[ Music ]
>> Joshua Landis: How the
first World War shaped the
modern world.
We have our entire
firmament here.
And we might as well
come in and sit
down beginning in
opposite order.
John Horne.
Eugene Rogan.
Christopher Capozzola.
H.W. Brands.
Heather Perry.
And Philip Jenkins.
Join me in welcoming
our speakers.
[ Applause ]
In this panel it's going
to be really free floating.
It's going to be
questions from the audience.
I thought I would start
off to let you think
about your questions by asking
a simple one about nationalism
and national identify.
How does the First World War
really set off change national
identify and nationalism from
each of your points of view
in a way it affects today?
How is our sense of nationalism
and national identity
in each part of the
world changed
by the experience
of World War 1?
Let's begin here.
And we'll move down
that way to John.
>> Philip Jenkins: I'm not
trying to avoid the question,
but I think the largest
changes are not necessarily
in national identity.
They're in religious
and cultural identity.
I would say, for example,
that the aftermath
of the war was the creation of
these totalitarian movements,
which built on so many of this
apocalyptic expectations I
talked about.
And then a sense of
Communism, Fascism, and Nazism
and the effects of those by
the 1940's, which discredit
so many ideas of
European nationalism
and to move towards more
of a united European ideal.
I think the most important
changes are actually
in religious identity.
And I can talk about those
later, but I don't want
to monopolize the
issue right now.
>> Joshua Landis: Thank you.
Does one other person
want to take that.
Well, I guess we'll try
to confine two responses
to each question.
That way we'll move
along more quickly.
Yes, Eugene, let me, excuse me.
>> Eugene Rogan: Well,
nationalism in the Middle East
in the First World War is such
a hot topic because it was
such a polarizing conflict and
played on people's loyalties
in ways that was tearing
the Ottoman world apart
with out the people
in the empire itself having
the opportunity or freedom
to debate their ideas of nation
and nationalism and an open way
to have some say in
their own future.
It really comes out in
the Paris Peace Conference
where virtually everybody
in the Tower of Babel came
down the stairs with
their agenda to try
and argue their case to
the great powers in Paris.
You know, I talked
about Sanremo.
Every lobbying group
from Armenia, Zionists,
Greek Catholics, Maronites,
Syrianists, Lybianists,
iraqists.
Everybody with their
own agenda and
yet nobody having had the time
to build a critical
mass of support.
The severance of the Arab world
from the Turks was so advanced
by the experience
of the war itself.
When you read Kemal
Ataturk's memoirs
of the Gallipoli campaign,
he was very disenchanted
with the performance
of Arab Ottoman troops
on the Gallipoli front.
It was as though they weren't
convinced they were fighting
for their own homeland.
And of course, for the
Arabs they weren't.
They didn't speak this language.
They didn't know that land but
it gave many in Turkey the sense
that the Arabs were less
committed to the Ottoman Empire
than Turks and nothing brought
that out more than the break,
the outbreak of the
Arab revolt which seemed
to signal the height
of disloyalty.
Again, in modern Turkey today,
it's such a shock to me to talk
to contemporary Turks who will
reflect back on the Arab revolt
of 1916, 1918 and say what
traders the Arabs are,
are in the present tense.
So, I think it unleashed
the whole panoply
of national questions
without resolving any of them
but made the Middle East
a deeply contested spot
for nationalisms as a whole.
>> Joshua Landis: OK.
Thank you.
Let's turn to the audience here.
And please address the
person who you would
like to answer your
question if you would.
At least first.
Yes, sir. In the back.
>> Male Speaker 1: I
was wondering about the,
what happened to the Kurds in,
this has been an issue ever
since World World 1 and
they basically got cut
out of the whole picture.
I'm addressing Dr.
Rogan by the way.
What happened to them and
why were they totally cut
out of that process?
>> Eugene Rogan:
I'll try and be brief
to give my fellow panelists to
share their thoughts over here.
The Kurds of all the
different national groups
in the Ottoman Empire
were the least developed
as a separatist national
group by the time
of the First World War.
They actually were
highly assimilated
within the Ottoman
Empire as so many Muslims,
they played a full role in
all the institutions of state.
I have a student who has just
finished a great doctorate
on the emergency of Kurdish
identity and then the lead
up to the First World War.
And it was really in
a very nascent moment
and not at all separatist.
No claims there to create
a separate Kurdistan.
So, how to surprising to find
that when the Ottoman Empire
has delivered its peace treaty
through the Paris
Process and you find
in the treaty it said
the provision not just
for the creation of an Armenian
state in northeastern Anatolia
but to itself on
the southern flank
of this Armenian autonomous
zone, a Kurdish autonomous zone
with all of the architecture
for that Kurdish zone
to declare statehood
and independence
from Turkey as well.
It was not requested
by Kurds in the course
of the war as a demand.
It did not reflect
any pre-existing
nationalist movement.
And one can only
assume that this was one
of the buffer state
creating projects
that had driven the peacemakers
the think about how to stabilize
that volatile region
after the First World War.
But as we were to
learn, the Kurdish,
the Armenian state was
not to happen because all
that territory would
be conquered
by the [inaudible] movement
based in Ankara in the course
of the Turkish War
of Independence.
But really the emergency
of Kurdish claims
that today represent
the greatest challenge
to the Sanremo borders
that we know
as the Modern Middle East was
not at all a national force
at work in 1918 or 1920.
But it certainly it is today
and if there is any force
that I see challenging the
frontiers of the state system
or the Middle East as it
stands today, it's not ISIS
or the Islamic State Movement,
it is Kurdish national
aspirations.
>> Joshua Landis: Let's
take it in the front
and then we'll go
to you in the back.
[ Inaudible Question ]
>> Male Speaker 2: Do
I need to repeat that?
OK. We've touched a little
bit on the Zionist movement
and from my understanding,
limited understanding,
the Dreyfus Affair was a major
spur for the Zionist movement.
But could you talk a little bit
about the history or the size
of the Zionist movement
in the late 19th century.
>> Eugene Rogan:
Thank you very much.
You are very right
that for Theodor Herzl,
Viennese journalist covering the
story of French anti-Semitism
around the Dreyfus Affair had
really engendered a conviction
that he and many other
European Jews shared
that there was no solution
to the Jewish question
through assimilation and that
the Jews were being treated
as an entity apart from all
other European communities.
So, they should have their
own national movement.
And this will give rise
to the Zionist movement,
which by the time you come
to the First World War,
I couldn't give you an
expressed figure, you know,
how big that movement had grown.
I'm guided here by the work
of Israeli historian Tom Segev
who in his book "One
Palestine Complete" plays
on just how small and weak the
Zionist movement actually was.
