How World War I Laid the Groundwork for Totalitarianism essay
At the beginning of the 20th century, in the majority of countries of the second-tier upgrade (like Germany, Russia, or Italy), the role of the state was higher than in the UK and the U.S., considered to be the birthplace of liberal democracy. For example, in 1913, in the U.S., the state redistributed only 9% of GDP, while in Germany – 18% (Meyer, 2007). With the sharpening of social and economic problems, it was quite natural to seek for solutions in further expansion of the regulatory functions of the state. Ultimately, there was a tendency to establishing a comprehensive (total) state control over the sphere of production, distribution and exchange, spiritual life of the society and citizens’ behavior. Such an expansion of state functions would be impossible without changing the nature of the state and establishing a new type of relations between state and society. Historically, the emergence and rapid consolidation of the communities of new, totalitarian type was the main feature of the interwar period of 1918-1939.
As it is known, the peace treaty with Germany about the end of World War I was signed on June 28, 1919 in the Mirror Hall of the Palace of Versailles, where in 1815 the documents of the Congress of Vienna were signed that ended the era of Napoleonic wars. This intentional analogy symbolized the desire of the victorious states to return to the prewar status quo (Meyer, 2007). By this peace treaty and a number of additional contracts, the main victorious powers (UK, France, USA) and their allies shared a significant portion of the material and territorial resources of the conquered countries and took care of their long-term benefits in military and economic spheres.
Formally, Germany became the only defeated country at the end. However, those countries which did not receive military acquisitions in substitution of human and economic losses of the war were also factually in the same position. This particularly related to Russia, which didn’t manage to withstand the load of the war and came out of it, and therefore did not participate in the Treaty of Versailles, and to Italy, which was formally represented in the “Council of Four”, but did not receive sufficient gains. Another member of the defeated Triple Alliance was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which ceased to exist as a result of its military defeat (Meyer, 2007). Thus, the results of the war were disastrous for losing states – both in the present, and in relation to their future (taking into consideration the post-war national debts, reparations and losses of important sources of industrial raw materials).
Therefore, the post-war revival was different in many ways for these two groups of European civilized countries. Victorious countries were striving to forget about the war as quickly as possible and return to the prewar forms of life. But the victims of military disaster failed to perform this return. For the peoples of these countries, the war didn’t end with the signing of peace treaties: the burden of humiliation, poverty and despair did not allow them to forget the war, and post-war miseries easily convinced the population to treat the war as the overthrow of the old world order. In Russia, Italy and Germany, where the need for updating the state mechanism was the greatest, the experience of military organization of life was saved in the new (“totalitarian”) form of social organization and was rethought as a cultural pattern and a source of new ideas about the world and man’s place in it.
The fact is that this time a long and exhausting war, which involved whole nations, as not a single preceding war, subdued the entire economic and social life of the participants. The need for ultimate mobilization of human and industrial resources led to a sharp increase in the state’s role as an instrument of compulsion. During the war, new methods and means of social control were worked out. In all the warring countries, the governments somehow came up to the creation of a special apparatus for controlling of economic processes by the state. In extreme conditions, state military-economic commands performed untypical for the civilization of those times control functions over finance, production and distribution of military and other important governmental orders and resources (Arendt, 2007).
During the war, the laws on labor protection were canceled, and weekends were abolished in a number of countries, working day was constantly increasing, and overtime became common. Strikes and unsolicited dismissal were forbidden. Public employment services distributed workforce. Labor mobilizations were conducted to ensure the functioning of strategically important industries (Drucker, 1995). To meet the ever-increasing military expenditures the authorities of the belligerent countries resorted to public borrowing, urging people to “consciousness.” In 1915 Germany and Austria-Hungary, and later other countries introduced rationing of basic foodstuffs (Arendt, 2007).
During the preparation and during the war itself, along with the instruments of state coercion for mobilization of public opinion, a system of mass propaganda developed in the participating countries which used oral (meetings) and the printed word (newspapers, cheap brochures and books) for the psychological support of the motivation for war (Meyer, 2007; Arendt, 2007).
The experience of war also implied that the army could serve as a social model for post-war social order. Trench equality showed how to solve the problem of disenfranchised and exploited proletarians: in the fighting army liberal values (especially personal initiative and self-responsibility) yielded to socialist values based on group action and unconditional submission (Arendt, 2007). Thus, for the first time the possibility to create a new type of homogeneous societies in a European scale became apparent in the trenches, in the factories and queues of World War One.
Finally, the total war of 1914-1918 led to the bankruptcy of millions of small market participants, multiplied many times the number of proletarians, and made the majority of people in the fighting countries lose faith in the parliamentary and market mechanisms of public self-governance that seemed reasonable in the 19th century (Drucker, 1995). During these years, the general election legitimizing the strong executive power was introduced; a significant public and trade union control was set over the business and working conditions, as well as the state guarantees in the field of pensions, insurance and health care (Arendt, 2007).
