Mark Mazower is Reader in History at the Universityof Sussex. He is the author of the prize-winningInside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation,1941-1944 (co-winner of the Fraenkel Prize and theLongman/His/Dry Today Book of the Year), He writesand broadcasts regularly on current developments in theBalkans.

MARK MjZOWER

Dark Continent:Europe's Twentieth Century

PENGUIN BOO"'~

pubhoMdby,hrP.ngumG,oupl'en1'''nlloohL''Lom'.London''8 jTz.Enf,land

"""gUln ""'nam Inc.. l7S Hudwn S",,~', New York, Nr'" York '00'4, USAl'.ngu'nlloobAum.li.L'd,Rin8"'ood.Vo

Contents

Preface

I. The Deserted Temple: Democracy's Rise and Fall

2.. Empires, Nations, Minorities

3. Healthy Bodies, Sick Bodies

4. The Crisis of Capitalism

S. Hitler's New Order, 1938-45

6. Blueprints for the Golden Age

7. A Brutal Peace, 1943-9

8. Building People's Democracy

.077,06

9. Democracy Transformed: Western Europe'. 19So-7S 290

10. The Social Contract in CrisisII. Sharks and Dolphins: The Collapse of Communism 367

Epilogue: Making Europe '0'

Mapsa~d Tables ."Notes

.. .1.6

Guide 10 FllrllJerReaJilrg ..6"'

Index ."

DARK CONTlNtNT: EUROPE'S TWENTIETH CENTURY

and resettlement were inextricably linked, for Hitler's war aimed atthe complete racial reconstitution of Europe."

There were no historical parallels for such a project. In Europeneither Napoleon nor the Habsburgs had aimed at such an exclusivedomination, but then Hitler's upbringing as a German nationalist criticof Vienna helps explain the contrast with the methods of governancepursued by the Dual Monarchy. In its violence and racism, Naziimperialism drew more from European precedents in Asia, Africa and- especially - the Americas. 'When we eat wheat from Canada,'remarked Hider one evening during the war, 'we don't think aboutthe despoiled Indians.' On another occasion he described the Ukraineas 'that new Indian Empire'. But if Europeans would have resentedbeing ruled as the British ruled India, they were shocked at beingsubrmrred to an experience closer to that inflicted upon the nativepopulations of the Americas."

National Socialism started out claiming to be: creating a New Order10 Europe, bUTas racial ideology prevailed over economic rationality,the extreme violence implicit in this project became dearer. 'Ginger-bread and whippings' was how Goebbels summed up their policy,but rhere was not enough of the former and too much of the latter.The 'Great Living Space lGro$$lebe"5Taumj of the European familyof nations' promised life to the Gcrmans, an uncertain and precariousexistence to most Europeans and extermination to TheJews. 'If Europecan't exist without us,' wrote Gocbbels in his pro-European phase,'neither can we survive without Europe.' This turned out to be true.The Germans threw away their chance [0 dominate The continentafter J~-40 and their defeat led to their own catastrophe. Himrnler'songinal visrcn came to pass - the Germans were henceforth concen-trated inside Germany - but it is doubtful whether he would haveregarded rhe way this came about as a triumph."

6

Blueprints for the Golden Age

The fOlilldalions of twentieth-centllry democ:racyhave snll tobelaid.

- E. H. Carr. Conditio"s ofPeau

For a Reetingmoment we have an oppommicy to make an epoch- 10 open a Golden Age for all mankind.

-C.Streit,U,,;oIlNow

The reexamination ofvalllcsand the heroic effort which mighthave saved the democracies from war ifthcy had been attcmptcdin time, are raking place and will takc place in the midst of the

