Towards a Fourth Reich? The History of National Bolshevism in Germany

1951 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-210
Author(s):  
Klemens von Klemperer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
World War ◽  
Modern Psychology ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Alter Ego ◽  
Political Opinions ◽  
First World

National Bolshevism represents a chapter in German-Russian relations since the First World War. As a policy advocating an Eastern orientation for Germany it is a most puzzling and at this day a very acute phenomenon. To those educated to observe the spectrum of political opinions in terms of Right and Left, with the extreme Right at the opposite end from the extreme Left, National Bolshevism seems a paradox. It suggests the meeting of extremes. More concretely the term stands for a rapprochement between German nationalism and Russian Communism. The story of National Bolshevism is the story of two “strange bedfellows.”In the effort to comprehend this upsetting pattern it might be recalled that modern psychology has in many ways succeeded in breaking down our traditional thinking about human relations. Love, for example, has lost its meaning apart from hate, which has become its alter ego. We might be tempted to translate this finding into political terms, and National Bolshevism would appear as an example of a political love-hate relationship. It might also be suggested that the further we get from the origins and die more insight we gain into die workings of die two twentieth century extremes — Fascism and Communism — the more we are struck by dieir affinities. We grant diat Fascism is nodiing more dian “doctrineless dynamism,” whereas Communism goes back to die solid doctrinaire structure of Marxism. And even through European history since 1917 often threatened to lead up to an ultimate conflict between Fascism and Communism, die “transmutation” through which Marxism has gone in modern Russia has brought it ironically close to Fascism. It has become increasingly evident that die fight between die two was a mere sham battle.

ENGLISH LABOUR AND TRADE UNIONISM OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY IN THE COVERAGE OF THE BRITISH HISTORIAN G. D. H. COLE

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-33
Author(s):  
T.N. GELLA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
First World

The main purpose of the article is to analyze the views of a famous British historian G.D.G. Cole on the history of the British workers' and UK socialist movement in the early twentieth century. The arti-cle focuses on the historian's assessment and the reasons for the workers' strike movement intensi-fication on the eve of the First World War, the specifics of such trends as labourism, trade unionism and syndicalism.

scholarly journals The Local versus the Global in the history of relativity: The case of Belgium

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-250
Author(s):  
Sjang L. ten Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
First World War ◽  
Global History ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Pattern ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

ArgumentThis article contributes to a global history of relativity, by exploring how Einstein’s theory was appropriated in Belgium. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, yet the early-twentieth-century Belgian context, because of its cultural diversity and reflectiveness of global conditions (the principal example being the First World War), proves well-suited to expose transnational flows and patterns in the global history of relativity. The attempts of Belgian physicist Théophile de Donder to contribute to relativity physics during the 1910s and 1920s illustrate the role of the war in shaping the transnational networks through which relativity circulated. The local attitudes of conservative Belgian Catholic scientists and philosophers, who denied that relativity was philosophically significant, exemplify a global pattern: while critics of relativity feared to become marginalized by the scientific, political, and cultural revolutions that Einstein and his theory were taken to represent, supporters sympathized with these revolutions.

Medea and British Legislation Before The First World War

1999 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Hall
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
First World War ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Commercial Theatre ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

Euripides' Medea has penetrated to parts of modernity most mythical figures have not reached. Since she first rolled off the printing presses half a millennium ago, she has inspired hundreds of performances, plays, paintings, and operas. Medea has murdered her way into a privileged place in the history of the imagination of the West, and can today command huge audiences in the commercial theatre. Yet in Britain, at least, her popularity on the stage is a relatively recent phenomenon. Medea has transcended history partly because she enacts a primal terror universal to human beings: that the motherfigure shouldintentionallydestroy her own children. Yet this dimension of the ancient tragedy was until the twentieth century found so disturbing as largely to prevent unadapted performances. On the British stage it was not until 1907 that Euripides'Medeawas performed, without alteration, in English translation.

The Classical Figures of Sociology and the Great Seminal Catastrophe of the Twentieth Century

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Joas ◽  
Wolfgang Knöbl
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Werner Sombart ◽  
First World

This chapter examines the intellectual prehistory and history of the First World War. Toward the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth centuries, German social scientists in particular had already attempted to theorize the connection between war and capitalism, or war and democracy, with authors such as Werner Sombart and Otto Hintze leading the way. Many European and American intellectuals, including most of the classical figures of sociology, did feel called to give their views on the question of war. In many cases, however, their writings did them little credit. How easily social theory can be led astray is plain for all to see in many of the statements made at the time, in that the bellicist arguments already to be found in the nineteenth century were often shamelessly deployed to denounce the enemy.