In general, after the world catastrophe of 1914-’18 the ideas of post-war people changed in the opposite direction. For most of them the war became the most important experiences and lesson of their lives, especially for those who were overtaken by the war in the young age.
The anti-war novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” tells about everything that a young soldier Paul Baumer and his wartime fellows experienced and witnessed in the World War One. Like Ernest Hemingway, Remarque (1987) used the term “lost generation” to describe the young people who, because of their wartime psychological traumas, were not able to settle in civilian life. Remarque’s novel thus was in sharp contrast with the right-wing conservative military literature prevailing in the era of the Weimar Republic, which, as a rule, tried to justify the lost war by Germany and to describe its soldiers as heroes.
The novel attempts to reveal the social consciousness of a soldier, his attitude to the war. One of the most important scenes in the novel is the conversation about the meaning of war between several young men, including Baumer and the oldest of them – Katczinsky. Most of them have no idea who their enemies are and what they are fighting for. Boys’ assumptions are so ridiculous that it adds a comic note to the story (reflections of Tjaden and Kropp). However, the conversation develops in the direction of truth. Only Katczinsky comes to it saying that a French worker, craftsman, mechanic or shoemaker has no reason to fight against them, and that it was all the tales of the government. When the fellows ask why wars happen, Katczinsky says that someone seems to get benefit from it (Remarque, 1987).
Thus, a whole generation of people came from this experience of war, trying to overcome the confusion and despair of the postwar chaos. The new attitude to the war evolved at rallies, supported by the newspapers, formulated in state documents. The Italian fascists proclaimed that only the war increased human energy to a maximum, and claimed that war for men was like motherhood for women. Bolsheviks insisted on a permanent class struggle in the USSR and the whole. The program document of German Nazis, Hitler’s book with the typical title “My Struggle” is an ultimate call for Germans to mobilize for a new war against the enemies of the Germany in the country and abroad pointed by the author (Arendt, 2007).
In each of the totalitarian states the power was based on the mass public communities built on military model, with centralized control and rigid obedience of local units to orders from the center. These organizations were called parties. But the leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin created the party of a new type, the aim of which was not parliamentary representation of interests of its supporters, but control over the masses by orders from the center. Intruding the weak parliamentary system of their countries, Hitler’s National Socialist Labor Party of Germany, Italian National Fascist Party of Mussolini these parties forcibly identified themselves with the state mechanism. They gave rise to the type of militaristic state, consisting of military-like strictly hierarchized bureaucracy and a range of “social” organizations created intentionally to control the minds and private lives of people (Drucker, 1995; Arendt, 2007).
Totalitarian states maintained and cultivated the military attitude toward work, life and even holidays. Military vocabulary familiar and understandable to the masses was used in the public campaigns of Mussolini which he called “battles”. At various times, Mussolini proclaimed the “Battle for Grain” (peasants had to grow more wheat), “Battle for Land” (land reclamation) and the “Battle of Birth” (fertility increase). USSR citizens knew the meaning of such expressions as “labor army” and “labor troopers,” “battle for the harvest,” and “ideological front”, Stalin identified his party as “the Order of the Sword.” Public holidays in all totalitarian states invariably included military parades, the paramilitary popular marches, mass meetings and marches with the meaning of military cohesion and social mobilization (Arendt, 2007).
Violence laid in the foundation of life of entire nations gained a more specific political incarnation in the 1930’s. Inside the totalitarian countries it reflected in the total persecution of entire groups of people deemed as “enemies” of the society on class, ethnic or racial grounds. The widespread use of concentration and forced “labor” camps were also a continuation of the experience of war in the “battles” of peace-time (Arendt, 2007).
In foreign policy, all totalitarian states were preparing territorial conquests: the restoration of “Roman Empire” (Italian fascists), the creation of the Third German Reich, Soviet Bolsheviks were preparing for a “world revolution” which they were to lead. And these ideas were implemented in reality. In 1936, Italy occupied Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and declared an empire. In 1939, Fascist Italy invaded Albania. The Soviet Union in 1939 started the war with Finland and annexed the part of its territory. In fall 1939, by mutual agreement Germany and USSR invaded Poland, and Western Ukraine, Western Byelorussia, and Romanian Bessarabia were annexed to the Soviet Union.
Thus, the development of totalitarianism after the World War One led to the outbreak of the World War Two, and after the second victory over Germany and its allies in the 20th century, the competition of the Soviet Union and the U.S. in the so-called Cold War left ample opportunities for the spreading of totalitarianism all over the world.