- J. Maritain, Christitmisme d dimocrallt

The Second World War and the confrontation with the reality of aNazi New Order in Europe acted as a catalyst inside and outside Ihecontinent for a renewed attempt TO define the place of (he democrancnation-state in the modern world. This chapter attempts TO describethe vanous axes along which the wanimedehafc look placr,;I debatewhose core concerned the rerhmkmg of anorher New Europe 10 nv ..aIthe authontarmn monst"r creared hy Berlin. It goes wlthoul s.il.yi~

~~~~u~:, ;~:~~~; ::;:;~ ~r~;~:~s a::;~::};~:r3:o ;~~~::;{he connnurnes between Hiller's Europe: and Schum,lO'~;He: VI"Ne In

,H,

0,0.111( CONTINENT: EUIIOPE'S TWENTIETH CENTURY

economic - especially industrial - Franco-German cooperation, formsrance; there are also the obvious continuities of personnel in statebureaucracies and administrations. But in the realm of political valuesand Ideals these continuities were much less important.Yet the Second World War did nOI start out - at least so far as

London and Paris were concerned - as a war for a new order. Thepower of Nazi dreams contrasted from the outset with the ideologicaltimidity of the British. 'These people,' fired off an elderly H. G. Wells,'by a string of almost incredible blunders, have entangled what is leftof their Empire in a great war to "end Hitler", and they have absolutelyno suggestions to offer their antagonists and the world at large of whatis to come after Hitler. Apparently they hope to paralyse Germany insome as yet unspecified fashion and then to go back to their golf linksor the fishing stream and the doze by the fire after dinner."The arrival of Churchill did not allay such criticism; indeed, follow-

ing Dunkirk it intensified. At the Ministry of Information, HaroldNicolson contrasted the 'revolutionary war' waged by the Germanswith the British 'conservative' war effort and urged that Whitehallrespond to the need to ask people to fight for a 'new order'. Conserva-tive Party reformers felt similarly while Aulee stressed the need notto fight 'a conservative war' with 'negative objectives'. Churchillhimself disliked any talk about war aims or the POSt-War order; butthe debate - in Addison's words - 'Rowed around him'. As talk of aNaZI New Order captivated Europe in the summer of 1940, Britishpolicy-makers came under pressure to outline a New Order of theirown. The debate that ensued - in Britain and abroad - gave impetusto many of the ideas and values rhar would form the foundations ofthe post-war world!

REVIVING DEMOCRACY

By March 1941, one prominent British politician could write that"everybody" is ulking about the new order, the new kind of society,dot- new wayofhfe, the new conception of man'. AtcordingtohisrorianE.. H Care, 'tM pomt a[ 15sueISnot the necc:sslty for a new order but

,",

the manner in which it shall be built'. Hitler could not win the war,in his view, but he would have performed 'the perhaps indispensabkIuncnon of sweeping away the liner of the old order'. Thusthestruglewas 'an episode in a revolution of social and political order'.'

At the very heart of this revolution were the preservation andreasserrion of democratic values in Europe. 'Democracy! Perhaps noword has ever been more devalued and ridiculed,' wrote the Frenchresistance paper Franc- Tireur in March 1944. 'Only yesterday it stoodfor long-winded committee speeches and parliamentary impotence.'Aware of the deep disaffection with the Third Republic in France,General de Gaulle expressly avoided raising the subject in his earlybroadcasts. 'At the moment,' he wrote in July '941, 'the mass of theFrench people confuse the word democracy with the parliamentaryregime as it operated in France before the war ... That regime hasbeen condemned by events and by public npinion.' It was this wholesaledisillusionment with democracy in inter-war Europe which had ledcommentators like Ambassador Joe Kennedy to predict after the fallof France that 'democracy is finished in England'. 'The necessity forre-stating the democratic idea,' asserted R. W. G. MacKay, author ofthe best-selling Peace Aims and the New Order, 'is the most fundamen-tal question for us all just now."

Chamberlain's uncertain presentation of the case against Hitlertypified for many critics the complacency, passivity and outmodedstyle of the prevailing 'bourgeois' democratic tradition in wesremEurope. What was to become the wartime consensus rested upon [hebelief that in order to survive in Europe, democracy would have 10be reinterpreted: the old liberal focus upon the value of political rightsand liberties had IIOt been enough to win the loyalty of the masses.'Democracy', wrote a central European emigre in the USA ' ... mustset its values against new ideals; it must show that it rs able toadapt its psychology and its methods to [he new tunes." from 'u~h aperspective, the Arla"ti" Charter of August 1941 Sl'C'mN "'odullycautious and even conKrvall~e In its promises. 'Nothing In the rntsuggests that we are In the middle of the g~aresT ~~olutionary war 01all time ... [This] h&$thedr:awb.t"k of suggesting thai the democracieswish to preserve .nd nu.mam the methods of ,hO' jnst, white tM

OAIlK (:ONTINl'.NT: l'.UIlOPE'S TWENTIETH CENTURY

totalitarian powers strive for something new and imaginative." InBritain, even rhe Charter itself was downplayed, according to ascathing anonymous critic of British propaganda: 'Speakers of theMinistry [of Informatlonllecture about the Empire, America, France,.. arnme cookery, the horrors of Nazi rule and Hitler's new order,bur they do not talk about our new order. There is, in fact, norecognition of the war of Ideas or of the social revolution throughwhich we are living."

Suspect as the nonon may seem to revisionists today, social revel-unon hardly seems too strong a term to describe the dramatic changeswrought by the war both in Britain and in occupied Europe. Wartimedislocation and chaos - some sixty million changes of address wereregistered in Bmain alone durmg the war - collapsed the socialdistances upon which the rigid pre-war class systems of Europe hadrested. The impact of bombing, together with systematic evacuationsand the mass panics and flight of millions of people (eight to twelvemillion, for example, covering hundreds of miles, during the masspanic in Belgium and France alone in the summer of 1940) broughtclasses and communities together which had formerly remained inignorance of one another. Rationing demonstrated that governmentplanning could be used for egalitarian ends and was as a resultsurprisingly popular. Hence the war itself, with the new roles assumedby government In managing the economy and society, demonstratedthe truth of the reformers' argument: democracy was indeed compat-ible wrrh an interventionist statc. According to Mass Observation in1!J44' 'Public feehng about controls is largely based on the belief thatthey are democranc, more democratic than the freedoms and libertieswhich in practice apply only to limlled sections of the population.";

In a Times edncnal of July 1940 entitled 'The New Europe', E. H.Carr asserted that 'if we speak of democracy, we do not mean ademocracy which maintains the right to vote but forgets the right towork and the nglu to live'. ThIS was Ihe message which socialistsacr0S6 Europe had been repeating for years; the war gave it a newurgency and plausibsluy. Imprasoned by Vichy, the former Frenchprertser Leon Blum wrote. 'A weak and perverted bourgeois democ-racy has collapsed and must Ix: replaced by a true democracy, an

energeric and competent democracy, popular instead of eapiralill.strong Instead of weak ... This popular democracy will be, indeedcan only be, a Social Democracy."

The wartime reformist consensus, however, included other groupsthan the socialists. Liberal progressives, technocratic planners andnewly assemve moderate conservatives were all keen to enlarge thesocial and economic responsibilities of the modem Slate. None wuhappier than Keynes, for example, 10 seize the chance to assert theprimacy of economics over finance and the bankruptcy of laissez- faire.He 100 had been frustrated by the rerrograde nature of the Britishgovernment's initial attitude towards post-war goals. In the summerof 1940 he had turned down an invitation to broadcast a rebuttal ofthe economic aspects of the Nazi New Order on the grounds that hefound much in them to admire. To Duff Cooper he wrote:

Your Iclter seems to suggest thaI we should do wclllo pose as championsof the pre-war economic SlIlIUS qllo and outbid Funk by offering good old1?10-1IOrI930-33,i.e.goldslandatdorinrernationalexchange/Distz-faire. Is Ihis punicularly attractive ur good propaganda?. obviou~ly I am

nOilhemJnlopreachthebeauticsandmeritsofthepre-wargoldst3ndardIn my opinion about three-quarters of the passages quoted from the

German broadcasts would be quile excellent if the name of Orear Britainwere subseiruted Ice Gerrnany cr rhe Axis ... If Funk.'splan is taken Iltf3Cevalue, I[ is excellent and jllSI whal we ourselves ought tQ be Ihinking ofdoing. If it is to be altacked,lhe way 10 do ir wuuld bemcasl doubt andsuspicion on i\s btma/ides.'

At the beginning of 1941 Keynes did agree to draft a declaration ofwar aims in which he emphasized the need to ensure social securityand to attack unemployment after the war. Never published, thismemorandum markl'

D.4.R~ CONTINHIT: EURore'S TWENTIETH CENTURY

