European civil war

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The historian Ernst Nolte made the name European Civil War known for the repeated confrontations in Europe in the course of the 20th century . He used this term as the title of his book The European Civil War 1917–1945 , which, together with his article The Past That Will Not Pass, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1986 triggered the historians' dispute.

About ten years later there were some publications on the subject at the London School of Economics and Political Science . These began with the publication of a work in 1996 in which the Spanish Civil War was described as an episode of a larger European civil war. This position has since found greater acceptance. More work on this theory was published in the following years.

The term is often used to explain the rapid decline of European supremacy in the world and the emergence of the European Union . Although only a minority of scholars advocate the European Civil War theory, it is still enjoying increasing popularity. The time of the European Civil War is mainly limited to the First and Second World Wars and many regime changes in the interwar period. However, there is no general consensus on this. The supporters of the theory mostly point to the high level of international participation in the Spanish Civil War and sometimes the Russian Civil War .

First coining of the term

" Because in this war not to fight, as it is in newspapers and how the Lord politicians say andre the Central Powers against an external enemy, not even a race against, but this major war is a European civil war (emphasis not in the original) , a War against the inner, invisible enemy of the European spirit. This has to be said and understood for once; Then one will also understand that after the terrible blood sacrifice of the war we have to fight the internal enemy, the ungod and fiend of Europe, the stupidity and dullness, the eternally dull, with all arms, in order to make the sounds lighter, to the brightness of the European Type to penetrate . "

- Franz Marc : The Secret Europe (1915)

In The Secret Europe , written shortly before his death at the front, Marc interprets the world war as a conflict of a spiritual and moral nature that would be waged between the forces of a progressive, artistic Europe and a secularized, materialistic Europe. Here, for the first time, and in contemporaneity with the conflict, it is described as a civil war, as a conflict within a cultural unit.

Arguments for a European Civil War

Nolte's thesis

“Did the National Socialists accomplish an 'Asian' deed, did Hitler perhaps only because they viewed themselves and their kind as potential or real victims of an 'Asian' act? Wasn't the 'GULag Archipelago' more original than 'Auschwitz'? Wasn't the 'class murder' of the Bolsheviks the logical and factual Prius of the 'racial murder' of the National Socialists? Can't Hitler's most secret actions also be explained by the fact that he had not forgotten the 'rat cage'? Did Auschwitz have its origins in a past that did not want to pass? "

- Ernst Nolte : The past that does not want to pass

This radical evaluation of fascism and National Socialism , which Nolte regards as related, as a reaction to Bolshevism, has provoked a violent and poisoned debate in the German newspapers and specialist journals, among historians and other intellectuals, which was certainly hysterical, insofar as it was often feared a relativization of the crimes of the Nazi regime made a rational argument more difficult (see Historikerstreit ). Instead of scientific discourse, a political discussion arose in the most important media in the Federal Republic of Germany in the mid-1980s. Nolte's theses were subsequently largely rejected in Germany and were not openly taken up again; but the concept of civil war for the world wars that he popularized remained. He also gained a following, even if they still form a minority in the research discourse.

