Second Thirty Years War

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The term Second Thirty Years War is a historiographical concept that asserts a chronological and substantive connection between the First World War , the interwar period and the Second World War and takes up the name of the Thirty Years War of the 17th century. It has been used mainly outside of Germany since the early 1940s. It was systematically introduced into the historical scientific discussion in 1988 . In recent research, the concept is also framed as a world civil war.

Origin and distribution of the term

The term appeared for the first time in the circle of Charles de Gaulle at the " FFL " when it came to the French accession to the Atlantic Charter . De Gaulle himself spoke in September 1941 in a radio address in London of "la nouvelle Guerre de Trente Ans". Churchill wrote to Stalin in 1944 from a "thirty years war from 1914". Scientifically, the term was the first subject in the study by Albert Muller, SJ: La seconde guerre de trente ans, 1914-1945 , Bruxelles / Paris 1947. Raymond Aron used it in comparison with the war between 1618 and 1648 and the Peace of Westphalia in the 1950s to describe the events of the World War 1914–1945. In 1988 the term was the subject of a detailed discussion and definition by the American historian Arno J. Mayer with the claim to the first scientific introduction, taken up in 2003 by Hans-Ulrich Wehler , in the Spiegel , No. 8/04, on the cover topic, 2005 by Ian Kershaw with reference to Mayer on the main topic in the English magazine "History Today" and serves the revisionist journalist Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof 2006 as the title of an audio CD. With the US historian Fritz Stern it is the subject of a lecture in 2007 both in Germany (Jena Center) and in the USA (University of Indiana). It is also used by Ralf Dahrendorf and Eric Hobsbawm . It has recently been used by Enzo Traverso alongside the term “European Civil War 1914–1945” to describe the European crisis.

Regardless of the European discussion, the reference to the “Thirty Years War” was also part of the Nazi historiography to illustrate the present after the First World War. For example with Max Hildebert Boehm in 1930 or with Franz Six , Günther Franz and Hans Joachim Beyer in 1940.

background

Arno J. Mayer discusses the term in his book Der Krieg als Kreuzzug , published in 1988 and in German in 1989 . The German Reich, Hitler's Wehrmacht and the 'Final Solution'. According to Mayer, the age of the crusades is an epoch of general crisis like the first half of the 17th and 20th centuries. “Epochs of general crisis are also epochs of general war” (p. 49). These wars feed “from the dynamic instabilities of the social and political order” and are waged all the more uncompromisingly “the more indeterminate and unlimited their goals are” (p. 49). Mayer sees the religious prerequisites as the decisive conditions for the “incredibly destructive and barbaric character” “which the first 30-year war assumed (which I call the first because Europe was drawn into its second 30-year war between 1914 and 1945 ) ”(P. 50). Between 1618 and 1648 there was already a total war in its effects . "While the general crisis and the Thirty Years 'War of the 17th century marked the final phase of the ideological struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism , the general crisis and the Thirty Years' War of the 20th century were the culmination of the ideological struggle between fascism and Bolshevism " (P. 65), whereby the “First World War” was “a secularized 'holy war'” from the unleashed national passions ”(p. 24).

Mayer sees Germany as the “nerve center” of the European crisis in the 20th century, as the “hub of a capitalist world economy that is chronically unstable in its dynamics and the European balance of power” (p. 68). In German society, institutions and mentalities with different historical backgrounds collided more conspicuously than in the other European powers. The National Socialists took advantage of this by politically channeling the discontent of the “many groups of society and the political elite who were threatened the day before yesterday” (p. 69) and, as a new crusade, shifted the center of the conflict to Eastern Europe in the “Second World War”.

Arno J. Mayer mentioned the term as early as 1981 (German 1984), when he summarized the discussion about the forces of the Ancien Régime as follows: “It took two world wars and the Holocaust, or a new Thirty Years War, as it were, for the European social and political wars To finally free economic systems from the parasitic yoke of feudal and aristocratic presumption. "

In the scientific justification for the use of comparative terms, Mayer refers to the historical comparative literature of the French historian Marc Bloch . The comparative reference to the Crusades and the Thirty Years' War is intended to draw attention to the violence of ideological passions, which can easily escalate military and geopolitically vague goals such as the conquest of " living space in the east " into the total annihilation of everything that is considered hostile.

Armed conflict in the interwar period

The interwar period was not a time of peace. Military conflicts continued to take place in Germany and Europe.

When the German soldiers under the leadership of Max Hoffmann began to retreat westward from Central and Eastern Europe in 1918, Lenin ordered the Western Red Army to advance west. The main aim of this operation was to travel through Central and Eastern Europe, to install pro-Soviet governments in the independent states and to support the communist revolutions in Germany and Austria-Hungary . At the same time border conflicts developed between many independent states in Central and Eastern Europe: Romania fought with Hungary for Transylvania , Yugoslavia fought with Italy for Rijeka , Poland fought with Czechoslovakia for Teschen , with Germany for Poznan (see Wielkopolska Uprising ) and with Ukraine Galicia (see Polish-Ukrainian War ). The Ukrainians , Belarusians , Lithuanians , Estonians and Latvians fought each other and the Russians. Winston Churchill commented condescendingly: "The war of the giants is over, the quarrel of the pygmies has begun."