reaching. Apart from Keynes's work in economic policy, pioneeringreforms were laid down in education, health and town planning. Warsaw the introducncn of free school meals and milk. It brought the1.9 government White Papers on Full Employment and a NationalHealth Service. Above all, it brought William Beveridge, whose 1.942-report on 'Social Insurance and Allied Services' laid the foundationsof the post-war welfare state. Beveridge himself, converted by the warfrom a critic of welfare capitalism to a believer in planning for radicalsocial change, even told Beatrice Webb in early 1940 that 'I would verymuch like to sec Communism tried under democratic conditions' .IG

This, then, was the man appointed reluctantly by the coalitiongovernment to investigate what it imagined would be the rathertechnical matter of social insurance reform. But Beveridge resolved-with enormous success - to see this work 'as a contribution to abetter new world after the war'. His subsequent investigations forcedWhitehall to travel further down the road to full-employment policiesafter the war than it had originally intended. Common to both Bever-idge and the government's own White Paper was their insistence onthe need for state planning for the social good and their denunciarionof the iniquities of pre-war laissez-faire. 'If the united democracies',concluded Beveridge in 1942, 'today can show strength and courageand Imagination even while waging total war, they will win togethertwo victories which in truth are indivisible.'!'

The reception which greeted Beveridge's reports attested not merelyto his talent for self-publicity but to the very real public interest11\ post-war reconstruction. Like Beveridge himself, British popularopuuon had shifted to the Left during the war. This could be seen inthe interest aroused by a special Picture Post issue in january 19410n"The Bmam we hope to build when the war is Over'; it was alsorefleaed in the sales of the Archbishop of Canterbury's best-sellingI9 Pengum Special on Chrtstliull!y and the Social Order, and theemergence of Richard Acland's Common Wealth Party. Beveridge'sproposals achieved mternanonal circulation through the BBC andunderground publications, 50 much 50 that 11'1 the Third Reich hisplan WaJ regarded as 'an especially obvious proof that our enemiesare rakmg over national-socialistic ideas'.u

This of course was nor entirely fair. Rather, the challenge of Nazismwas forcing democrats to look again at the question of sociaJ andnational solidarity. The process had starred already in the t9}ot,notably in Sweden where the Social Democrats had pioneered anexplicit alternative 10 the prevailing authoritarian model of coercivepopulation policy. The Swedish welfare state which emerged in thelate 1930$ was a determinedly democratic programme, combiningpro-nalalist measures to encourage people to have more children withan affirmation that the decision whether or not to have children wasan individual one which the state should respect. Sweden did maintainsterilization of the mentally ill, but it also supported birth controlclinics, provided sex education in schools, liberalized abortion lawsand protected the rights of working mothers at the same time that itintroduced family allowances, universal free medical and dental careand school meals.

For one of the architects of these policies, Alva Myrdal, the Swedishmodel presented a contrast to the Nazi conception of the relationshipbetween state and individual. It was - she argued in Nation andFamily - a necessary amplification of the scope of modern democracy.Finishing her book in August 1940, Myrdallooked forward cautiouslyto a time when 'the present calamity' would be over and 'freedomand progress would again have a chance in Europe'. But, she warned,in what were fast becoming familiar terms,

Such Bnend of this war, even more than that of rhe earlier one, Will prc:senra challenge to democracy, again russerted,lo fulfill Its social obligationPolitical freedom and fonnal equality will not be enough; real democt::l.cy.socjaland~onomiedemocr3cy,willbeexacled ..

Europe will be impoverished. The fiscal Stlllctures of befhgerem andnonbelligcrcm countries ahke wiH seem bankrupt whenmcasurcd by tradinonal norms of 1I",."cial solvency. Th.. rich will have seen Ihelr wealthtaxed away. The masses will be hungry. Whc:n,be StfllClU'Cof war-nme~onomy hreaks down, the dtslocauoes of nonnal exchange ,md COm"",o.:ewill be left as enormouSmalad,ullmen'~. Th..demobdizcd m,ll1o""wdl "aveemploymCIIIand surllY. Bo,h cour,.... and wisdom ....ill be ~U, ......IUpreserve orderly fleedom anJ 10 avoid soc,al chaos. TheS

DARK CONTINENT: EUII.OI'I'STWENTtETH CENTURY

however,willnotpreveottheuodertak,ogofsocialrcforms;oothecontrary,they win force reforms whether we wan! them or no(.'J

An this formed part of the more general debate about social justiceand democracy that the war had provoked. By i941., Nazi visions ofa more egaliranan New Order shielding Europe from the capitalist'plutocracies' had lost any allure they once possessed. It was theiropponents who now stood for a fairer future. In France, for example,Leon Blum's impassioned defence of the Popular Front during his trialat Ricm in 1941.had won him many admirers. Another indication ofdisaffection with Vichy was de Gaulle's call that November for a'New Democracy' against the reactionary regime of Petain; by April194}, the General was talking about the need to introduce state controlof economic affairs and social security."

EVidence abounds for the radicalization of ordinary people acrossEurope living under Nazi rule. 'The last thing we want is a return to thesocial conditions of 1939 with their economic chaos, social injustice,spiritual laxity and class prejudices,' wrote a young Dutch lawyer inan underground newslerrer in 1941. In Greece, inflation and foodshortages had led to 'a veritable social revolution' and 'the veeringtowards the Left of elements of the public who, before the war, wereamong the most conservative'."

Resistance and underground movements were naturally responsiveto this leftwards shift in popular attitudes, partly because many oftheir leading cadres were drawn from the Left and partly becauseresistance itself was an exercise in communal solidarity, whose valueslent themselves to an egalitarian and morally elevated vision of thepost-war world. After Stalingrad, people's minds turned more andmore to the Iucure; 'in the heat of the battle, amid the terror of theGestapo and of Vichy,' proclaimed La Revue libre in late 1943, 'essays,pohncal theses, draft constitutions, programmes are springing upalmost everywhere, circulating, being read and discussed: The mostunlikely groups now tried to expound an 'ideology'. L.

It would be a rniscake 10 insist too strongly upon the similarities ofres'~tance ideologies across the continent: after all, resistance groupswere fragmented, localized and poorly informed of one another's

existence; they were drawn from very diverse political and socialelemems of the population; above all, they were wartime phenomma,with all the flux, uncertainty and ideological confusion which theconditionsof the war produced. In haly, where twenty years of Fascismhad made state intervention in socio-economic affairs less of a noveltythan in Britain or France, anti-Fascists stressed the themes ofiusticeand liberty above those of planning; in France, faith in dirigisme wascombined with a fervent patriotism only perhaps matched in Poland.Such differences of emphasis, however, cannot obscure the remarkableconvergence of resistance aspirations. Whether inrerprered in teT.msof nationalization of major industries and banks, of State ptanrungthrough price and production controls, or of vague and unspecifieddemands for 'social justice', the goal of a fairer and 'SOClahzed'economy was shared by the vast majority of resistants. '.Fi~ance is atthe service of [he Economy,' declared the plan which Emile Laffonplaced before the Conseil National de la Resistance in 194}. This wasthe dream of Keynes and all those who had seen the prospects foreconomic recovery in the 1930S sacrificed before the altar of thebalanced budget."

Slower to respond to the new mood because of their greater d!stancefrom events, the exile governments of Europe also shaped th~lr posr-war aspirations to take account of the desire for a new domestic order.Norwegian foreign minister Trygve Lie stated that the war'has madenecessary in all countries a national planned economy under rhedirection of the State'. The Dutch governmem was rather reluctantto consider what this might mean, but the Belgians, byconlfast,qu,.cklyset up a Committee for rhe Study of Postwar Problems comm'tTedto the extensive usc of 'national planning'; an 'organized nationaleconomy' would allow the state to banish mass unemploymen~.Benei's government was- rightly - proud of pre_warC~echoslovJk,a senlightened social policies but still envisaged Ihe nationah1al10n ofbanks, insurance companies and heavy industry and rhe mrrodu

OAIlK CONTINENT: EUIlOr~'S TW~NTIETH CENTURY

Liberal prime minister Tsouderos. They, too, committed themselvesto sweeping reforms when the war was over. For social democratslike Bend or Spaak the cause: of economic planning and social inter-vention was scarcely new; but it was the winning over [0 such ideasof conservative Europeans - and the consequent convergence of Leftand Right - which provided one of the preconditions for posr-warpoliticalsrabihry."

THE INDIVIDUAL AGAINST THE STATE