And that if it was
a strong force
in shaping British war time
policies towards Zionism
and Palestine, it was
because they were able
to manipulate a longstanding
anti-Semitic belief
that the Jews represented a kind
of clandestine international
that controlled government
and economy of the world.
And that people didn't seen
Weizmann for what he was,
which was a spokesman of a
marginal political movement
who had a suitcase full
of documents under his bed
in a bed set in Piccadilly
but not the great shaker
and mover of world affairs.
So, you know, that
would suggest to me
that this was not a movement
that commanded mass support even
at the time that Weizmann was
so successful in gaining access
to British political leaders
and gaining their
support for the movement.
But it's worth remembering
that even the Zionists
were fence sitters.
They weren't sure
whether Britain
or Germany would best
advance their interests.
And in the course of the war had
been playing the field the same
way that all weak powers did.
Unsure who was going to prevail
in the great war and decide,
you know, which cart
to hitch your horse to.
>> Joshua Landis:
Philip Jenkins.
>> Philip Jenkins:
I am wondering
if I could just add
something to that.
By 1914, Zionism in
a sense is in a mess.
And there's a huge
amount of disagreement.
Many prominent Jews in leading
Western countries opposed
Zionism because they
think it could lead
to a future segregation
of Jews in their country.
Also, Zionists are
very much divided
as to whether they would
accept a Jewish national home
in another country such
as Argentina for example,
which is seriously discussed.
German Jews particularly enter
the war very, very enthusiastic.
And there's a crucial event in
1916, which is often forgotten,
which is the surge
in anti-Semitism
in Germany in the war.
In 1916, the German War Ministry
announces there is going
to be a census of Jews to
try and decide how many
of them are properly fighting
at the front as opposed
to shirking their duties.
And this is called the Jewish
Census, the Judenzahlung.
And that does a terrific
job of persuading even very,
very loyal German Jews that they
have to look outside Germany.
And that's what turns
many people to Zionism.
And meanwhile on the other side,
the fact that the British
are occupying Palestine puts
Palestine back on
the Zionist agenda.
So, it's very specifically
events of the First World War
that shape Zionism as we
know it in later years.
>> Male Speaker 3: Doctor
Brands, Ho Chi Minh went
to Paris, and he wanted to speak
to Woodrow Wilson
about his concerns.
Would you address that?
And if there is any
possible application
to today's problems
in the Middle East?
>> HW Brands: I will try to
explain what Wilson's motives
and intentions were at Paris.
But I'll preface it by saying,
you know, I suggested at lunch
that I might touch
on the question
of why Woodrow Wilson has
become unpopular of late
and why he is a very hot topic
at universities like Princeton
that have honored
Wilson in the past.
And the basic complaint
against Wilson these days is
that he was the President who
presided over the segregation
of the federal workforce
in the United States.
And the explanation that
I'll make of that is, well,
first of all if anybody
decides to hold
that against Wilson,
that's fine.
You can hold anything you want
against any historical
character.
But it's important to
remember that a President
in Wilson's position elected
at the time he was elected
by the means he was
elected was in no position
to resist the wishes of the
Southern Conservatives who made
up of a sizable portion
of the Democratic Party.
Wilson was a Democrat.
He was the only Democrat
between Grover Cleveland
and Franklin Roosevelt.
So, Wilson understood that to
hold his coalition together,
he needed to hold the support of
Conservative Southern Democrats
who in those days basically
were all white supremacists
of one form or another.
So, this is why Wilson refused
to oppose the segregation
of the workforce in
the United States.
It also explains Wilson's
approach to various groups
at Paris who wanted
an explicit statement
that race would not be an issue.
The Japanese, for example,
wanted a clear statement
from the victors that basically
the Japanese race would not be
held against them.
And Wilson refused to entertain
that because Wilson understood
that getting any
treaty that came
out of the Paris
Peace Conference
through the U.S. Senate
was going to be difficult.
And if it address
the issue of race,
then he could basically
kiss goodbye the chance
of getting those
Southern Conservatives
who wouldn't let him take
any different position
on race in the United States.
So, I am not sure exactly
how much of this entered
into his treatment of Ho Chi
Minh but this is by Paris,
Wilson had essentially given
up on the idea of any kind
of comprehensive
self determination.
If it meant that it would
antagonize the British
and the French more than they
were already skeptical of Wilson
and his internationalist
schemes,
he would leave that
for another day.
So, Wilson by certainly the end
of the Paris Peace
Conference believed that he had
to get a League of Nations and
he had to get something that was
at least marginally
acceptable to the U.S. Senate,
which by this time
was controlled
by the Republicans anyway.
>> Joshua Landis: John Horne.
Do you have something to add?
>> John Horne: Yeah.
If I can add just a
couple of thoughts
on this really interesting
exchange.
Of course, Ho Chi Minh
famously was already in Paris.
He was a waiter there.
And he famously borrowed a
dinner suit in order to try
to see Wilson when he
was working at the Ritz.
And there is an important point
behind that, which is a topic
that we haven't touched on
is the extraordinary mobility
of populations produced
paradoxically
by this static war.
And that, of course,
included hundreds of thousands
of Colonial men coming from
the first time to Europe.
And in the French
context of course
that included Indo-Chinese but
there were also 140,000 Chinese
who came and labored
on the Western front.
And I think that
underlines the point.
And it was a question I would
have for, Professor Brands,
as to whether Wilson ever
envisaged those ideas
of self-determination
applying to non-white peoples?
In other words, this was a
solution, which was for Europe.
And in a sense if you want
to take a long sweep at it,
the spring time of
the peoples in 1848
in Europe finally
comes home in 1920.
That's to say when movements
for national liberation
and national self-determination
are by and large realized
with all of the problems
that that entails.
But this is a Europe of
nation states which emerges
out of the First World War.
And the claims which are
being made by largely secular
and this is where I
come back to the very,
very interesting paper
this morning on religion
and I am thoroughly in
agreement with the argument
that religion framed much
of the language of sacrifice
in the First World War
but it shouldn't perhaps almost
maybe blinders to the fact
that there was a secular
nationalism which was pushing
through and which was
particularly strong
in Colonial intellectual elites.
And these are the
people who beat apart,
[inaudible] has shown this in
his work, they beat apart Egypt,
Egyptians, Chinese, Indians
to Paris in 1919 looking
for the application of the
principles to the [inaudible].
It doesn't happen then.
When it happens, of
course, is over a quarter
of a century later
with decolonization
after the Second World War.
So its nation states confirmed
in Europe, beyond Europe.
In fact, it's the first
awakening of the demands
which were awakened
in 1848 in Europe
which were only finally achieved
really about 30 years later
after the Second World War.
Just one final point on this.
There's alternative [inaudible]
in that Princeton historian
and his famous work on
Lenin and Wilson showed
up about 50 years ago
almost now but a work
which in a way has still
stood the test of time.