German Freikorps fought in the Baltic States in 1919 with temporary support from Great Britain against Soviet Russian troops, in 1920/21 in Upper Silesia against Polish insurgents , who were reinforced by regular troops. Poland and the Soviet Union in particular tried to enlarge their territory and were involved in military conflicts. In the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918 and 1919, the armed forces of the Second Polish Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic fought for control of Eastern Galicia after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. Poland and the Soviet Union have been at war against each other since 1919 ( Polish-Soviet War ). From 1918 to 1920, Carinthia and Yugoslavia were in a military conflict . Estonia fought for independence from 1918 to 1920 ( Estonian War of Freedom ). The Greco-Turkish War lasted from 1919 to 1923 . During the Irish War of Independence , the Irish Republican Army (IRA) waged a kind of guerrilla fight against the British government in Ireland from January 1919 to July 1921. In the spring of 1920 there was civil war in the Ruhr area in the wake of the Kapp Putsch . From June 1922 to April 1923 Ireland was in the middle of a civil war . In 1923 the French occupied Germany in the Ruhr . In 1923, communists carried out a military uprising in Hamburg . Militant conflicts were practically the order of the day in the Weimar Republic.

The Italian-Ethiopian War between October 3, 1935 and May 9, 1936 was also one of the conflicts between the wars , although it was only indirectly about intra-European issues. Because Benito Mussolini wanted to raise his country to the rank of the third largest European colonial power alongside Great Britain and France.

This was followed by the Spanish Civil War from July 1936 to April 1939 with the de facto participation of Germany and Italy (naval blockade, deployment of the Condor Legion ). This conflict is seen as an immediate testing ground for new weapons and tactics for the approaching Second World War .

There were also military conflicts outside of Europe between later parties to World War II, which in turn had a lasting effect on events in World War II. If you include them in this analysis, the Manchuria crisis of 1931 with the subsequent occupation of Manchuria by Japan and the Sino-Japanese War from June 1937 to September 1945 must be mentioned in this list , especially the Sino-Japanese War in Asia Space flowed into the fighting of World War II.

Continuity of German Eastern Imperialism

With his secret decree of October 7, 1939 on the “consolidation of German nationality”, when he used the name for the former military, Hitler presented revealing evidence of the continuation of east-imperialist planning since the First World War in connection with the ideas of “living space in the east” Administrative area " Upper East " for the Polish areas occupied since the attack on Poland on September 1, 1939. Section II of the decree reads: “In the formerly occupied Polish territories, the head of administration Ober-Ost carries out the tasks assigned to the Reichsführer SS according to his general instructions. The head of administration Ober-Ost and the subordinate heads of administration of the military districts are responsible for the implementation. ” Hinrich Lohse ,
who is Reich Commissioner for the Eastern Region , had the information material from“ Ober Ost ”used at his headquarters in Riga to compile atlases and statistics. Some of his employees had already worked there during the First World War or after its end and ensured personnel continuity. The image of the “Thirty Years War” had served in the “Land Ober Ost” - and in the Freicorps deployments in the Baltic States that took place until 1919 - to identify the soldiers who, in the multiethnic country, considered themselves Landsknecht figures and the “chosen people” of the war .

Long-planned plans had already been used during the Sudeten crisis in September 1938: Chief of Staff Franz Halder gave General Max von Viebahn the order in September 1938 to fetch the regulations for the war of aggression that had been played out since 1923 and now under consideration from the archive. Colonel-General Hans von Seeckt commented on the overall plans for a so-called Great Army in 1925: "We have to get power, and as soon as we have this power, we will of course get back everything we have lost."