If one tendency in wartime thought was to stress the evils of pre-wareconomic individualism and laissez-faire and the need for greater staleintervention in the interests of social harmony, another was to arguethat the struggle against Hider had revealed the irnporrance of humanand civil rights. In the legal and political sphere, in other words, thetrend was to reassert the primacy of the individual vis-a-vis the state.The wartime rehabilitation and redefinition of democracy movedberween rhese two poles."

Occupation raised the question of individual choice in the mostdirect and inescapable form. Experiencing the terrors of Nazi rule inPoland led the science fiction writer Sranislav Lem to a theory ofchance where individual autonomy and power had vanished: it wasmere contingency whether venturing OUtfor food led to a prematuredeath, forced labour in the Reich or a loaf of bread. In Yugoslavia,diplomat turned novelist Ivo Andric saw the onset of civil war interms of the power of historical forces and collective traditions overt~ mdrvsdual. In his prophetic pnzewinmng novel, Bridge over theRilJe~ Drma, five cemunes of Bosnian history dwarfed [he individualprotagorusts

Yet others reached quitedifferem conclu~ions; faced with the choicebecween collaboration and reneanee, everything boiled down not tofate but to a stark individual decision. In VOlni,., e no, the IralianI1Ovelu.r Eho Vluorml msisred rhar both resistance and Nazi bruralirywere the resulr of human choices. 'He who fal15, rises also. Insulted,opprc::s.cd. a man can make arms of the very chains on his feet. This

is because he wants freedom, n01 revenge. This is man. And theCesrapo 100? Of course! ... Today we have Hitler. And wbar is he?Ishenotaman?''''

'To render myself passive in the world', wrote Sarrre in Being. a"JNOllJillglless (194 ~), 'is still to choose the person lam.' The experienceof occupation had a powerful effect on the development of existermal-rst thought. Sartre denounced rhe fatalism of his Iellow-inrellecruals_ men like Dneu, Brasillach or even Emmanuel Mourner - who hadchosen to collaborate because -They argued - history and destiny hadchosen Hitler's Germany as the way of the furure. Writing one of hiSLeiters to a German Friend in July 1944, Albert Camus argued sirni-larly: 'You never believed in the meaning of this world and thereforededuced the idea that everything was equivalent and that good andevil could be defined according to one's wishes ... I continue to believethat this world has no ultimate meaning. BUI I know that somethinginithasmeaningandthatisman.'ll

To enter into resistance was often a profoundly personal act. WhatAlban Vistel called the 'spiritual heritage' ofrhe resistance emergedfrom the sense that Nazi values were an affrone to 'the individual'ssense of honour'. For many insurgents this was bound up with thepassionate sense of patriotism and their desire for liberty and led themnaturally 10 stress rhe importance of individual freedom. 'The idealwhich motivates us', declared a founder of the French MRP, 'is anideal of liberation.' Resistance fhusdemonstraled that collective actioncould serve to defend individual liberties.ll

Inside Hider's Cerma ny, 100, the experience of Nazi rule encouragedn revaluation of the role of the individual on a smaller, more restri.:teJand private scale. After the war, the German-Jewish philolOgist VictorKlemperer would try to explain to his students in the runts of Dresdenthai the Third Reich had devalued the meaning of warnme her"mby turning it mto pan of the propaganda machme of the regime. Thereal hero, he wen! Oil, had been the lonely IIldl~ldual, Isol~ted andapart from the adulation of the state. Heroes I~ the ~a~l panlh~'nwere borne aloft on a SpUriOUSnde of pubhe a:.. dalm, e~en JLtl'ISISin Ihe ann-Nazi resrsaance had had the sUPf'Ort of thelrcomr.l~' forKlemperer rhe model of true heroism had been his non)e .."h "lie,

DARK CONTINf.NT: EUROPE'S TWENTIETH CENTURY

who had courageously stood by him through the Third Reich, despitethe misery this had brought her, alone and with no support or recog-nition for her courage.

To religiousrhinkers, this reassertion of the individual consciencewas perhaps the outstanding intellectual development of the war. Atthe same time as the Church rediscovered its social mission - whetherAnglican in Britain, Catholic or Orthodox - so it reasserted theprimacy of the human spirit over totalitarian demands for total loyaltyto the state. Emmanuel Mounier's flirtation with Vichy, prompted bythe desire 10 pass from 'bourgeois man and the bourgeois Church'led him and other religious reformers into a spiritual cul-de-sac.Pointing to a way our was Jacques Marirain, a fellow Catholic intellec-tual. Like Mounier, Maritain believed that social reform was urgentlyneeded; but unlike him he argued that it was possible within a demo-cratic context. ln Christianisme et Democratie (1943), Maritaininsisted that the inter-war retreat from democracy could now be seento have been a mistake: 'It is not a question of finding a new namefor democracy, rather of discovering its true essence and of realizingIt ... rather, a question of passing from bourgeois democracy. . [Qan integrally human democracy, from abortive democracy to realdemocracy.'1l

Here in embryo was the source of post-war Christian democracy,arleast in an idealized form. [n his 1942 work, Les Droils de /'hommeella 101 tlatureIle, Maritaln developed the idea that the full spiritualdevelopment of an Individual demanded contact with society. Theperson existed as an 'openwhole', and found fulfilment not in isolationbut in the community. '[ have stressed ... the rights of the civicperson; wrote Maritain, 'of the human individual as a citi~en.' Thisconception of social responsibility as an individual duty, and of suchbehaviour as a condition of political freedom, can be encounteredamong other religious groups as well. Greek Orthodox ArchbishopDarnaskillOli called for less selfishness and a greater sense of solidarityIn the face of the famine m Greece. Wilham Temple, the Archbishopof Canterbury, Cited Mantaln approvingly and echoed his call for a~rou~ 'Democracy of the Person' as opposed to an egotistical'Democracy of IndIviduals'!'

",

The new emphasis upon the worth of the individual reached beyondthe sphere of moral philosophy and religion into that of the law.St~rting with Churchill's bold declaration on 3 September t939 thatrhe war was being fought 'to establish, on impregnable rocks, therights of the individual', Allied propaganda emphasized the sanctityof rights. 'In the course of World War Two,' wrote the distinguishedinternational lawyer Hersch Laurerpacht, 'vrhe enthronement of therights of man" was repeatedly declared to constitute one of the majorpurposes of the war. The great conresr, in which the spiritual heritageof civilization found itself in mortal danger, was imposed upon theworld by a power whose very essence lay in the denial of rhe rightsof man as against the omnipotence of the Srate.'2SIt was all very well, however, to proclaim a crusade in defence of

rights but which rights were at issue and for whom? Quincy Wrightwas reflecting liberal American thought when he hazarded a definitionwhich focused upon civil liberties, equality before the law, and freedomof trade. Bur others objected that this ignored the new social demandsgenerated by the war. Nazi occupation, according to the Pole LudwikRajchman, 'was a process of levelling down entire populatio~s, whichcreates a psychological atmosphere for compelling aurhorieies, thepowers that will be, to accept very far-reaching reforms'. He arguedthat hundreds of millions of people were 'thinking today in terms ofthe future exercise of human rights, which cannot but include thetight to a minimum standard of social security'. Thus ar the curserwe find the debate under way between broad and narrow concepnonsof human rights: starting during the war, this argument would gam

~~i~~e~:~I~u::;:~~~~ ~ho~~~~~:~:t a:~~ :~ :~: ~;~::r~~:n:!:.:eThe new commitment to rights raised knotty problems of race and

empire. [n the late 19305, lawyers had wimessed the d~velopmenr ofa body of Nazi jurisprudence which conSCiously enacked MICra]notions of mdividual autonomy in Ihe name of Ihe Interest) 01 therace and the stale. Now they argued that allll-Semmsm msrde Germ.oln~had paved the wily for the racist ambitions whICh led to the NUlccnquese of Europe, as well as to the eJ(lermln"tlon of mrlhons ofJews discussed openly and III detail by Marltaln and others b} 19-4J

DAII.~ CONTINENT: EVROPE'S TWENTIETH CENTVRY

Yet Western inrellectuals - not to mention governments and publicopinion - hesitated to make any connection with the ideas of racialsuperiority stili very much current in their own societies."

Noting that this was 'an ideological war fought in defense ofdemocracy', Swedish Social Democrar Gunnar Myrdal observed thin'in this War the principle of democracy had to be applied more:explicitly to race. . In fighting fascism and nazism, America had[0 stand before the whole world in favor of racial tolerance andcooperation and racial equality.' Some white Americans were inceeas-ing1yuncomfortable at the hypocrisies involved in fighting Hitler witha segregated army. Black Americans commented upon 'this strangeand curious picture, this spectacle of America at war fa preserve the:ideal of government by free: men, yet clinging to the social vestiges ofthe slave system'. 'The fight now is not to save democracy,' wroteRalph Bunche, summing up what was probably the dominant viewamong African-Americans, 'for that which does not exist cannot be:saved. Bur the fight is to maintain those conditions under which peoplemay continue [0 SHive for realization of the democratic ideals. Thisis the inexorable logic of the nation's position as dictated by the worldand-democratic revolution and Hitler's projected new world order.'l11