There was an alternative
framework to all of this,
which is the Bolsheviks
having failed
to achieve the world
revolution which they wanted
by 1920 do realize that the
colonial sphere in which Wilson
and the allies have now failed.
There's been an Egyptian
revolt in Egypt in 1919.
There has been Amritsar
massacre in India.
They now as Bolsheviks argue
that Colonial self-liberation
is part
of the plan for class
revolution.
And they do that at the second
Congress of the [inaudible]
on the third international
in August 1920.
And, again, talking about
the present, I mean right
through to the end of the
Cold War, the Wilsonian,
the final sort of Wilsonian
post-Second World War vision
for the post-Colonial world is
shadowed by the Leninist vision
which is there right the
way through the Cold War.
>> Joshua Landis:
Chris Capozzola,
do you want to say something?
No? OK. Let's go right
to Philip Jenkins
who had something
to say on this.
>> Philip Jenkins: I agree with
every word you say, particularly
about what becomes of the
ideology of sacrifice.
But what's interesting
is the interplay
between an ideology
formed in religious circles
that then become secularized.
And the great example of
that, when these people come
to Europe, often they
meet old established
European revolutionaries.
And often they meet
Irish revolutionaries.
And if you look at the
rhetoric, for instance,
of the 1916 [inaudible]
rising [inaudible],
it is literally soaked in
the blood of sacrifice.
It's an utterly Catholic derived
rhetoric in so many ways.
But yet it lends
itself and it's adopted
by those revolutionary
movements and cultures
who have never known a Catholic.
And that's an interesting
transition because, as you say,
revolutionaries meet each other
in London, meet each other
in Paris, and they
learn from the,
these older established
movements.
So, I entirely agree
with your point.
>> Joshua Landis: Great.
OK. Kevin Butterfield, please.
You're next.
>> Kevin Butterfield: Today is
a wonderful exercise in thinking
of the memory of the War.
Not just the physical
consequences
but also how we remember it
and I think this is a
question for Professor Perry.
I'm struck by the
consequences and the challenges
of remembering a losing effort.
And I'm curious about the German
memory of the First World War.
I am wondering if you could
talk about it in the near time
and the rise of Nazism, the kind
of short-term memory of the war
but maybe also tell
us a little bit
about the centennial observance
and how Germans are thinking
about the War 100 years on.
>> Heather Perry: Well, I
guess I would say a few things.
So, we have a tendency I
think to kind of interpret
and understand the German loss
of the war as being a kind
of one-way path to Nazism.
And I would encourage
us actually
and here maybe I'll speak as
a German historian and less
as a medical historian, I would
encourage us actually to kind
of separate the loss of the
war from the German Revolution
of 1918, 1919 because those
are two things that are kind
of happening at the same time.
So, there's the loss of the war,
but there's also this
profound revolution in Germany
and a deeply democratic
revolution.
But on the one hand it's
sort of part of this wave
of leftist revolutions.
There's a fear that
it might sort of go
in the way that the Russian did.
But on the other hand,
there are groups of Germans
that are really embracing
Wilson's ideas.
Expecting actually to be
invited to the table, right?
They are the ones who are not
actually invited to be a part
of the peace negotiations.
And I think that one thing
that German historians are doing
is trying to untangle the Treaty
of Versailles as having sown
this sort of deep seeded hatred
to disentangle that from a
sense of what democracy failed
to provide Germans and the
way in which Germans became
by 1929 certainly after
the hyper inflation
of the early '20s and
then The Great Depression,
how there was this sense
that this democracy,
which they had embraced as
part of believing Wilson
and his project and then found
that they were not treated
as fairly as they expected to be
and that the '20s is a
large disappointment,
which is one reason why Nazis
on the one hand but also
on the other extreme side, the
Communists, they are both groups
which if nothing else promised
to get rid of democracy,
which is very appealing to a
lot Germans in the early '30s.
It seemed to be something
intransigent.
So, I would say that first.
I would kind of encourage
us to do.
Another thing I would
suggest and probably really
for all nations is
that this was a war
in which there was
a profound sense
that the citizen soldier
deserved compensation
and the sacrifice that the
soldier had done was tied deeply
to citizenship and therefore
I think there was a difficulty
in Germany to figure out how
to celebrate and honor soldiers
who had bravely defended
really to the bitter end
in some cases their nation but
on the other hand had lost.
And that's where this difficulty
is kind of interesting.
The combining of
veteran care and benefits
with the civilian disabled
was in some ways a kind
of victory for the civilians.
But in fact by the mid-'20s,
many German soldiers felt
as though they were losing
their special pride of place
and that they were being
kind of lost in [inaudible].
And it's one of the
reasons why Hitler,
his appeal to the veterans
of the First World War
was something that was
so wildly popular among them
including Jewish veterans.
And so not, there were a lot
of German Jews who were deeply,
deeply assimilated and very,
very loyal to the
Empire and to the nation.
And the [inaudible]
didn't deter them.
And in fact, the numbers proved
that there was a
disproportionate amount of Jews
in the army fighting
for the empire.
So, in fact, the whole thing
sort of backfired right?
In some ways - in
some ways - right?
>> Philip Jenkins: Except
they never issues the results.
>> Heather Perry: They
didn't publically.
>> Philip Jenkins: Right.
>> Heather Perry:
Because the results, yeah,
because the results didn't prove
what they had hoped the results
would prove.
Right?
>> Philip Jenkins: Exactly.
>> Heather Perry:
So, there's that.
And then I think, and I'm
sure that John will talk more
about this, but in terms
of remembering the War,
there has been a sort of
broad movement across Europe
to remember the War as
a sacrifice for all.
A War in which nobody one.
There have been some
that have argued
that Germans haven't been
celebrating the commemorating
the War as much as others have.
But I think it's also been
part of the shift in the memory
of the War not to think of it
so much in terms of victors
and vanquished but
perhaps and social
and cultural winners and losers.
I'll say one more thing
and then I'll move on.
I would like or challenge us
to think about this as well
as not just a kind of national
emancipation or revolution
but in fact the emancipation
of other kinds
of social [inaudible] and
specifically I am thinking
about women and the way that
women make citizenship gains
and also African Americans
in the United States.
This is a huge movement
for them.
And so I would think
that we want
to move beyond just the national
paradigm here when we think
about what it, the very deep
and very important social
legacies of the War.
>> Joshua Landis: OK.
We had our next question here.
Then I'm going to
go back to you.
And there was a lady,
yes, right there.
And then well come back to you.
And that will take us to four.
>> Male Speaker 4: Heather led
a very good discussion today
on the health aspects of War.