Evaluation of Nolte's approach

The European Civil War, regardless of whether it began in 1914 or 1917, is at least interesting as a hypothesis and leads to a new and necessary perspective on the events of 1914–1945. The Fascism has roots that behind the Russian Revolution rich, like the Nazis . The fact that National Socialism was a German form of fascism is at least very controversial, if not to be rejected, the differences in the basic ideological equipment are too serious; Estates economic and social order in fascism, national-racial conception in National Socialism. Fascism emphasizes neither racism nor anti-Semitism in a way similar to Hitler's world of thought; Italy does not know the will to annihilate entire population groups and the dissolution of the state into a metaphysically transfigured "leader", because in addition to Mussolini there was still the "Great Fascist Council", which also ousted him in 1943. National Socialism was a separate German form of the revolutionary right, but only to be seen in the context of fascism, even if not to be equated or definitely subsumed under the term. Furthermore, the extreme right that emerged after 1918 was not consistently anti-Bolshevik, as outsiders like Ernst Niekisch show, or the left wing of the NSDAP was by no means suited to saving the West from socialism . The entire socialist rhetoric of the National Socialists contradicts Nolte's thesis and raises the question of whether the revolutionary right was not a reaction to the Russian Revolution, but an equivalent reaction to the crisis in Europe since 1914/1918, that is, that both totalitarianisms are granted the same starting position and, contrary to Nolte, neither sees Lenin's communism nor fascism / National Socialism "causally", i.e. evaluates it morally and smooths it out in an apologizing way. Even the communists were not opposed to the national in the Weimar Republic, but there were a number of moments when a synthesis of socialism and nationalism seemed obvious: Karl Radek's attempt at the “ Schlageter Line ” and also the “ Querfront ” idea the circle around Kurt von Schleicher , the joint strike at the Berlin transport company in 1932 ; all of these are signs of a rather common cause of totalitarianism . Left and right-wing extremists agreed in their rejection of bourgeoisie and tradition; they were both supporters of a radical redesign. It was the struggle for supremacy in Europe that made communism and fascism mortal enemies, not that communism, as a threat to the West, encountered the defenders of culture, the fascists. The ideological front position in Europe after 1918 was: Liberalism would have run down, and fascism (with the special case of National Socialism) and communism are the two competing principles that contend for the future of the continent. The dirigistic approaches of the “ war economy ” 1914–1918 and the crisis of capitalism from 1929 were both milestones for a deep crisis of liberalism , and both events made the totalitarian counter-designs from left and right plausible. In times of a mass state and mass wars, in which the individual meant nothing and the dead were given in millions, liberalism did not seem up-to-date, even as a mockery. The fact that liberalism then became dominant again in Western Europe in the form of the western victorious powers is a reaction to the failure of totalitarianisms and their atrocities, which completely disavowed these concepts.

prehistory

The concept of the European Civil War is older than the controversy surrounding Nolte's work. As the opening quotation shows, which is probably the first use of this term, there was already a partial idea among contemporaries that this world war from 1914 to 1918 was a unique turning point in European tradition and history. The First World War was seen as a turning point that ended a period of standstill and ossification and made room for a new, contemporary and “modern” order; Both the revolutionary left and the artistic avant-garde saw their condemnation of the existing confirmed. The First World War was also the origin of a new right, the extreme right, which had a prelude in Charles Maurras and the Action Française. Even before the First World War, there was a kind of anticipation of developments in Europe in its colonies ; the treatment of the colonized peoples and the rebels after the suppression or victory of the colonial powers was not that of prisoners of war, but that of criminals; one did not want to judge, but destroy. The colonial wars were in part anticipations of the European civil war, see for example the extermination orders against the Herero and Nama . The sectarian wars in the 17th century, as well as the wars in the wake of the French Revolution , took on the characteristics of civil war because they exceeded the limits of conventional warfare and in some cases anticipated the partisan struggles of the 20th century with their blurring of the separation of front and rear. In the 19th century, with the guerrilla struggle of the Spaniards from 1808 to 1813 and the German Freikorps in 1813 ( Landsturm Edict ), irregular fighters emerged who used partisan tactics and thus expanded conventional war to include aspects that had civil war character (dissolution of the front, combat also in residential areas and among civilians, no clear uniform). Léon Gambetta's “Franctireurs” in 1871 must also be placed in this context ( guerre à outrance ).

Civil War era

The conflict of 1914, planned as a classic war , resulted in an ideological confrontation, brought about by the Russian Revolution in 1917, a national confrontation due to the independence of the East European and Southeast European peoples from the tsar - such as the Habsburg Empire , as well as a social confrontation due to the disempowerment of the nobility and the Enforcement of social rights on the part of the workers ( e.g. eight-hour day ). All these developments are based on circumstances that arose before 1914: Marxism , the mass state, nationalization of the masses and the technical-industrial revolution were the conditions under which the world war could change the face of Europe so strongly. In the end, the conflict was no longer “classic” in the sense of the Western war tradition, in which it corresponded to the Clausewitzian conception and terminology. Rather, the acts of war 1914–1923 ( the time of the civil war riots in Germany ended with the failed “ Hamburg Uprising ” in 1923 ) created a new kind of awareness of totalitarianism , of “all or nothing”. The age of arbitrariness, tradition and discussion was over, now revolutionary decisions were called for and it seemed as if a radical, all-changing policy was possible at any time. At the end of the war there were on the one hand Thomas Mann's " Considerations of an Unpolitical ' ' , whose book was overtaken by the events of 1918, and on the other hand radical works such as Spengler's " Prussianism and Socialism "from 1919 and Carl Schmitt's famous formulation:

"" Anyone who decides on exceptional cases is sovereign. ""

- Carl Schmitt : Political Theology (1922)

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) can be mentioned here as a representative of the artistic avant-garde , for whom the world war was a fundamental shock, a senseless slaughter, in Europe of all places, for the American Pound, who was then Londoner by choice, the cradle of culture par excellence. If he wrote top-heavy role poems around 1910 after a few Victorian love poems, his work turned into an increasingly political and decidedly culture-critical dimension. In “Hugh Selwyn Mauberly” (1920), Pound turned against the decadent elites of aristocratic England; in his “Cantos” he went deeper and deeper , analyzing the crisis of Europe as a crisis of the liberal-democratic, Anglo-Saxon capitalist system that followed Had fallen hands of Jewish bankers; Furthermore, Bolshevism as the strictest materialism is a cultural threat to the West. Between these alternatives there would be only one salvation for Europe, namely Italian fascism . This attitude became more and more radical at Pound, his anti-Semitism took on paranoid features, and yet he is representative of the tension between the modern avant-garde and fascism on the other side. The First World War was a shock, which led these circles to an anti-Bolshevik standpoint, further examples to be mentioned are Hitler's admirers : Knut Hamsun , Louis-Ferdinand Céline and at times Wyndham Lewis, as well as "fascists" like Henry Miller , Gabriele D'Annunzio , FT Marinetti and Igor Stravinsky , who said in Italy in 1930: “ I don't think anyone worships Mussolini more than I do . [...] He is the savior of Italy and - hopefully - of Europe ”.

Conflicts in the interwar period

The character of a civil war is very specific in this period of world wars, evidently through several internal conflicts that were not only waged during the interwar period, but also accompanied the main wars of 1914–1918 and 1939–1945. In the interwar period, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) with its internal Spanish and international front-line position, which can be interpreted as a war between fascism and communism, a social struggle for land reform and democracy or a failed military coup, deserves special mention . Here, under a magnifying glass, stood all the conflicts that had plagued Europe for 20 years, conservatism and the rulers of the old elites against the modern ideals of progressives and republicans, Marxism against Catholicism. In Hungary between 1918 and 1920 first a communist regime and then a nationalist regime replaced . Another extreme example is Greece. During the Second World War there was both a fight against the occupiers from Germany and Italy and a civil war between communists and nationalists . The effects were even worse in Yugoslavia , where, in addition to acts of war by the regular armies, there was genocide and a civil war between the Serbian Chetniks against Tito's troops and the Ustaše . The following applies to all of these conflicts: the civil war was not the stand-alone conflict; there was a complex of different fronts, all of which ended in total war and a singular development that Europe was not familiar with and that destroyed old Europe. The unity of the continent in history and culture, which undoubtedly existed in a certain way before 1914, threatened to be destroyed.

More arguments

Proponents of the idea of ​​a European civil war argue that the heads of many European countries before the First World War were closely related and in some cases belonged to the same family. Their legal systems were very similar and even converged over time despite spatial separation. In addition, European culture is largely homogeneous, with most states tracing their roots back to two origins: Christianity and antiquity .

A single culture and legal system could therefore lead to the presumption that Europe is moving towards a common state. At the end of the European civil war, the elites in various European states began to establish a centralized state, which has since transformed into the European Union.

The establishment of the EU after the Second World War is central to the theory of a European civil war, since a civil war usually arises between competing groups within states or empires for the rule of the same. Experience shows that civil wars end with the emergence of a revitalized central power.