The Justification of the Godless: Heinrich Vogel and German Guilt

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 327-346
Author(s):  
Haddon Willmer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Complex Response ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
German People ◽  
First World

Guilt has proved an irresistible category for making and interpreting the twentieth-century history of which Germany has been the focus. In that history individuals, organizations, and nations have become guilty. The history of guilt is not made by the wrongdoers alone, but also by those who judge them. Doing wrong and being moralistic often have an evil symbiosis in individuals and communities. Guilt has not always been accurately allocated, and accusations of guilt have been manipulated for political purposes so producing more complex evil. There was guilt for the First World War, but it was untruthfully imposed on Germany alone by Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty. Within Germany, assigning guilt to political opponents, while refusing to accept any responsibility for what had happened, intensified the divisions within the nation and ensured that its policies were inspired by inward as well as outward enmity and unreality. The theologian H. J. Iwand argued in 1954 that the Nazis had taken the Freund-Feind conception of politics to absurdity, blaming (versündigt) the Left for all that happened after 1918. Consequently, Iwand judged the nationalist front in the Weimar Republic to have represented die organisierte Unbussfertigkeit of the German people. Too late, after 1945, it had become politically clear to many, but not to all, that complex historical guilt must be met by a complex response lest its power escalate yet again beyond the control of truth, understanding, and humanity.

Conclusion

2013 ◽  
pp. 463-465
Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
First World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
First World

This concluding chapter describes the history of the Jews since the beginning of the diaspora as that of a succession of autonomous centres. The centre that developed in Poland–Lithuania from the middle of the thirteenth century was one of the most remarkable and creative. However, the history of the Jews of this area in the short twentieth century, between the outbreak of the First World War and the collapse of communism in Europe, has been tragic. The decline of Jewish communities was the result of local integral nationalism, the devastating impact of the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany, and the longer-term destructive effects of communist rule, particularly in its Stalinist incarnation. Ultimately, the complex story of the Jews of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, and of their contribution to Jewish life and to the culture of the larger world around them, needs to be better known and better understood in the diaspora, in Israel, and in the countries of eastern Europe. The Nazi attempt to annihilate the Jews and Stalin's efforts to eradicate their culture ultimately failed. There are still Jews in eastern Europe, and the rich culture the Jews created there remains a source of admiration and inspiration to both Jews and non-Jews.

An Estimate of the Importance of the British Coastal Liner Trade in the Early Twentieth Century

2009 ◽  
pp. 223-242
Author(s):  
John Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

This chapter attempts to fill in some of the gaps in data in the history of the British coastal liner trade from the beginning of the twentieth century up to the outbreak of the First World War. It explores the various vessels and cargo within the trade; estimates the volume of work performed by coastal liners; and seeks to determine the capacity and frequency of routes used. It provides figures that correlate with previous studies, and suggests in conclusion that the coastal liner trade was made up of three sectors - liner, coal, and the miscellaneous remainder - all of which thrived in Britain during this period.

The Reception of Scientific Management by British Engineers, 1890–1914

1997 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Whitston
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
Scientific Management ◽  
World War ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Business Efficiency ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type ◽  
First World

While Britain never had a scientific management movement like that in America, historians have exaggerated the negative reaction of British engineers to the ideas of F. W. Taylor and other American proponents of business efficiency. A review of the leading British engineering journals in the early twentieth century reveals that Taylorism received a fair amount of attention, and much of it positive. By the beginning of the First World War, the majority of trade journals were echoing Taylor's demands for a new type of management. The misapprehension on behalf of historians stems from a number of factors: an overemphasis on articles published during years of labor agitation, such as 1911 and 1912; and, a failure to appreciate the different way in which scientific management was perceived in Britain. This fuller understanding of British responses to Taylor and his ideas helps to elucidate a chapter in the broader history of British economic performance and managerial methods in the twentieth century.

scholarly journals Historisising twentieth-century historiography

HISTOREIN ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Antonis Liakos
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Generation ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First World

The twentieth century has been described as a dark century of wars, holocausts, death and pain. This is true, but it is only a partial image of the century. This article discusses five major challenges and their relations to historiography: a) the disintegration of empires, decolonisation and the rise of new nations; b) the impact of world wars (genocides, revolutions, totalitarian regimes); c) the boom in technoscience and the digital era; d) the ascent of rights, the transformation of gender relations and mass literacy; and e) globalisation. These changes were experienced by three generations of historians. The first generation appeared before the First World War, the second from 1918 to 1970 and the third from 1970. The question we pose is: has the history of historiography responded to these challenges or does it also have its internal logic? And how has it responded?

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