Having spent an intensive bit of
my career of more than 50 years
in ophthalmology, I
would want to focus in on
that either the Germans or
in general because it's a war
that causes a pointed tension
by all those who have something
to say and therefore the war
that results in blindness
and injury to eyes
is a focal point
for the beginning
of much of our care.
>> Heather Perry: Yes.
I mean, absolutely.
I think that, you
know, as I said,
kind of one of the
legacies or the way that we
like to interpret wars and the
advancements of medical care
and that's very important,
but also that these soldiers
through their suffering
deserved better medical care
than had been available.
And that's really sort
of across the board.
I don't think that's
nation specific.
And therefore much
of the medical community
I think was spurred
to make medical advancement and
that that is quite significant.
I mean the medical legacy
of this War is huge.
>> Joshua Landis:
John Horne, go ahead.
>> John Horne: Just
to add a word on that.
I'm not like Heather a
specialist on medical history
and the disabled, but I have
worked with a number of medics
on the history of war.
And what strikes me
especially when I look
at contemporary forms of
wound, physical wound,
is that once you have mechanized
firepower, which you have
with a machine gun and once
you have high explosive shells,
which you have from
the 1880's on,
then you have the
essential ingredient,
certainly when you add flame
and gas and of course both
of those things are
present on the battlefields
of the First World War, you
have the essential ingredients
of death and bodily devastation
for the 20th century which means
that the kind of wounds
that soldiers face in Iraq
or in Afghanistan are very, very
similar to those that they face
in the First World War.
The differences come in
the kind of treatment
that you can give them.
But even there it's a term
like triage for working
out who you can save, who you
can't save, which is familiar
to anybody working and
acts in an emergency room,
it comes from the
French Army in 1914
and from their military
services.
Who can save?
Who can we leave until later?
Who do we need to
operate on now?
And as far as I can see
the only current injury
which wasn't there in the First
World War is that of being blown
up from underneath
by a land mine.
There were mines, but they
were much bigger things.
But the anti-personnel mine
is a more recent invention,
so that's a particularly nasty
consequence of more recent wars.
But otherwise, it seems to
me that in terms of the kind
of injury, the First World War
is unfortunately the beginning
of a world, which is still ours.
>> Joshua Landis: Yes.
In the back now.
>> Male Speaker 5:
For Doctor Perry.
You touched this morning on the
orthopedic work on the people
that lost limbs and using
the people in the economy
and in the workforce of
Germany and you mentioned
that at some point the
able bodied began to kind
of resent the jobs that
these people were getting.
Is there any connection
between that resentment
and the Nazi program
of eliminating the
physically disabled?
>> Heather Perry: I think that
there is, but I don't think it's
as quite as direct as
we might want it to be.
So, part of what I think
happens is that there is a kind
of rhetoric about the usefulness
of the body to the state,
the person to the state and
this is in particular in Germany
where they are mobilized much
more efficiently and maximized
in a way that just doesn't
occur in the other nations.
The other nations just don't
have the manpower pressures
that Germany has.
And there is this sense that
anyone who is not sacrificing
and doing their bit and
always is somehow treasonous.
And this includes, you
know, women cut their hair
so that they could donate
it to stuff blankets.
I mean there are all ways in
which the bodies transform
to show this sacrifice
of the war.
So, I think what, I
think what happens is
that through these
rhetorical strategies,
Germans spend four years,
a little over four years,
actually, if we consider the
fact that the blockade is
in place until Germany signs
the Treaty of Versailles.
So, we're talking, what?
June 1919, so really five years
of war and sort of deprivation.
And in the meantime you've
got the Spanish flu going on.
So, there's this sense that
the body, the national body,
the wartime body is
extraordinarily important
and that it's incumbent upon
all Germans to somehow put
that in service to the nation.
And they get used to
hearing that and seeing that.
And so when the Nazi's begin
their [inaudible] rhetoric,
this idea that the
body must contribute
to the fulk [phonetic],
then any body that can't do
that is somehow traitorous
or as the Nazi's call it
life unworthy of life.
I do think we have to be very
careful though because it's not
as though disabled soldiers
were targeted for elimination.
The physically disabled weren't
at least initially targeted
in the way that the
mentally disabled were.
But it certainly created
this notion in German ears,
in Germany's conceptions of
what the state owes the citizen
that anyone who is
not contributing
to the state doesn't
deserve state help.
I really think that's
what happened.
>> Joshua Landis:
Chris Capozzola.
>> Christopher Capozzola:
If I can follow up on
that with a somewhat related
story from the United States.
I think one of the most
important publications
that comes out of the war years
in the United States is an
enormous 900-page catalog
with a title "Defects
Found in Drafted Men."
That the draft brings every
one of those drafted men
in front of a doctor, right?
And they harvest all this data.
It's a progressive
era understanding.
We'll really understand
the American body.
And one of the things that they
understand is the poor state
of many people's health.
And that poor health often maps
to who is a working class person
and who is an immigrant.
And this becomes fodder for
the arguments of eugenics
in the 1920's and then
also critical information
for the imposition of
immigration restriction
against Southern and Eastern
European immigrants in 1924.
>> Joshua Landis: Thank you.
Yes, the lady over
here who had a, yes.
>> Female Speaker 1: We address
a condition today called PTSD.
And I believe it was
called shell shock
when I was a child
several decades ago.
Was there a condition similar to
this recognized in the soldiers
that came out of
the First World War?
And if so, how was it treated?
>> Heather Perry: Yes.
Absolutely.
So, shell shock comes
from this war.
That was the British term, one
of the British terms developed
to try to describe
this new injury.
It's kind of interesting,
in German,
the word that they used
was zillonshock [phonetic],
which would translate
to soul shock.
And it's very interesting
because those words are
already telling us something
about the epistemology
of these conditions.
So, if you call it shell shock,
you believe that this
condition is caused by shells,
by this sort of external
force, by being around them,
by the fear, by the duress.
If it's soul shock,
then implicit somewhere
in that definition is that there
was something already wrong
with the person to begin with.
And that was very key because
any soldier who could prove
that his injury physical or
mental or nervous that came
from the War, of course, would
get some kind of war pension.
What's kind of interesting
though is that one of the ways
to deal with this new condition
and actually now some historians
have found that there's even,
it goes back to the Civil War,
it's called Soldier's
Heart in the Civil War.
But one of the things that
is interesting is this
talking cure.
And there is a lot
that has written
about Sassoon and Rivers.
And in Austria and Hungary
which was a multi-ethnic,
multi-national army,
not everyone spoke
the same language.
And most learned men
that doctors were,
Austrian Germans spoke German
and many of the men of the rank
and file were Polish
of Czech or Slovenian
and didn't speak German.
So, they should not
use a talking cure
because they didn't
speak the same language.
So, what we find in these
multi-national armies is
that the relied more on
the physical treatments
that were available at the time.