Supporters of this theory are further aided by the tendency to view World Wars I and II as part of the same conflict with a 22-year armistice (similar to the Hundred Years War of 1337-1453 and the Napoleonic Wars ).

The attitude to see the two world wars, including the Spanish and Russian civil wars, as intervening conflicts, as a conflagration and to trace the roots of the First World War back to the Franco-Prussian clashes , makes it possible to bring about political changes in Italy , Portugal and other states to investigate within a context.

Arguments against a European civil war

Opponents of this concept argue that civil wars are mainly fought between groups within a single state. While it is possible that civil wars across national boundaries, notably to irredentist ideas of a spatially distributed ethnicity to meet or when states split into individual components and then wage war on each other, as in the American Civil War happened.

In both cases, the opponents argue that Europe between 1890 and 1945 should never be seen as a single state. Each nation had an individual government, a different legal system and in part its own colonial empire .

Therefore wars were international and not national. Accordingly, the establishment of a European state (in the form of the EU) should be seen as an attempt to prevent future wars, and not as the result of any victorious side in a civil war that expanded its influence on the other.

Temporal divisions of a European civil war

All supporters of such an assumption agree on the inclusion of the years 1936 to 1945, the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and the end of the Second World War. However, there are different views on the further classification.

There is also greater agreement over the years from 1914 to 1945, in which Europe lost its hegemonic position in the world and was finally split into two fundamentally different spheres of interest . But the period of the European Civil War was extended by some scholars. As a result, it began with the Franco-German War on July 19, 1870 and did not end until the reunification of Germany in 1990.

literature

  • Ernst Nolte: The European Civil War 1917–1945. National Socialism and Bolshevism. 5. revised and exp. Edition. Herbig Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-7766-9003-8 .
  • Enzo Traverso : Under the spell of violence. The European Civil War 1914–1945. Siedler, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-88680-885-4 .
  • Walter L. Bernecker: War in Spain 1936–1939. Darmstadt 2005, ISBN 3-534-19027-0 .
  • Arno J. Mayer: The war as a crusade. The German Reich, Hitler's Wehrmacht and the “Final Solution”. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1989, ISBN 3-498-04333-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Secret Europe in the online library zeno.org. Retrieved June 23, 2012.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Ernst Nolte: The past that does not want to pass. A speech that could be written but not delivered. , accessed June 23, 2012.
  3. ↑ Bundesarchiv Potsdam, files of the Reichskolonialamt, RKA, 10.01 2089, p. 23, handwritten copy of the proclamation to the people of the Herero and the additional order to the imperial protection force, October 2, 1904. See the use of telegraphy in the war against Africans. (PDF; 1.5 MB) p. 195.
  4. ↑ Enzo Traverso: Under the spell of violence. The European Civil War 1914-1945. Munich 2008, p. 44ff.
  5. ↑ The entire section refers to: Carl Schmitt: Theory of the Partisan. Interim remark on the concept of the political. Berlin 2010, pp. 12-16 and 39f.
  6. ↑ Carl Schmitt: Political Theology. Four chapters on the doctrine of sovereignty. Berlin 2009, p. 13.
  7. ↑ Quoted from: Ezra Pound: Die Pisaner Cantos. Edited and translated by Eva Hesse. Arche Verlag, Zurich / Hamburg 2002, epilogue by Eva Hesse. P. 231f.
  8. ↑ Quoted from: Ezra Pound: Die Pisaner Cantos. Edited and translated by Eva Hesse. Arche Verlag, Zurich / Hamburg 2002, p. 231f.
  9. ↑ See: Walter Bernecker: War in Spain 1936-1939. Darmstadt 2005, p. 24, especially the cited conclusion on this page by Mañón de Lara
  10. ↑ Enzo Traverso: Under the spell of violence. The European Civil War 1914–1945. Munich 2008, p. 71.
  11. ^ "Central Europe", a cultural entity that was shaped by a colorful mixture of peoples - there were significant minorities in Central and Eastern Europe - was completely destroyed by the Holocaust and the expulsion of the Germans. See Enzo Traverso: Under the spell of violence. The European Civil War 1914-1945. Munich 2008, p. 145.