Florentine: Unrepentant Political Nazi

Author(s):  
Kristen Renwick Monroe

This chapter tells the story of Florentine, widow of Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, one of the two top Dutch Nazis during the Hitler period. Florentine's husband served as the Dutch plenipotentiary to the League of Nations during the 1930s and as head of the Dutch National Bank during World War II. Offered the chance to be secreted to South America after the war by the Nazi leadership, Florentine and her husband elected to stay in Holland to “tell people the truth” about the war. Florentine remained an unrepentant Nazi until her death in 2007, traveling as much as her health permitted to speak in favor of the Nazi cause. She was extremely proud of her job as former leader of the Dutch Nazi Youth Movement for Women and was devoted to the memory of her husband.

Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (01) ◽  
pp. 123-139
Author(s):  
Taufan Herdansyah Akbar ◽  
Agus Subagyo ◽  
Jusmalia Oktaviani

Realism is an approach and paradigm that is in international relations, Realism began to be debated during World War II (World War II) because of the failure of the League of Nations (LBB). LBB is the brainchild of idealists who are considered to have failed to prevent war and create peace. Realism existed even before the paradigm debate which was later called classical realism with one of its characters being Niccolo Machiavelly. Niccolo Maciavelly's style of realism emphasizes that human nature is egositically and creates an anarchic world. In this study the research team wanted to prove that what Niccolo Machiavelly delivered was not merely increasing military power merely to create peace, but negotiation and diplomacy methods were also instruments of the State in achieving its national interests in realism like Indonesia. The national interests of Indonesia are everything for Indonesian politicians and the existence and power of Indonesia is the goal of Indonesia's interests to avoid war. Therefore Indonesia must have played its role in the Asian-African Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement at that time as an instrument of achieving national interests in Realism. This research will use qualitative research methods with a historical approach. The results of this study provide answers that Realism is not merely militaristic but also a role as a rational actor.


Author(s):  
Jussi M. Hanhimäki

The International Peace Conference in 1899 established the Permanent Court of Arbitration as the first medium for international disputes, but it was the League of Nations, established in 1919 after World War I, which formed the framework of the system of international organizations seen today. The United Nations was created to manage the world's transformation in the aftermath of World War II. ‘The best hope of mankind? A brief history of the UN’ shows how the UN has grown from the 51 nations that signed the UN Charter in 1945 to 193 nations in 2015. The UN's first seven decades have seen many challenges with a mixture of success and failure.


2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 1740-1768 ◽  
Author(s):  
MAGGIE CLINTON

AbstractFascist Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia and the League of Nations’ handling of the crisis resonated strongly in Nationalist China, where it recalled the League's failure to thwart Japan's claims to Manchuria in 1931. As these two crises unfolded, the League became a nexus around which Nationalist Party debates about the position of colonized and semi-colonized countries within the extant world order crystallized. Party adherents reflected on China's and Ethiopia's positions as independent nation states with limited territorial integrity or juridical autonomy, and assessed this situation in light of their respective League memberships. While party liberals continued to view the League as a flawed but worthwhile experiment in global governance, newly-emerged fascist activists within the party denounced it as an instrument for curtailing the sovereignty of weak nations. From these conflicting views of the League, it can be discerned how Nationalist disunity was partially grounded in disagreements over the nature and ideal structure of the global order, and how Chinese fascists agitated to escape from modern structures of imperialist domination while reiterating the latter's racial and civilizational exclusions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2 ENGLISH ONLINE VERSION) ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
Jakub Pokoj

The aim of this paper is to analyse the issues regarding the process of organising branches of Narodowy Bank Polski in the so-called “Regained Territories” based on the example of the National Bank of Poland’s branch office in Racibórz. First, the communist authorities’ attitude towards the banking system was discussed. Secondly, the legislation in the field of banking was analysed, especially the Decree on the National Bank of Poland of 15 January 1945. Then, the archival sources regarding the Racibórz branch of NBP were analysed. The final part of the article was devoted to conclusions based on the research.