So, a lot of shock treatment.
A lot of water therapy.
There's still some reliance on
what was called moral therapy
and this idea of sort of
distracting the patient
with gardening or repetitive
motion to help them sort
of distract from the pain and
then just outright denial.
Whether or not that
was a real condition
or whether it was a form of,
well, I guess slacking, right?
A sort of form of avoiding what,
in Britain it was
called malingering.
But a way of somehow
trying to evade duty.
So, it all, it all
really depended.
And what's kind of interesting
now and I think it's coming
out of our advancements
in medical discovery is
that with the emergence of
TBI, traumatic brain injury,
and understanding that some
mental trauma can be physically
caused, right?
That it's not a kind
of psychological trauma
is actually causing,
there's a whole group
of historians
in Heidelberg right now who are
going back and looking at a lot
of the mental trauma cases
from the First World War
and they're finding that
they think there is TBI
that TBI was happening and that
there were some of these cases
that are caused by
physical injury.
So, it's one of these
interesting ways
in which our modern day medical
advancements impact the way
in which historians try
to understand the past.
>> Joshua Landis: John Horne.
>> John Horne: Can I
just add a point to that?
And it just picked up,
Heather, on your last comment
which is using the present
to look at the past.
So, if you look at the figures
for whatever word was used
at the time for shell shock,
the figures are quite low
for the First World War for
the reasons that you suggest.
It's novel.
There's the fear of malingering.
People don't know
how to diagnose it.
In the British case, 2 to 4%.
If you look at the Second
World War for the U.S.,
if you look at the war in
Vietnam, it's much, much higher.
And so the question
is and it relates
to what I was saying a
moment ago about similarity
of injuries, if we project
that back then that suggests
that there's a significant
underestimate of the number
of soldiers who suffered
from shell shock
in the First World War, that
for many it simply didn't come
to the surface.
And the second point related
to that, I was thinking
when you were speaking this
morning, we tend to keep these
in separate categories.
But I find it hard to believe
that men have lost, you know,
an arm or lost their
genitals who have been blown
up aren't also mentally shocked.
So, the question of Post
Traumatic Stress Syndrome
as an accompaniment of physical
wounds is perhaps also an issue
that's worth looking at.
>> Joshua Landis: Yes.
There was one more
person up here.
And then we'll take new.
Yes. Was that you?
Yes, please.
>> Male Speaker 6: In 2014,
I was fortunate enough to go
to Vienna and also to Berlin.
The Austrian Military
Museum located
in Vienna had a spectacular
exhibit on World War 1.
I was so impressed when I
left it I had to just sit
down and think about it.
It was almost as if they
were inventing a new weapon,
a more efficient
weapon ever week
to wreak more and more carnage.
The exhibit in Berlin
in the History
of the German People Museum
was much more subdued.
And I found it very
interesting that the comments
on the exhibits basically
said, "We didn't lose the War.
The allies didn't defeat us.
We just simply got
tired of fighting.
The people forced the
Kaiser quit right now."
That wasn't my question
though that I am going to ask.
The Shia and the
Sunnis are certainly
at each other's throats
at the present time
and I think are basically
at the cause of many
of the problems in the Mid East.
What were the conditions between
the two prior to World War 2,
or I'm sorry, prior to World
War 1 and after World War 1?
Would it have been better rather
than having geographical
nationalist borders drawn
to have separated the two into
different areas and allowed them
to make their decisions?
>> Eugene Rogan:
Does this one fall
to the Middle East hand again?
It's an excellent question.
One of the things I
discovered in doing my research
on the campaign in
Mesopotamia was the breakdown
and support among Shiite Sunnis
in Iraq for the war effort
which took the following form.
they got drafted
along with Sunnis.
All Ottomans got called
to arms, but they deserted
in great numbers particularly
as the British were scoring
key victories from Basra
and making their way up
both rivers of Mesopotamia.
And when they found that the
war wasn't to their liking,
they would go back
to their towns.
And the Ottomans sent
recruiting gangs to try
and get these deserters
to come back to service
and they all faced the threat
of death for having deserted,
but of course the Ottomans
didn't need executions.
They needed soldiers.
And they would go to
these Shiite shrine towns
in the middle of the Euphrates.
They faced massive resistance
and they set off a
series of revolts.
So, actually starting quite
early, the Ottomans were trying
to control their Shiite
population to keep them
from revolting over the way
in which conscripture was being
carried out at the same time
that they were trying to
defend their territory
against the British.
It made it doubly
remarkable that they were able
to stop the British at
Selman Pak [phonetic]
and retain the territory
as long as they did.
I think that the
British observed this.
One of the things the British
wanted to do was play on Shiite
and Sunni differences.
Lawrence of Arabia even before
going to Arabia was sent
on a fool's mission with
Aubrey Herbert at the very end
of the Siege of Kut to try
and either provoke a mutiny,
an Arab revolt in Mesopotamia
long before the Hashmidera
[phonetic] revolt or failing
that to bribe an Ottoman general
to let the British soldiers go.
And he was given a million
pounds that he had discretion
over to try and achieve this.
This is all in the
biographies and stuff.
It's not sort of woven yarns.
This is the way it worked out.
And they're nice Arab
accounts of Shiites that he met
with to try and be
recruited to this lost cause
of an internal revolt
against the Ottomans.
And they make an interesting
addition to the record.
Where do we stand with that?
The Ottomans had
ruled over Mesopotamia
as though it were
a Sunni territory.
And they imposed a
culture of Sunni domination
that became the inheritance
of the successive state Iraq.
I think despite that, had
anyone tried to separate
out let's say Baghdad as a
Sunni area from the rest of Iraq
as a Shiite area would
have run into difficulties
that are present today
which is the intermixing
of communities is so extensive
that they don't lend themselves
to separation without
ethnic cleansing.
And I think there was
real problems with the way
that the British went about
map making, but I don't know
that Iraq was actually
one of them.
And what was really the problem
between Sunnis and Shiites
that say in the beginning of the
20th century is very different
from what has emerged to be
in the 21st century which has
so much more to do with the way
that religion has become a
dominant principle of government
since the Islamic
Revolution in Iran and the way
in which majority rule came to
Iraq after the American invasion
in 2003 that has unbalanced
the regional balance of powers
and made religion and politics,
Sunni and Shia now battle lines.
But in my own lifetime, I have
known it to have been otherwise.
The Beirut that I grew up
in as a kid in the 1970's,
Sunnis and Shias inter-married.
They were very vague
on the differences
between their respective
interpretations of Islam.
Something has changed
in the Arab rule.
It has a lot to do with the way
that religion has
gone into politics.
And I think it is going to be
much harder to fix than simply
by trying to separate
people out.
>> Joshua Landis: Yes?
We've got time for a
few more questions.