Remarks

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Kruse: European and global character of the war. In: Federal Agency for Civic Education , Dossier: The First World War, May 6, 2013.
  2. ↑ Cf. René Cassin on September 24, 1941 in London: “If such an attempt (ie the creation of a new European peace order) has failed after the war that began almost thirty years ago, it is not primarily because the following period Was nothing but a ceasefire, while Germany, because it aroused senseless desires in others, only thought of revenge? Hitler only resumed Wilhelm II's dream of world power in a more brutal and monstrous way. " (Cassin)
  3. ^ Antoine Prost / Jay Winter, Penser la Grande Guerre. Un essai d'historiographie , Paris 2004, p. 33.
  4. ↑ Stalin's correspondence with Churchill, Attlee, Roosevelt and Truman 1941–1945 , Berlin 1961, p. 254. - Churchill returns to the term in his book The Gathering Storm , Boston 1948, p. VII.
  5. ^ Cf. Gerhard Hirschfeld: The First World War in German and International Historiography . From: Politics and Contemporary History . B 29-302004
  6. ↑ Wehler, 2003, p. XIX, 985.
  7. ^ Traverso, 2007.
  8. ↑ Max Hildebert Boehm: The German Borderlands , Berlin 1930, p. 326 f.
  9. ^ Christian Ingrao : Croire et détruire. Les intellectuels dans la machine de guerre SS , Fayard, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-213-65550-5 , pp. 105-107. In German: Propylaen, Berlin 2012 ISBN 9783549074206 ; Federal Agency for Civic Education BpB, Bonn 2012, ISBN 9783838902579 .
  10. ^ AJ Mayer, Aristocratic Power and Bourgeoisie. The Crisis of European Society 1848–1914 , Munich 1984, p. 325. - When using the term, Mayer relies on statements by Jean Jaurès and Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg , both of whom were thirty years old before the outbreak of war in 1914 in view of the international conflict Warn war (p. 313 f.).
  11. ^ Translation of a quote from Norman Davies: White Eagle Red Star. Pimlico, London 2003, p. 21. Original text: “The war of the giants has ended; the quarrels of the pygmies have begun. "
  12. ↑ Aram Mattioli , Experimental Field of Violence: The Abyssinian War and its International Significance 1935–1941 , Orell Fuessli: Zurich 2005; ISBN 3-280-06062-1 .
  13. ↑ See materials for the “Generalplan Ost” .
  14. ^ Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius , Warland in the East. Conquest, colonization and military rule in the First World War , Hamburger Edition: Hamburg 2002, p. 329 f. ISBN 3-930908-81-6 .
  15. ↑ Liulevicius (2002), p. 62 ff.
  16. ^ Carl Dirks / Karl-Heinz Janßen : The war of the generals. Hitler as a tool of the Wehrmacht . Berlin (Propylaea) ³1999, p. 27 f .; ISBN 3-549-05590-0 .

literature

  • Maddalena Guiotto, Helmut Wohnout (ed.): Italy and Austria in Central Europe in the interwar period / Italia e Austria nella Mitteleuropa tra le due guerre mondiali . Böhlau, Vienna 2018.
  • Gerhard Hirschfeld : First World War - Second World War: War experiences in Germany. Newer approaches and considerations for a diachronic comparison. P. 2. ( PDF )
  • Ian Kershaw: Europe's Second Thirty Years War. in: History Today. September 1, 2005. (English)
  • Domenico Losurdo : Battle for History. Historical revisionism and its myths . Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-89438-365-7 . (The book contains an abundance of materials on the classification of the European revolutions, the American revolution and colonialism, including Hitler's colonial ideas with regard to Eastern Europe. “Second Thirty Years War” is a common term for Losurdo “ which historians often resort to to designate the period of colossal upheavals between 1914 and 1945 ".)
  • Arno J. Mayer: Noble power and bourgeoisie. The crisis of European society 1848–1914. Munich 1984, ISBN 3-406-09749-9 .
  • Arno J. Mayer: The war as a crusade. The German Reich, Hitler's Wehrmacht and the “Final Solution”. Reinbek near Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-498-04333-1 .
  • Fritz Stern: "The Second Thirty Years War" in: Fritz Stern: The West in the 20th Century. Self-destruction, reconstruction, threats to the present. Series title: Jena Center History of the 20th Century. Lectures and colloquia, volume number: 3, Göttingen (Wallstein) 2008, pp. 9-29, ISBN 978-3-8353-0254-9 .
  • Bruno Thoß: The time of the world wars - epochs as a unit of experience? in: ders., Hans-Erich Volkmann (Hrsg.): First World War - Second World War. A comparison. Paderborn 2002, pp. 7-30. (Criticism of the use of the term.)
  • Enzo Traverso: Modernity and Violence. A European genealogy of Nazi terror. Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-89900-106-0 .
  • (fr) Enzo Traverso: A feu et à sang. De la guerre civile européenne 1914–1945. Paris 2007; (German) Under the spell of violence. The European Civil War 1914–1945. Settlers: Munich 2008, ISBN 3-88680-885-8 .
  • Matthias Waechter: De Gaulle's 30 Years War. The Resistance and the memory of 1918 , in: J. Duelffer / G. Krumeich (Hg), The lost peace. Politics and war culture after 1918, Essen 2002, pp. 51–60.
  • Hans-Ulrich Wehler: German history of society, Vol. 4: From the beginning of the First World War to the founding of the two German states 1914-1949. Munich 2003.
  • Hans-Ulrich Wehler: The Second Thirty Years War. The First World War as a prelude and model for the Second World War. In: Spiegel special. 2004/1: The original catastrophe of the 20th century ., Pp. 138–143.

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