British attitudes were marked by similar hypocrisies. DudleyThompson, a Jamaican volunteer arriving in England to join the RAF,was asked: 'Are you a pure-blooded European?' George: Padrnore, theremarkable journalist imprisoned in 1933 by the Nazis for artackmgHitler's racial policies, spearheaded the efforts of the Pan-Africanmovement to force the British [0 extend their democratic crusade tome empire. Under Churchill, the archetypal romantic imperialist, thiswas never hlc.c:lyto happen. Hard though it may be: now to credit It,tbe British governmem aCtually launched its own Empire Crusade inlate 1940 to whip up support for the war. Whitehall's feeble effort tospread a 'dyn;tmlc faith' among the public contrasted Nazi efforts tobuild a "slave empire' with the Brmsh version: 'The British Empire isexawy the opPOSite. There has been nothing like it in the worldbefore;.Il is a commonwealth, a family of free nancns -linked togetherby a loyalty to one lung. It stand~ for progress; It IS the hope of thefuture."

.,s

That the Empire Crusade turned Out to be a complete flop may rellus somethingabout the attitude of Europeans to their empires. Duringthcwarthis~eemsrohavebeenbased largely on indifference, at leasrin Britain and France (though not perhaps in the Nerhertands). In allthese countries, domestic matters were of much livelier concern thanquestions of imperial government. The cause of empire beat weaklyin British hearts. But so too did anti-imperialism. Most Europeansseemed scarcely aware that any inconsistency was involved indefending human liberties at home while acquiescing in imperial ruleoverseas. One examines the resistance record in vain for indicationsof an interest in the predicament of colonial peoples. In Italy, forexample, the retention of colonies was a question of amour propre.In France, there was much discussion of remodelling the empire butvirtually none of dismantling it; the Left more or less ignored theissue, and their silence at the Brazzaville Conference on imperialreform in early I944 was entirely characteristic. Queen Wilhelminasimply offered 10 turn the Dutch Empire into a commonwealth which'would leave no room Ior discrlrninaricn according to race or national-ity'. To the Indian Congress Party's demands for British withdrawal,Whitehall countered by arresting Gandhi and offering Donvimonstatus ..IO

To astute and sensitive observers of the Allied war effort, theambiguity of European ani tudes to race was one of the rnost strikingfeatures of the war. The American anthropologist Robert Redfieldremarked on how, faced with Nazi theories, democracy had beenforced to a 'self-examination' of the inconsistency between what Ifprofessed and practised: 'The ideal is now asserted as a program foran entire world - a free world,' Redfield noted. 'And yet the le;aderswho announce this program are citizens of the countries in whichracial inequality is most strongly applied.' Redfield predicred m thefuture 'a moderate reaction favourable to inlolerance' With a 'corte-

:$n:!~~aS;;;:~~:t::~fi;~~ r:::~:~~!=::;::"ra~~equality and human righrs, did n-c:nrually coptnbule to lhe ending ofEuropean imperiab.m. il did noc do so aUlQmaucally' Europeans (andwhite Americans) remained largely unmoved by the drama of their

O~II.~ CONTINENT: EUROPE'S TWENTIETH CENTUR Y

own racial problems. So long as colonial subjects were willing to fighlon their behalf, they had little incentive ro alter the structure: of power10 a radical fashion. Bur here tOO, in ways largely invisible to British,French, Belgian and Dutch eyes, the war itself was rhe catalyst ofchange: Ho Chi Minh continued the struggle he had begun againstthe Japanese - against the French; Asian, African and Caribbeanservicemen - Kenyarta and Nkrumah among them - returned homefrom fightmg in Europe prepared to continue the struggle which hadbeen starred against Hider.ll

THE NATION-STATE ANDINTERNATIONAL ORDER

In 194

DAIIK CONTIN(t

DAII II: CONTINENT: EUROPE'S TWENTIETH CENTURY

The New: Europe. This showed a map which divided Europe intoWest European, Scandina~ian, Baltic, German, Central EUropean,Balkan and Iberian federations. Only Italy escaped intact.R

Brirish and American officials engaged in post-war planning alsotended - as they had in 1jl'1-18 - to see federation as an attractivesolution to Europe's border problems. Austria, for example, posedBritish Foreign Office clerks with no less of a dilemma than theHabsburg Empire had done earlier. Few in Whitehall appear to havebelieved that Austria could survive as an independent state, but evenfewer were happy to allow the Anschluss to stand: a surrogate empirein the form of Danubian 'integration' was the answer. Reviving theinter-war Balkan Union, and press-ganging Bulgaria into joining it,was an analogous pepe-dream."

Churchill was drawn to the idea of a United States of Europe,envisaging an arrangement by which Britain could exerr leadershipon a continental scale. From May 1940, US planners for the post-warworld came to believe that a new international organization, far frombeing incompatible with regional or continental unions, would in factbe more firmly based if they were created first. Indeed Newman's 1943map was very similar to that envisaged by the US State Depanment101940.-"

At the same time, though, we should keep these schemes in perspcc-rive. Federalism diminished in popularity inside and outside govern-man as the war Went on. One reason was the strong hosriliry ofthe Soviet Union to arrangements which seemed intended to createann-Sevier blocs in eastern Europe. Another was the objection ofmany small counrnes which - despite the examples of the wartimeCzech-Polish and the Greek-Yugoslav alliances - worried aboutdisappearing mto a Europe more than ever dominated by the majorpowers.

lnscde continenlal testseance movements, rhe idea of Europe stoodfor an erhical hentage rather than a specific SCI of politico-economic.arTlll1go:ment~.As.erting the exl~lenee of common European valuesWaJ; a way of dtnymg the durabrluy of Hitler's N~w Order. By talking01 du~ "ruggle as a F."..ropell>1 CIVilwar, the Italian Partito d'AzioneKI U5Hruggk for a 'democranc revolution' firmly in a continental

framework. High school pupils in Paris in 1943 demanded 'a newEuropean order' to take the place of the Nazi order, and insisted thatwhat they had in mind was not a Europe dominated by one hegemonicstate, nor an economic and financial network like the Pan-Americanunion, but 'a cultural and moral communiry which must be trans-formed by the war into a political and social one'. Le Fmnc-Tireurannounced that 'as one regime collapses, another is being born. Itarises from the fire of the struggle of liberation and from the icy coldof prisons, with the mass resistance that has sprung up from theFrench rnaquis to the Polish plains, from the factories of Milan 10the German forced labour camps, from Norwegian universities to themountains of Bosnia.'40

There were some more specific commitments to the ideal of federa-tion. But in general the strength of the commitment was in inverseproportiontothesizeofthegroupconcerned. The anri-Fascisr Wentor-ene Manifesto' of August 1941, for example, reAeering the ideasof British federalists, had only limited circulation during the war.Resistance support for federation was rarely at the head of theirprogramme. Hence, the efforts made by some historians to trace theorigins of the Common Market back to declarations of the wartimeresistance arc in the last resort unconvincing, and one could withequal if nor greater justice nguethat its origins lay with the Nazis:by 19'13many Axis sympathizers were keener 'Europeans' than theiropponents. In general, resistants remained motivaled - as did mostEuropeans _ by considerations of domestic social and economic policyand patriotism, their horizons bounded by the confines of the nation-Stale.

For at the same time as giving an impetus to federalism, the warhad actually Increased nationalist sentiment in Europe. Patriotism,aher all, was far more important than 'Europeanism' as a monve forresistance. Intelligence repons coming our of Holland in lare 1941noted rhar 'the population is ... ardently nationalistic. There IS evenreason 10 fear an intenSification of Dutch nationalism. A blooJb~lhis rmrrunenr.' British pride ~t fhe country's nand against (he ThirdReich may help explain .. hy su.ppon for federal Union faded .1"'01)' asthe war ended. France saw a resurgence of the ',Jea' of the nanon

OARI( CONT1N~NT: EUROPE'S TWENTIETH CENTURY

\'(Ihen Polish resistance groups agreed that 'rhe Polish Republic willbe a member of the federation of free European nations', this was lenan expression of federalist faith than a desire to ensure the securityof an mdependenr Poland after the war. In traditionally narionalisriecountries like Greece, internationalist sentiment never took hold.There.es in Poland,Albania and Yugoslavia, a virtual civil warwirhinthe resistance led both left and Right to insist on its nationalistcredentials. In general, conservative and right-wing resisters to theGermans were more hostile to the idea of surrendering nationalsovereignty than were socialists or Christian Democrats; but even thelarter tended to attach greater importance to the cause of reform athome. Federalism remained, in other words, a relatively weak elementof the wartime consensus."