We'll start here.
And then we'll go to you.
OK. Please.
Right up here in the front.
Amanda Tomlinson.
Right here in the front.
Amanda is a star Arabic student.
She was select by the U.N.
out of thousands to present
to the General Assembly
her essay in Arabic.
[ Applause ]
>> Male Speaker 7: Assume it's
February 1st, 2017 and each
of you has been invited
into the White House
for a private meeting with the
President, the new President.
And you have an opportunity
to gibe at him or her
with your fingers
behind the desk,
is there something
you'd want to see done
or not done during
the next four years?
As a private citizen,
I look at you
as experts in the Middle East.
And I get my opinions from
news cycle to news cycle.
And so one thing that I hear
politicians arguing is why don't
we arm the Kurds.
But I understand the Turks
don't want the Kurds armed
because they're afraid
of the Kurds ambition
for a separate homeland.
So, if I hear that the Kurds are
being armed, is that good news?
Are we winning?
I mean is peace eventually
coming to the Mid East
or is things going worse?
What do you want the
President to do or not do?
>> HW Brands: OK.
I would start by
saying be very careful
about getting any more deeply
involved in the Middle East.
[ Applause ]
I wouldn't rule it
out categorically.
There are things
that can happen.
American nationals can
be threatened, injured,
but as a general rule, the
United States has been trying
to bring peace to the Middle
East for the better part
of a generation and hasn't
done a very good job.
So, I would say don't get
any more deeply involved
than we already are.
[ Applause ]
>> Philip Jenkins: This is
specifically not a comment
about your question about the
Kurds, but if I was talking
to the President at that point,
I would remind him or her
that in term of the most severe
and dangerous situations
possibly facing the U.S.,
the Middle East is like
number three or four.
And I would urge them to pay
very, very close attention
to what is happening in China
and what is happening in Russia
and way down the agenda I would
think about the Middle East
because the situations
with China
and Russia are deeply scary and
deeply frightening, and the fact
that they are not being
talked about more scares me.
[ Applause ]
>> Joshua Landis: Yes, Eugene.
>> Eugene Rogan: I
don't think I am going
to get much applause
for this one.
But it's probably since
you've got a group of experts
and you want to pick our brains,
good to get some
different opinions too.
And when Madam President
wants a selection of views,
it's good to get a
selection of views.
All I would say is I look
across the Middle East today
as a region so shattered,
so broken that America will
not long be able to overlook it
until its interests are
more directly involved.
And it's better to address a
problem in constructive ways
than to try and fix things
that are destructive.
I think we learned through
hard lessons how not handling
simmering problems can
come home to sting you.
What I would like to see
America using though far more
than its military force is its
economic force and its values.
Not to promote democracy.
That didn't bring us much
joy but to certainly think
about reconstruction plans not
just to do good in the world
but to make the world
with which we can trade
that will stop producing
people that are alienated
and estranged from world order.
I would like to see America take
a leadership role in helping
to rebuild a Middle East
that every time I see it
on the news is just of cities
that have been bombed
into rubble.
And as long as they stay
rubble, it will be a source
of instability to our world
of refugees and of terrorism.
And but if we can help them to
rebuild and give people a stake
at a future, that is
better than the rubble
that they're facing now.
I feel America has a kind
of Marshall Plan moment
where it could do some very
genuine good in the world.
So.
[ Applause ]
>> Heather Perry: I just
want to say one thing too.
I won't try to project or
anticipate foreign policy,
but I would just like to
say about our veterans,
if I had the ear
of the President,
I would say can we
stop, take stock,
and invest some serious
money and time into thinking
about how we're taking
care of the veterans
of this war [applause].
We have too many, we have
too many who are homeless
and who are struggling and who
are just being marginalized
because everyone is
sick of these wars
and they deserve more
attention for their sacrifices.
That's what I would do.
>> Joshua Landis: John?
>> John Horne: I think my first
response would be you're asking
the wrong people
because historians,
by definition, always
come too late.
[ Laughter ]
But if I did have the privilege
of talking to Madame President
and I was asked, and I was
asked what single lesson
from the First World
War whose origins,
its course could one draw
some kind of knowledge
and insight from, it would
simply be this, which I think is
for me the lesson that
historians have for people
with power, people in politics,
which is that nothing ever turns
out exactly as planned.
>> Eugene Rogan: Yes.
>> Joshua Landis: Thank you.
Yes?
>> Female Speaker 2: I'd like
to introduce you all to a book.
This goes back to
your medical, in fact,
talking about the veterans
it's appropriate here
because this is a book that came
out when we lived
in South Carolina.
It's called, "Manse".
Not a house a Presbyterian
minister lives in.
That was the man's name.
Manse Jolly.
I cannot recall the author's
name although I met the man.
It's the story of a young man
who fought in the Civil War
in South Carolina and was
essentially shell shocked
or I liked your, what was
the first term that you used?
Not the soul shocked.
The other term?
>> Heather Perry: Oh, from the
Civil War they are starting
to call it Soldier's Heart.
Soldier's Heart [multiple
speakers].
>> Female Speaker
2: I didn't hear.
I'm sorry.
>> Heather Perry: Oh, sorry.
Soldiers Heart is the term
they are [multiple speakers].
>> Female Speaker 2: Right.
But there was another one that
you used before the soul shock.
It was a German translation
I think.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
This was a young man who
fought in the Civil War
as a Confederate and he was
injured but not visually.
Not any way physically.
An attack when his
companions were all killed.
He had no scratch on him.
He came away with nothing that
seemed to be a problem and
yet he began to act very much
as a PTSD patient would act.
Later on, years later,
he became a vigilante.
He was with one of the raiders
in South Carolina
attacking anybody that looked
like a Yankee, which was a
lot of folks, and he ended
up marrying a young woman
who was very good for him.
He followed her and her
father to a ranch in Texas.
And it was there that he began
to have these flashbacks
although he did not remember
them at the time.
Ultimately, it caused him to
inadvertently drown himself
because he thought he was
chasing Yankee soldiers.
And he took himself and
his horse into a river.
Now, it's all conjecture
in some ways
because nobody knows what
was in the man's mind.
But the author was able to
extrapolate from his behaviors
and what people told about
him how he was affected
by the battle.
And it might be something
that anybody that isn't doing
with medicine and injuries
during, during any war
for that matter would be able
to enjoy the story, well,
enjoy is the wrong word.
Anyway, the name is Manse,
the young man was Manse Jolly
like Jolly happy
Christmas and all.
And I just want to
introduce you to that
because it has affected me a lot
and knowing what these people
would have gone through.
Thank you.
>> Joshua Landis: Thank you.
Let's get to another question.
Yes. Here.
>> Male Speaker 8: OK.
I had about four
or five questions.
Now it has gone over
to the last one.
