are in pursuit of liberty and the
power to do useful public service? Well, there is only one answer to that alternative; there is only
one way out of it, unless you are prepared to put back civilization two or three generations; you
must give those women the vote. Now that is the outcome of our civil war.”
15
German Society at War
• Class
Opposition:
unequal
distribution of means of production
• Class Tension “can be discovered in
the consciousness and utterances
of class members reflecting their
dissatisfactions,
hopes,
resentments, protests, demands
etc.”
• Class Conflicts occurs “when the
state is engaged in the service of
he economically dominant class to
the detriment of the dominated
majority of the population.”
• http://quod.lib.umich.edu
/cgi/t/text/textidx?c=acls;idno=heb01301
16
The Weak Ruling Structure of the German
Empire
•
•
•
•
Higher Officials from the Ranks
The Royal Family
The Army High Command
Low representation of
Industrialists
• Outsiders: Middle Class
• Workers: Growing in Strengths but
without power
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wik
i/File:Dreiklassenwahlrecht.jpg
17
Max Weber on Status
• Class and Status Group
• The Sources of Status:
Education, Training,
Inherited Honor, profession,
Communal Life…
• Manifestation of Status:
Lifestyle
• http://www.google.com.hk
/imgres?imgurl=http://uplo
ad.lifeweek.com.cn/2011/09
16/1316143889192.jpg&imgr
efurl=http://www.lifeweek.
com.cn/2011/0916/34942.sh
tml&h=263&w=192&tbnid=
AcJU9YDWPg3q7M:&zoom
=1&tbnh=186&tbnw=135&u
sg=__VyILEvlG6DzkClkFTnj1
X6xYF_c=&docid=yMm7GS
h4xF6e9M&itg=1&hl=zhTW&ved=0CJsBEMo3&ei=n
tWYVLP0F4yiuQSR1IKQCg
18
The German Industrial Structure
• Medium-sized Business
• Skilled vs. Unskilled Workers
• Gender Distribution
19
The Impact of War on Skilled Workers
• The expansion of war industries
• The increase in female workers
• Rapidly trained workers
20
The Entrepreneur
• The three-fold Growth of Cartels from 1914-1918
• Machine tool industries
• Cut of Benefit
• Benefits from Government Policy
• Industrial Standardization
• Widening Gap between the Rich and the Poor
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:R%C3%BC
gen_Postkarte_048.jpg
21
The Middle Classes
• Its component: White
Collars, Artisans, Civil
Servants
• Organization Behaviors
• Income Pattern
• Salary Reduction and
other Impacts during the
War
• The left turn
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wik
i/File:Wohnzimmer_des_Schlosser
meisters_C.F.A._Hauschild_in_Berli
n,_Stralauer_Str._49.jpg
22
Strike and Protests
• Women and Children came first
• Food Shortage and Victory that never came
• Growing protests, SPD declining
• Unorganized Movements
23
How did the State Respond?
• War Communism
• Junkers and Industrialists Cooperation
• The Jews were to be blamed
• Liberalization: “People’s Food Advisory Board:” and “Budget
Committee”
• The Anti-government bloc in the parliament
24