THE NEW CONSENSUS: LIMITS ANDCONTRADICTIONS

In I~44 the emigre Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek publisheda small book entitled The Road to Serfdom. 'If we take the peoplewhose views influence developments, they are now in the democraciesall socialists,' bemoaned Hayek. 'Scarcely anybody doubts that wemust move towards socialism.' This prospect he found deeply alarm-ing. Why, he asked, had the West gone to war against Nazism if itwas prepared to stamp out freedom at home? The Road to Serfdomargued mcisrvely that freedom and what Hayek preferred to call'collecnvrsm' were incompatible. According to Hayek, the idea of'democratic socialism' was simply a confusion of terms; any attempt10 achieve such a synthesis would tilt society inexorably towardstoraliunanism. Those, like H. G. Wells, who argued that economicplanmng and the protection of human rights could coexist weredeludmg themselves; planning required dictators and reduced parha-mcfIt to Impotence. Denouncing 'the tOlalilarians in our midst', Hayekcalled for people to turn away from the rmrage of 'the great utopia'and ro return to what he termed 'the abandoned road' of economiclJberallt.ID.'"

BLUEPRINTS fOR THE GOLOEN AGE

Some four decades would pass before Hayek's ferocious pokmicsucceeded in gaining an intluenrial audience, and then it would becomerhe new bible of the Tharcherite laissez-Iaire revivalists in their aSS3uhon the post-war social order. But in 1944 Hayek was a voice in thewilderness. His insistence that Western planning was equivalent toSoviet collectivism fell on deaf ears, as did his assault upon the notionof democratic socialism. The Austrian nee-liberal tradition found areadier audience in rhe United States.

Far more in keeping with contemporary European opinion was theexpatriate Hungarian-jewish sociologist Karl Mannheim, who argued(in Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (1940)) the contraryview to Hayek's. For Mannheim, the age of laissez-faire was over. Heargued that in a modern mdusrrial society 'there is no longer anychoice between planning and laissez-faire, but only between goodplanning and bad'. In a discussion which anticipated Isaiah Berlin'sTwo Concepts of Freedom, Mannheim insisted that there are differentconceptions of freedom, and that the libertarian's insistence upon'freedom from external domination' leads him to neglect the otherforms of 'freedom as Oppoftunity' which certain types of planningcreare in society. For Mannheim, democracy needed to come to termswith planning if it was to survive; the enemy to beware was notthe planner but the bureaucrat. As he puts it: 'The problem of thedemocratic constitution of a planned society mainly consists in avoiding bureaucratic absolutism.")

In retrospect what is striking is the lack of debate on these issuesin most of Europe. The rwo countries where economic liberalism wasmost in evidence after 1~45 were West Germany and Italy; rhere. theIdea that state planning was associated with totalitarianism had aplausibility borne of bitter experience. Yet not even in those countriocould there be a return to Hayek's 'abandoned road, Elsewhere thepnnciple of state intervention - either for a mixed economv J~ inwestern Europe, or for a planned and cOl)rrolled econom~. a~ IIIeastern Europe _ was accepted wnh surprisingly hnle reSI)lan.:eBehind this development lay the memory of caplrali)llIs nnee-war criSIS, the rrdli~ which the Soviet system won III the w ...against Nazism u well as the sense producnl by W,Imme ,Iale

OJlII.K CONTrNENT' EUROPE'S TWENTIETH CENTURY

controls and rationing that state intervention could increase social[aoness,

It was also questionable whether economic planning was compatiblewith the new intemarionalism. It was, after all, the Left and the $lXialreformers who tended to bein favour of both abandoning laissez-Faneat home, and creating new international institutions with enlargedpowers. E. H. Carr, for example, proposed the creation ofa EuropeanPlanning Authority 'whose mission will be nothing less than thereorganization of the economic life of "Europe" as a whole'. With acharacrerisuc blend of realism and idealism, Carr did nor blanch atthe idea of taking advantage of the 'centralized European authority'that Hitler had established while abandoning the nationalist premisesupon which it was based."

But how could national planning, which Carr also advocated,coexist with planning at a ccminenrallevel! What if national economicInterests did not mesh with those of Europe as a whole? In general,there was little awareness on the Left of such a potential conflict. Buthere the critique from economic liberals was penetrating. Hayekinsisted that international planning was a nonsense:

One has only to visualize the problem~ eeued by the economic planning ofevmsuch an area as wesrern Europeto seethat the moral bases Icr such anundenaking are completely lacking. Who imagines rhae there exisl anyCOmmOn,dcal~ of disrriburive jusli

OAk!: CONTINENT: EUROPE'S TWENTIETH CENTUII,Y BLUEPRINTS FOR THI! GOLOlN AGE

UTOPIAS AND REALITIES: THE EXTENT OF

THE ACHIEVEMENT

Dunng the war, cautious commentators had warned against utopianexpectations. 'How flew will the better world be?' asked historianCarl Becker. 'Many people are saying that what we have to do tomake a new and better world is to "abate nationalism, curb thesovereign state, abandon power politics and end imperialism," henoted, adding, 'Maybe so. But if so, then 1think we have an impossiblejob on our hands. . Making a new and better world is a "

Looking back at the way visions of the post-war world emergedduring the struggle against Germany, what must surely strike us isthe extent to which a genuine consensus of ideas concerning domesticreform - political, economic and social - was arramed and lasted wellinto the post-war era. Consensus, in other words, was a reality notmerely a wartime propaganda mYlh, as some recent scholars haveargued. The Labour government's creancn of a National HealthService, together with its commitment to educational reform,naricnalizarion and full employment resred upon the studies carriedout during the war and survived the changeover of power III J9jl.Elsewhere in western Europe tOO the mixed economy ~"d wdfnestate became the norm, dopi~ 'lOpS ilnd Silins as liberals tried tohalt the growth of pubhcspendinsor swam brit'fly againsl theJmgist4current. There was. 10 IOffiC extent, an 'emulation effect' a~. furexample, France follow~ lhe Bntuh and Belgian lead In rdonIllllJ

DAItK CONTINtNT: tU"OPt'S TWENTllTH CfNTUIlY IHUtPIUNTS fOIt THF GOLDEN AGE

SOCial security. Under Soviet rule, eastern Europe moved towardscconormc planning and the development of a social secunry system;given rhe acceptance of such measures by exile governments duringthe war, it seems likely that not dissimilar developments would havetaken place even wirhour Soviet pressure. Across Europe, in olilCtwords, the repudiation of lurssea-faire was complete. As a result, theidea of democracy was resuscitated, filfully and abortrvely in easternEurope, but with much greater success in the Wesr.

However, III other areas of reform, advances were less durable.Women's rights had been promoted by resistance movements durilllthe war; this was part of what many regarded as their 'dual war ofliberation' - against the Germans and against the 'reactionaries' Ithome who opposed social reform. Moreover, the war itself had pro-foundly altered traditional gender roles, disrupting family ties andproviding women with new tasks and challenges outside as well asinside the home. Liberation did bring some enduring changes, notabl}'the extension of the suffrage in France, Yugoslavia, Greece and othercountries where women had formerly been excluded. But Just as after1918, the ending of the war revived more traditional relations betweenthe sexes. Governments tried to get women to withdraw from theworkforce and return to the home, both in order to give employmentpriomy to returning servicemen and to encourage the production ofbabies. In countries like Greece and Italy, this trend was blamed bythe:Left on capualism, but as it was also occurring in such uncapitahsrenvironments as Tito's Yugoslavia, other explanations for 'thereasserricn of patriarchy' must be sought.

Part of the answer hes In the new post-war pro-naralism, based onthe old concerns about the birth rare and population decline - naturalenough in the aftermath of the greatest bloodletting in Europe'shistory. But the answer may also be found in ordinary people'sreactions to rhe war; the feeling of sheet exhaustion after years offighting, and the desire to rerrear from the world of ideological strifecomrrbuted to an idealization of domestiCIty. With this nostalgia forthe home, many men and many women looked forward 10 setdingdown end starung a famil~. 'After the war I shall get married and~ta~ at home for ever and ever,' said a twenry-~earold, working on

the day shift. 'I'll get nghr OUtof it when the war is over,' said another.older married woman. 'Straight OUIof 11. I've been here about fifteenyears now. 1was married six years ago. 1suppose J'll goon fora timetill my hubby gets serded, and then I'll go home and mcrease thepopulation: 'For Deiter or worse: concluded [he hhss Observationteam, 'the larger number of opiruonared women lI'unt to return to,or star! on, domestic life when the war is ovcr.:"