I lived in Lebanon and in Jordan
and in Ethiopia here just the
past while and I would say
in response to what
you were saying
about taking perhaps a
more active role in terms
of economically, I also
see a warning in that
because I've seen, since
I was in Jordan in 2001
and then thereafter
and there is just a lot
of investment in
private schools.
You see the School of Minds,
the School of America,
and the curriculum often
times has American flags,
American Presidents in it.
It's for an upper class
kind of clientele.
They have a biking projects.
Kind of American kind of
projects that they're trying
to bring into Jordan
specifically.
And I saw in Ethiopia as
well these private schools
that people go to that there
is a course of influence
on traditional life that
is produced by that.
I would be, I was with some
Bedouin people in Jordan.
And they, and the taxi
drivers and what not,
there's a depressive/oppressive
feeling
when you start showering people
with these economic goodies
from America that is resented.
And that causes a split
off in its own right
of resistance towards that.
Colonial or whatever way,
whatever term you want to use
that I think that, that's
something to be considered
and perhaps you might
want to comment on that.
Yeah.
>> HW Brands: If I could
comment on that, I would just
like to say that the United
States has spent many billions
of dollars in Afghanistan
since 2001
with not much to show for it.
Marshall Plans are
proposed for various places.
Marshall Plan for Vietnam.
Marshall Plan for Latin America.
But the thing that made
the Marshall Plan work was
that Europe had this
pre-existing call it sort
of legal and intellectual
infrastructure.
And what it needed after World
War 2 was the material resources
to get that up and going.
For some of the places
we're talking about now,
that infrastructures, they
have never been developed
in the sense that Europe was
developed during the 1920's
and 1930's.
So, it's an entirely
different matter.
It's sort or economic
development from the ground
up rather than kick starting
an existing situation.
>> Christopher Capozzola:
I would just add to that.
They also had the state
institutions and structures
for distributing those resources
through democratic
processes whereas sort
of pouring large amounts
of resources into corrupt
or failed states can often
sort of generate tensions
and exacerbate existing
tensions.
But I guess back to the broader
sense, I think to the extent
that Americans have
provided humanitarian aid
to other countries, that's a
history that traces in many ways
to the First World War to
the efforts of Americans
to address the crisis
in Belgium,
which generated the political
hero of the war, Herbert Hoover,
but notice almost
every other war
in American history created
a military President.
The First World War created
a humanitarian President.
We forget that part of
it because what happened
to him once he got into office.
But when that humanitarian
impulse is a crucial aspect
of what Americans could do.
And think this is what
Professor Rogan was getting at
but I think might require
both being sort of humble
about our impulses and humble
about how transformative
it could be.
So, maybe Marshall Plan
was the wrong term.
>> Eugene Rogan:
It's a short hand.
We talk about using
development funds
to take war broken countries and
put them back into operation.
And so there is no other
Marshall Plan than the one
that happened after
the Second World War.
But we use it as a short-hand.
And I think there is no way
that American will be able
to assume the bill
for reconstructing what has been
destroyed in the Middle East.
It is going to take an
international effort.
It's going to take leadership.
And I think there is money
that could be diverted to that.
We spent a great deal
of money at making war.
We spent a lot of
money in destroying.
So, I think that there
is a moral responsibility
to spend money on
helping to rebuild
and to encourage
others to do so.
And I think that America is
very well placed to do that
but I totally take the point
that were America to go in
and try and make major
investments and try
and impose schools, it
would seem in some way
as if it were trying to extend
its influence or authority,
and that would certainly
backfire.
I think the extent to which
American could be seen
to be doing disinterested good.
Its efforts would be
very well accepted.
And we are looking at a region
as you move across from Libya
through Syria and Iraq and
Yemen that is so broken with so,
you know, such limited
resources to rebuild it
that if don't take
the self-interest
of rebuilding this
territory, we will find
that it will come
home to haunt us.
And I would rather see us be
proactive, diminish the amount
of bombing we do, and spend
what is much cheaper the money
on bricks and mortar to help
people have homes to go back to
and then start talking
about reforms
or renegotiating the
politics of that region.
>> Joshua Landis: OK.
We have time for
two more questions.
I promised this gentleman here.
And then we'll come to you.
And then we were going
to go to a lady here
if we have time for
a third question.
>> Male Speaker 9: There's
quite a body of work coming
out of the German trenches of
World War 1 and post-World War
in Germany that was
decidedly anti-war.
So, to my estimation there
was an anti-war movement
that doesn't get
much discussion.
So the question to you
as history professors
and knowledgeable
people, what happened
to that anti-war movement?
And how did it impact
or not impact the post
World War 1 Germany?
>> Heather Perry:
Germany specifically?
Well, so there was a profound
Pacifists movement that came
out particularly among
artists and intellectuals.
The most famous of course
we know is all quiet
on the Western front but we
can also look at the series
of art produced by soldier
artists such as Rose
or Dix that's very important.
I could maybe suggest
a couple of things.
A lot of that stuff came out in
the, well, the art was coming
out in the early '20s.
All quiet comes out
in '27 I think.
And, you know, first
and foremost one
of the first things the Nazis
did when they came to power was
to label all of that as
degenerate and anti-German
and burn it and ban it and make
it next to impossible for a lot
of Germans to find after 1935.
However, there was actually
a larger international peace
movement and concerted
efforts among many,
especially in the wake
of the League of Nations.
And Germany, of course, disarms
mostly because they're forced
to by the terms of the Treaty.
Everyone else was supposed to.
There was supposed to be this
kind of voluntary disarmament
or at least a descaling
of armament and it
for the most part didn't happen.
And I think there was a real
disappointment among people.
So, I could just start
there, but I could go on.
>> HW Brands: Well,
I would just add
that the Washington
Naval Conference
of 1921 was the most successful
disarmament conference
ever held.
And it diminished the
size of the navies
of the principal naval powers.
So, that was one area
in which this anti-war
or disarmament movement
succeeded.
>> Joshua Landis:
Chris, Philip, and John.
>> Christopher Capozzola:
I would add a second
which is actually the efforts to
ban the use of chemical weapons.
And the sort of, and that was
an effort that was a bottom
up effort by the
peoples of many nations.
Right? I think the less
and often resisted by some
of the states that
wanted to hold onto them.
And that movement, which
the United States, you know,
was not in a hurry to
sign, nevertheless,
I think created international
norms against the use
of chemical and biological
weapons that continue even
in [inaudible] crisis in
Syria in the 21st century.
>> Philip Jenkins: Can
I just add one thing?
The United States in some ways
has the strongest anti-war
reaction to the First World War.
And where you see it is
in the 1930's it really becomes
a mass movement where you get
so many legislatures who are
struggling to prevent any chance
of the U.S. ever getting
involved in war again.