Author(s):  
Ronny Patz ◽  
Klaus H. Goetz

Chapter 3 introduces many of the topics of the book by tracing the evolution of UN system budgeting from the mid-nineteenth-century international unions, several of which are predecessor organizations of today’s UN specialized agencies, through the interwar League of Nations to the main geopolitical changes after World War II. This historical perspective demonstrates the continuity in some of the budgeting dynamics throughout more than a century. It shows how principal and agency complexity in the UN are based on early design decisions in the League of Nations. It highlights how voluntary funding of the League of Nation’s Health Organization looked similar to today’s financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, suggesting that principal complexity has always included actors beyond states. And the chapter explores how the complexity of the IO bureaucracy responsible for managing money and discord evolved from small, host-state supervised bureaucratic units to today’s major administrative operations.


1959 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 635-639

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development announced on June 10, 1959, a loan equivalent to $11.6 million to the Union of South Africa. The funds were to help carry out a railway expansion program, executed by the South African Railways and Harbors Administration, that had been one of the chief objects of public investment in the Union since the end of World War II. Twelve banks participated in the loan for a total amount of $2,484,000, representing the first three maturities and parts of the fourth and fifth maturities which were to fall due between December 1961 and December 1963. Among the participating banks were: the Bank of America, Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, The Philadelphia National Bank, The New York Trust Company, Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York, National Shawmut Bank of Boston, The First National Bank of Chicago, The Chase Manhattan Bank, First National City Bank of New York, The Northern Trust Company, and the Swiss Bank Corporation (Basle). Amortization of the loan, which was for a term of ten years and bore interest of 6 percent, was to begin in December 1961.


Author(s):  
Udi Greenberg

This chapter focuses on theories of Hans J. Morgenthau, a German émigré specialist on foreign relations. In the years immediately after World War II, Morgenthau emerged as the highest intellectual authority on international relations in the United States. His theory, which became known as “realism,” explained why the United States had no choice but to oppose the Soviet Union and China and prevent them from expanding their power in Europe and East Asia. However, Morgenthau also opposed U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War. This dual position marked both the high point of the German–American symbiosis and the moment of its crisis.


1977 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyce Laverty Miller

In the summer of 1925, a revolt erupted in the French mandated territories of Syria and Lebanon and rapidly spread throughout the area. The French army of the Levant seemed powerless to halt it. By autumn, no part of Syria or Lebanon was secure against sudden disruption of life and property. Stories of French incompetence, impotence, and arrogance were widely circulated in the Syrian and European press. The Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, in a rare exercise of its limited powers, refused to accept the French report for 1925, which covered only the comparatively calm period preceding the revolt, and demanded instead a full account of the disturbances, as well as the restoration of peace in the mandate. In October, when rebels infiltrated Damascus, the French military administration took a drastic step to end the revolt. Without warning, General Sarrail, the high commissioner, ordered the ancient city bombarded continuously for nearly twenty-four hours. When the smoke lifted, much of Damascus was in ruins; the reported loss of life and property appalled world opinion and galvanized Arab dissidents. A torrent of violent and emotional criticism was unleashed. In some quarters it was even hinted that the League of Nations would remove the mandate from French control. Yet less than a year later, the revolt had been quashed and France's hold on the mandate was so secured internationally that it survived into World War II.


Author(s):  
David C. Rapoport

The Versailles Treaty ending World War I established a new international order by creating the League of Nations and, dividing the defeated empires in Europe into a number of nation-states. The overseas empires of the defeated became League of Nations mandates, which the victorious powers administered until they were sufficiently developed for “self -determination.” Ironically, the first terrorist campaign began in a victorious power’s territory when the Irish Republican Army produced the first success in global terrorist history though it did gain all territory sought. Campaigns emerged then in other mandates and overseas territories of the victorious powers but all failed. But the Atlantic Charter drawn in World War II made the self-determination principle more obligatory by pledging that the imperial territories of the defeated powers would be freed immediately. When the war was over, the victorious powers often dissembled portions of their empires. Elements not freed largely contained conflicting ethnic elements unable to agree on how to be governed. Successful terrorist campaigns materialized in those territories, and the wave ended when the energies of governments not terrorists dissipated! But most successes were incomplete because bloody tensions between ethnic divisions in the new states persisted. Important terrorist decisions helped their causes. The First Wave’s language tactics, strategy, and targets were changed and helped terrorists get less offensive media coverage and significant support from the international world, particularly the United Nations. They now described themselves as “freedom fighters” not terrorists. Assassination occurred rarely, violence was restricted to local territories and efforts to cooperate with group were abandoned. The police were the principal civilian element attacked, and warnings about attacks were often given to other civilians enabling them to seek safety.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document