In the case of attitudes to race, one can scarcely talk of a retreatfrom wartime radicalism. European attitudes 10 race were slowlychanging anyway before the war; the war itself appears hardly to haveaccelerated the process. Anti-Semitism did not disappear from Europeafter 1945: ro the contrary, it imensified across rhe connnenr immedi-ately after the war ended as Jewish survivors returned home to findtheir property inhabited b~ others and their goods plundered.

There were also few signs in 1945that the European powers intendedto do anything other than cling on !O their colonies. Being subjectedto Nazi violence appears to have made them more rather than lessinclined to inflict imperial violence of their own: French forces killedup to 40,000 Algerians in the aftermath of the Serif uprising in May1945, and left perhaps as many as rcc.ccc dead in Madagascar in1947. Decolonizarton, for all The efforts of the '945 Pan-AfricanCongress in Manchester, remained off the European political agendauntil forced back as nationalists raised the costs of hanging on to thecolonies. In so far as the European imperial powers had been humili-ated by the war and were now overshadowed b~ the ami-imperialistsuperpowers, (hey felt more rather than less inclined to reassert theiral1thoTlty overseas. It was hardly a coincidence that it was the oneimperial power which could have been said to have 'won' the WJr-Greal Britain - which first accepted the netd for decoJ{lnil.3.tion.

The vision of a united Europe flickered on fitfully;u the nanon-srarereasserted itself and adjuSled to the exigenciC'$of the Cold W;lr. EuIrefforts to force the pace led to the creation of ,uch bureJtu:tJlI": dronesas the Council of Europe. a far cry from rhe ideall)ri.: visions of 1941At the stan of the 19SOli.the failure of rhe EDe (European DefenceCommunity) marked the end of the federalist dream for three decades.making Nato rarher thaD any purely European orgamaanon rhe

DARK CONTINENT: eUROPE'S TWENTlETl-i CENTUR Y

warchdog over the newly sovereign German Federal Republic. There-after, the Eueopeanisrs were a chastened but more realistic cohort,following Einaudi's advice and adopting a gradualist programmewhICh, beginning with the ECSC in 1951,100 in turn to the CommonMarket and the European Union.As to the revival of international law, the realization of wartime

dreams was also patchy and unsatisfying. The United Nations' com-mitment to human rights was as weak as its overall position in powerpolitics. From the doctrinal point of view, human rights were givenpnorny over economic and social rights in the Charter. But in termsof the protection of minorities the UN Charter represented a stepbackwards from the League. The Universal Declaration of HumanRights of 1948 did symbolize the new status of the individual ininternational law, and lasting mistrust of the Nazi doctrine of statesupremacy, but it contained no provisions for enforcement and remainslittle more than a pious wish."

More far-reaching in its implications was the Genocide Conventionof the same year - passed after a remarkable one-man crusade byRaphael Lemkin, who had been disappointed at the refusal of theInternational Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to judge acts committedby the Nazis before 19}9. Lemkin and others had seen the war-crimestrials as an opportunity to secure world peace by increasing the powersunder mternationallaw to take action against individuals as well asstates. The Genocide Convention added an important new crime toth05C recognized under international law, and imposed obligationsupon ratifymg seares to act to prevent or punish its commission. Bur theConvention's potential has been entirely ignored by the internationalcommumty and there has been little evidence to back the UN'sconfident assertion that 'the feeling will grow in world society thatby protecung the national, racial, religious and ethnic groups every-where m the world we will be protecting ourselves.' For four decades,a 5Crle$of genocides went unpunished outside Europe; in [992 thaimdifferen~ extended to Europe itself."

7

A Brutal Peace, 1943-9

Now that the United Nations are beginning to reconquer E1UO~from the Nazis, the 'demccraric' phase of colonial policy comesinto effect ... What (the Europeans) used to refer to with acertain disdain as 'nanve politics' is now being applied to them.

- Dwight Macdonald, 'Narive Pohncs', 19~'

The Second World War - the culmination of nearly a century ofgrowing violence between the European powers inside and outsidethe continent - was really several wars in one. It was, first andforemost, a military conflict, fought out by armed forces, promptedby Hitler's imperial ambitions. But it was also a war between races,religions and ethnic groups - a bloody reopening of accounts byextreme nationalists wishing to revise the Versailles settlement byforce. Thirdly it was, in many areas west and cast, a class war in thebroadest sense, whether of landless braccianti against pro-Fascistlandowners in northern Italy,or poor hill farmers against the urbanites.Finally, as resistance movements burgeoned in 1""3-4 and provokedbitter reprisals by collaborationist militias, the war Mc

~:mt'tJtary Hislory of the Use of Poiso" Cas (New Haven, Conn., 1993),

55 y_ Arad, Brhee, SOb,bo" Trebllnka: The OperatIon Reinhard DeathCamps (Bloomington, lnd., '987)

56 R. van der Pelt and D. Dwork, Auschwlt"-, '270 10 the Present (N~Hnen,Conn.,I996J

57 BrownIng, "Thedecrsron concernmg rhe Final Solulion',in Fateful Months.E.ss..ys On the Emergenu of Ihe F'"al Solu/ion, op. ctr., p, H58 van der Pelt and Dwcrk, op. cif., pp. }z6, _H6, 343S9ibld.,p.}17

: :heD~~I:::!~tl.:, ~~o::,:, ~~;c~:~:c~;;i~;;,;::~ I:~:h~5:~:~~r.pp. 354-S1; on rhe Ustak genocide, see A. Djilas, The Contested CO'''',,),:

Yugosl,:1t/ Umly ,,,,d Commu"ist Rellolutlon, '919-1953 (Cambridge, MaSii.,1991),PP IZS-7

6, Goebbds and Kohl of the Railway Dept. cited In Kogon, Langbein andRlickerl,op.Clf.,PPID_lt

61 W. Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: An Investigation into the Suppreuion

of Informl1l,on I1bol1t Hillers Final SOIUlion (london, 1980); T. Kushner,

The Holoc""sl and Ille Ub..,allmagination (Oxford, (994)

63 Klee,Dressen and Riess,op. cit., pp. '96-107IS.! G. J Horwrrz, In the Shadow of Death: Uving outside the Gates ofMauthal1sen(New York, 1990),ch. 6

6SG.Schwan:,DI1!nalionulsouaitstischetJ Lager (Frankfurt, J70 On reports that mismanagement had led 10 the need far 'an overpowering

pohce machine' see Dallm, op. cu., p.119; T rever-Roper, op. cit., pp. 461-767' Y Sauer, 'Tllednth.marches, janu3Iy-May, 1945', Modern Judaism"\lyIj)),pp. J-U,up. f'

71SeeHot"WI~,op.cil.,chs.7_8

73 Klukowsk" op. Cil., p. 345; see also R. H. Atnug, Inside the Vicious Heart:

Amn.eans and the f..iberaliOtJ of Nau COllunlralio" Camps (New York!O:a:ford,198,)

74Horwil1.,ap. cie., p- t6S7S v. Lumans, Himmler's Auxiliaries: The VolludeutscheIht Germa" Nat;o/llJI Minorities of Europe, t933-1945 (Chapel199)),PzOjJ6 TrevorRoper, op. Cil., pp. }3, 69, 9z, )16, 354-,';17 C. Child, 'Administration', in Toynbce and Toynbee, op. cc, p. DBE. K. Bramsred, Goebbels and National Soaahst Propagmu/4, 19-1J-JH1(Ann Arbor, Mrch.. 1965), p. 303

6: Blueprints for the Golden Age

I H. G. Wells, The New World Order (New York, 1940), p, 4S1. [. McLaine, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morak attd the Muwtry ofInformation in World War /I (London, 1979), pp- 30-)1, 101; P. Addison,The Road 10 '945' British Politics and the War (London, 1975), p. IIIjR.Acland, The Forward Mar(h (London, T941),P.9;E.H. Carr,Conallloru

o[Peace(New York, 1941),P 94 W. Lip(;ens (ed.), Documents on the History of Europelln Illtegratum,

vel. I: Conlllle.llal Plans for European Unioll, 1939-194$ (Serlin/New York,'98S), p. 39, Kennedy in The Times, 18 November '940; on de Gaulle, A.Shennan, Rethinking France: plans for Renewal, 1940-19,.6 (Oxford, 1!JlI9),

pp. 53-6; R. W. G. MacKay, Peace Aims and the New OrMr(London, 19-41

edn),P.75 E. Ranshof~n.Werrheimer, Victory is "ot Enough: The Str"'teg)' for 11LastHlg Peace (New York, 1.942.),PP. U.1-}; 'Metropoliu:cus', 'The: MIIII",'1of[nformatian',Poi.tieIlIQua'teri)"I} (t.941I,P3O6 d. R. M. Titmuss, 'War and social policy', In his EsuI)'5 0" lhe 'Welfar~Slat

10 J. Harm, WilliJm Bel,,,,,dgl': A. Biography (Oxford, '977), e. J66~~~~~~:' 10~2~',I;.P;;:7; W. Bevendge, SOClallnsuranCl's and Allied ServiUJ

13 Harrts.op. cit., p. 420;.for parallelrhmkmg In the Nazi bbourorganizalion

:n~RR.S;'~!~~~~~'~~~.~',a~~~~o::~$!::a~i::~sh:::~:;:~:~il~~:g~D:::~sIadt,I99I),Pp.71-92.

~!:;I:~~~~p~;;;~;'n a;:/j~7~~J::. ~;:~i::.~pmment In Dl'mOCTatic

1-4M. Sadoun, Ll's$oc,aftsII'SSOus I'occupatlon: rhistanCl' 1'1co!labor alion

!Pans, '982.), p. 136; C. Andrieu, LI' Program COmmun de la ResistanCi.': des,dus dans la gueITI' (Paris, '984),pp.114f

ISllpgenS, 01" en., p. 569: M. Mazower, Inside Hiller's CruCI': Thl' up",_tnce ofOccupat,on, 194'-1944 (New Haven, Conn., 19:93), p. 26716Shennan.op.m.,p.,6

17 Andrieu,op.cit.,p. ,818 L W. lorwin, Postular Plans of the United Nations (New York, 1943),PI" !l8, '35-40, '44-519 New World Order. Wells, See, ... g., 01'. dl., p. 58

20 E. vincnm, M~'I and nOI Me', (IT. Sarah Henry) (Marlboro, Vt, 1985),PIS7

21 j. D. Wilkinson, The IlIIcllectual Resistance in Europe (Cambridge.Mess.,

198,), p. 47; Camus in G. Bree and G. Bernauer (eds.), Defeat and Beyond:

An Anthology of French W,mime Writmg (1940-1945) (New York, 1970),pp. 347-9