And there's a very
interesting movement,
which I think has been
largely forgotten,
which is called the
Veterans of Future Wars
and it's saying well, you know,
give us our money now
before we have to get killed
and that becomes a
very strong movement.
But when you look at FDR dealing
with the menaces of Japan
and Germany, he has to
wrestle through the thicket
of legislation that
is being created
by that very strong
anti-war movement,
which reaches its height
in about '34 and '36,
which in some ways disables
the U.S. from intervening
on the side of [inaudible].
>> HW Brands: And in fact this
was an explicit Congressional
reaction against Woodrow Wilson
who took the United States
into war after proclaiming
neutrality.
The neutrality legislation of
the mid-1930's says this is
out of the hands
of the President.
Congress is going to take over.
And no President
is going to lead us
into another European
war the way Wilson led us
in the First World War.
>> John Horne: I
mean just to say
that I think that's
an excellent question.
And I think there's
a profound movement
of revulsion against war.
And it doesn't always, in some
cases it does carry a capital P,
Pacifism.
But there's a kind of
a Pacifist sensibility,
which is much more widespread
after the First World War.
You can see it during
the war itself
because the question is this and
soldiers pose it to themselves,
is the real enemy the enemy
opposite or is the enemy the war
that we're all facing.
And it's a question, which in
a sense you can't really afford
to answer while the
war is still going on
but after the war
is over you can.
But I think what the importance
of Woodrow Wilson and wall
that we heard about at
lunch time I think is
very considerable.
But we shouldn't make
the mistake of imagining
that the League of
Nations project is just a
Wilsonian project.
It's not. It fits into
a whole long tradition
of European liberal thinking
about international relations
and socialists thinking about
international relations.
And in the 1920's and around the
League of Nations, which because
of the American absence
because largely
but not exclusively a
European organization.
There is a whole strong
movement for peace
in other contexts I've called
cultural demobilization.
In other words, it's how
you dismantle the image
of the enemy.
And that work is profound
in the inter-war years.
And I will just give
you two examples of it.
One is that there are
movements of the kind
that you say the
veterans' movements,
moral disarmament is one
that comes out of this.
And the idea is unless you
disarm the mind then it serves
no purpose to disarm
actual weapons.
You have to make people
think in terms of peace.
The other is that hard nosed
statesmen like Aristide Briand,
a French Foreign Minister,
and Gustav Stresemann,
the German Foreign Minister
between 1925 and 1929 engage
in this cultural disarmament.
They agree that Germany and
France will not go to war again.
There is an extraordinary moment
when Germany takes the German
delegation finally takes its
seat in 1926 at the
League of Nations.
And they're welcomed
by Aristide Briand.
And Aristide Briand
says, and he's talking
about marshal masculinity here.
He says there is nothing
left that we need to prove
to each other on
the field of battle.
So, it's time to throw
away these widow's weeds.
And of course it makes us
remember that women were walking
around covered in black
widow's mourning veils
for the inter-war period.
In that, millions.
And he says, and it's a
wonderful image, he says,
in future, and it's
exactly to your description
of the Wilsonian project.
He says rather than
fighting each other
when we have the
inevitable disagreements,
we shall go like a
peaceful country folk
to the local magistrate
to settle our differences.
Now, Briand is a hard
nosed politician just
like Kellogg is a
hard nosed politician
and signs the Kellogg-Briand
pact.
So, I guess what I am saying is
there is a profound movement,
a sentiment in favor of
peace and reconciliation
in the inter-war
years, which adheres
in the League of Nations.
And by the way, one
of its manifestations is
the first project proposed
to by Aristide Briand for
the United States of Europe,
which is his 1928-1929 proposal.
We know that [inaudible],
the historian
who was written a wonderful book
called, "The Lights that Fail,"
we know that these lights failed
when the Nazis came to power
and alternative understanding
of war
which was you never demobilize
and you remobilize when they,
as it were, held sway.
But I think it shouldn't
blind us to the fact
that there is this profound
moment and movement in favor
of peace in the inter-war
years and then it picks
up in different forms in
the post World War 2 period.
And that is in once sense why
I think the European project
for all the difficulties
it faces at the moment,
we can see as a kind of
an indirect god child
of this moment after
the first world war.
>> Philip Jenkins: Just one
very counterintuitive thing.
We all talk about
the First World War.
And we assume, oh, well,
that must have been invented
after the Second World War.
No. The first great history of
the First World War is published
in 1920 with a despairing
sense of well that's the first
and let's wait for the next.
>> Heather Perry: And maybe
I'll just add onto that.
Another one of our
common assumptions is
that the war ends mid-1918
because the thing of course
that we're not talking
about are the way
in which violence continues
until '21, '22, '23, '24,
and most of these, whether
it's Anglo-Irish war,
whether it's the, what
my grad student writing
on Greece calls the
Greco-Turkish War, whether it's
about the Russian
Civil War, whether it's
about the revolutionary
violence going on in Germany,
what's going on in Hungary,
what's going on in Poland.
War continues until, well '24 is
a good time to sort of stop it.
But and even then, I mean I
think we have to sort of think
about what's going on
internally for these nations.
They were not at peace.
>> John Horne: But if
I can just add to that.
I mean I think that's true.
And in a book, the book which I
did with Robert Gerwarth on War
in Peace, we coined the
term [inaudible] to talk
about this continuation
of violence
and paramilitary violence,
revolutionary violence,
counter revolutionary violence,
which I think you're quite
right, it goes until 1923,
but thereafter, thereafter
there's a moment, a period,
quite an extended period
of real peace making.
I mean I live in Ireland.
You know, we had the Belfast
Peace Agreement in 1998.
It took ten years for
the essential fruits
of that to develop.
So, why would we think
that after the Great War
that the Paris Peace Conference
and the various treaties would
actually be the beginning
of the peace making.
In a way, they were the
culmination of the war.
And what we have thereafter are
a series of revisionist most.
The first of which is the
Treaty of [inaudible],
which is when the Turks
get away with tearing
up the Treaty of [inaudible].
And by the way, Hitler
is a keen observer.
And German nationalist more
generally of that moment.
But on the other side
there's the feeling, well,
the real peace making, the real
peace process is actually going
to come from the Locarno
Treaties in the mid-1920's.
And we shouldn't be
surprised by that.
What we know about transitional
justice, about transition
from war to peace suggest
that these are long
and difficult processes.
And so I think it's slight
[inaudible] to imagine,
you know, that there could
have ever have been a kind
of transition from
war to peace in 1919.
>> Joshua Landis: On that
note, on the note of peace,
I'm going to shut
down this conversation
that is so exciting.
We could go on all nice.
Please join me in
thanking our guests
for a wonderful,
wonderful dialogue.
[ Applause ]