~~~~~:~:t;~.~i~~:t;~;:pmtuel de la Res!Slanc~, In Lipgens, op. cil., p. z68;

23 j. Hellman, Emmanuel Mouni~r and the New Catholic Lefl, 1.930-1950(Toromo, 198t), p. 180; J. Marit3In, Christianity and Democracy (SInFranClKo,C~hf., '986),p. 11

l.4 J. Mar"aIn, Th~ Rights of Man and Natural Law (San Francisco. Calif.,1,986). PI' ,91, 165. W. Temple, Chml,anily and Social Order (Harmonds-wonh,M,ddx.194Z),p.80

~a~.~I~J!;;~npfC,~'~; ~a~a:~:r;::~:, ~::n~:~::,~:~;e;'/~:;"::s ~~7so;;Man 'Nt ..., York, '94SI, pp. v-v,; E. Hamburger el al., LI' Dro,t raClSle iIl"a',,,ul d~ 14 e",dualtun (New York, 194})

z.6 The Worlds De,ImJl aNllhe U",'td S'illtS ~A Conf~rencc of Expert'!' inIntcmultiro

W. Friedman, 'The dismtegration of European civilisation and ,he future ofimemarionallaw', Modern Law Relliew (December 1938). 1'1'. ',4-1I..-JHelz, The National Socialist docrrine of internalional law', Pol.ticll/ SdnraQ"arlerly (December 1939), pp. n6-HH The World's De5,my and the United States, op. cie., pp. 101-5

34 ibid., p. 1',; Laurerpachr, op. cit., p. vi, H. Keisen, Pl'a~e Ihrough 1..4111(Chapel Hill, NC, (944), esp. pp- 4'-2.is W. Lipgen!;, 'European federation in the politicallhought of resistancemovemcars', Ce"tral European Hi510ry, I (1968), p, 10; W. I. Jenning&, AFederation for Western Europe (New York/Cambridge, 1940), p. 10}6'Stalemcnt of Aims' cited in W. Lipgens,A HistoryofEurop'a,.llItegrillio",

vol. ': 1945-1947 (Oxford, 1982), p. 143, MacKlly, op. 1;11.,p. l): _ the$pe(ial issuc, 'AngloFrench Union?' in The New Commrmwe4lrh QIulrtnly,v: ~ (April 1940)J7G. T. Renner, 'Maps fora new wor!d',ColUns {6Junc IW),pp 14-15:B.Newman, The New Europe (New York, 1,943). frontispiece; foran ,mpo";ant

sUlVcy of eaeher moves lowards federalism, ~ R. SchIei.utFr. Fe.ur.,Ju,"

~~ ~ec:;~:~~I~S~";h!,::=,~N:.wK!~:i: ~~aS~ubia: a survey of plans of

SCIUliOn', Journal ofCenlt>l1 &.ro(JU" Af(.nn (january 19+4). pp ..... 1- ...:1.39 H. NOller, POIIWI" For,;p Po/xy p~.uion. '9J9-194f \Wnrpon,Conn . '97S),PP4S8-60

: ~:,:~,n;: ;:~;c~;~:~s:~~::~~!':'r~~:':c~,t ..: :.P;~119' ,.~

41 F. A. von Hayek. T'" Ro.ul10 Sv(do," (Chlca~o, '':IoU), pp. 4, ('7, 8 ..

43 1\, MannJ.",m, Man and Soci~ty In an Ag~ of Reconstruction (Londoll,1910cdn),pp.6,}80

44 Carr, Conditions ofP~au, op. cu., pp. 156-6145 Hayek,op.cit., p. 2.0;46 Ibid., p. lop; ~ also, F. A. VOII Hayek, 'Economk cOlldilions of illier.

srate federalism', The New Commonwealth Quarurly, v: 1 (September 19.19),

pp. Ill-So

47 L. VOII Mises, Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State andTotal War (New Haven, Conn., '944), p. 181i

48 C. Becker, How New Will the B~tter World be? (New York, '944), pp. v,

."49 The Journey Home, op. cit., pp. 4}-PSO Pavone, op. ch., p. 5705' M. Higollllet (cd.), Behind th~ Lmes: Gender and the Two World WIl'J(New Havell,Conn., 1987)

S1Cf. B.JancarWebs,er, Women and Revolution in Yugos/a"ia, '941-19'41

([Rnvcr, Colo., 1990), p. l/i}; The Journey Hom~, op. cit., pp. H-Ii53 I. Suoo, 'Historical foundations of human rights and subsequent develop-menes', in K. Vasak (cd.) The International Dimensions of Huma" Righls, i(PariS, J981), pp. ll-41; H. Laulerpacht, Inlemational Law and Hllman

Rights (New York, 1950), p. 353; H. Laurerpachr, Report: Human Rights,

the Charter of the United Nations and the lntemanonai Bill of the Rights ofMlln(Brussc!s,1948),P.U

S4 N. Robinson, The Genocide Com,en/ion.- A Commentary {New York,1_960},p. 51; S also H. Kelscn, 'Col1cctivc and individual responsibi lit yinmrernaeicnallaw with particular regard 10 the pLmishment of war criminals',

California Law Review,XXXI (December 19H},PP. 530-71;H.laulerpachl,

'The subJcctsof the Law ofNa'ions', Law QUllrterly Review, LXIlI [Ocecber'947), pp. H8-6o; LXIV (january 1948), pp. 97-IlIi

7: A Brutal Peace, 1943-9

, In hl5 M~mo'rJ of a R~volu/lonist: E.ufI:ys '" Po/iticlll Crili~ism (New York,

'9S7),P119

:I. On ,he war as a (ivil war, see Pavone,Gp. CII., and A. J. Mayer, Wiry Did/h~ HI!"'~ No/ Darkntr (London, l,.,a)

) KullloCher. 09. "1., pp. 174-81; P. R. Magos