Seventh Grade History

Teacher & Student Readings

The Barney Charter School Initiative at Hillsdale College

Hillsdale, Michigan

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Seventh Grade History Readings

Table of Contents

An Introduction…………………………………......…………………………..………………..6

Teacher Readings…………………..……………………………………........……………….…7

Student Readings—General…………………………………......……………..………………..8

Student Readings—Provided…………………………………......………..……...…………10ff

American Expansionism—Primary Sources

The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chapter I, abridged……………………………...… 12Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan

“The March of the Flag” Speech, 1898, abridged………………………..……...…………........13Senator Albert Beveridge

“The Philippine Question,” 1900, abridged………………………..…………………………… 16Senator Albert Beveridge

On his decision to annex the Philippines…………………………………..………...……......... 18President William McKinley

“The White Man’s Burden” …………………………………......…………………………...….19Rudyard Kipling

Heart of Darkness, Part 1, selection………………………………………………………….….20Joseph Conrad

“State of the Union Address”—The Roosevelt Corollary, 1904, selection…………………….. 23President Theodore Roosevelt

The Great War—Primary Sources

The Program of Count Cavour, 1846, selection………………………......…………………..…25Count Camillo Cavour

Speech of the King of Italy, 1861, selection………………………......……………………...….26

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King Victor Emmanuel II

“Blood and Iron” Speech, 1862, selection………………………......………………………...…27Minister President of Prussia Otto von Bismarck

United States’ “Declaration of Neutrality,” 1914………………………………...……………...28President Woodrow Wilson

All Quiet on the Western Front, Chapter 2, selection………………………………...……….....29Erich Maria Remarque

With Austrian Cavalry on the Eastern Front………………………………………………….… 32Oskar Kokoschka (Austria-Hungary)

Machine Guns in Action, Russian Poland, 1914………………….……………...…………….. 33Karl H. Von Wiegand, journalist

Sergeant Bell at the First Battle of Ypres on the Western Front, 1914………………...…….… 34Sergeant J.F. Bell

Shelled in Trenches on the Western Front……………………………………….…..……….... 35Second-Lieutenant Graham Greenwell (U.K.)

The Somme: Day One—Through German Eyes………………………………..……….…...... 36Matthaus Gerster (Germany)

The Somme: In Captured German Trenches……………………………………………….……37Philip Gibbs, journalist

Lance-Corporal Baxter (U.K.) Wins the DCM in the Western Front……………………………38Robert Graves (U.K.)

On Burying the Dead……………………………………………….……………………………38Leonard Thompson (U.K.)

U-Boat 202 Attacks……………………………………………………………………………... 39Adolf K.G.E. von Spiegel (Germany)

Decree of Abdication, March 15, 1917…………………………………………………………..41Tsar Nicholas II

The Great War—Secondary Sources

The Unification of Italy: 1860 and 1870…………………………………..………………….… 43Jonathan Rogers

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The Unification of Germany and Otto von Bismarck…………………..……………………..... 46Jonathan Rogers

1894: Imperial Russia, abridged…………………………………………….…...……………... 51Robert Massie

Trenches…………………………………………………….…………………………...…….... 55firstworldwar.com

A Forest after Bombardment by German Artillery……………………………………………... 59Alistair Horne, historian

On Industrial War……………………………………………………………………………..... 60Alistair Horne, historian

On Medicine and Aid Stations…………………………………………………….…….…….... 61Alistair Horne, historian

America from the Twenties to the New Deal—Primary Sources

We are at one in wishing a living wage……………….……………………………………..…. 63Bishop William Quayle and Samuel Gompers

Main Street (excerpt)………………………………….……………………………………..…. 65Sinclair Lewis, 1920

My Life and Work (excerpt)……………….………….……………………………………..…. 66Henry Ford

Historical Catechism of American Unionism………………………………………………..…. 67International Workers of the World, 1923

America from the Twenties to the New Deal—Secondary Sources

The Roaring Twenties………………………………………………………………………..…. 70Harlan Hogan & Richard Hawksworth

The Rise of Totalitarianism & World War II—Primary Sources

“Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” Speech, May 13, 1940, selection……………………..……..... 75Prime Minister Winston Churchill

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“We Shall Fight on the Beaches” Speech, June 4, 1940, selection………………………..….... 76Prime Minister Winston Churchill

“Their Finest Hour” Speech, June 18, 1940, selection……………………………….……....... 77Prime Minister Winston Churchill

State of the Union Address, “Four Freedoms” Speech, January 6, 1941, selection.…….……... 78Franklin D. Roosevelt

Attack At Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941……………………………………………..….…... 80Commander Mitsuo Fuchida (Japan)

The Bataan Death March, 1942………………………………………………….………….. ….82Captain William Dyess (U.S.A.)

The “LeMay Bombing Leaflet,” August 1, 1945………………………………………..………84America to the People of Hiroshima

German Surrender Documents…………………………………………………………...………85

Proclamation by the U.S. President following German Surrender. May 8, 1945……………..…86President Harry S. Truman

The Rise of Totalitarianism & World War II—Secondary Sources

Germans Elect Nazis……………………………………………………………………………..88thehistoryplace.com

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An Introduction

The following compendium is organized to serve three needs of the teacher.

First, every teacher, regardless of education and experience, needs to be well read in the history he or she is teaching. Compiled first is a list of teacher readings or resources that, while not appropriate for students, are apt for the continued and requisite study of the teacher.

Second, recommendations are made with regard to works that students themselves are able and ought to read. These student readings are referenced in general, leaving to the teacher the task of deciding which selections students should read. Works are organized into primary and secondary sources.

Third, it is recognized that some assistance can be lent to directly provide the teacher with specific texts and selections that are suitable for student reading. These provided student readings are again organized into primary and secondary sources.

The teacher ought to draw from these three fields in addition to his or her own research and study. Moreover, the provided student readings will not suffice by themselves. Every teacher must pursue the best readings independent of this small and selective set. And as always, preference ought to be given for primary sources, and secondary sources should only be chosen to serve specific needs and for outstanding quality. At the 7th Grade level students should read both primary and secondary sources. Secondary sources and lecture should set the backdrop for original documents and class discussion. At this level discussion is encouraged, but teachers should expect to do much of the talking.

Each field is divided into four topics for Seventh Grade History: American Expansionism, the Great War, America from the Twenties to the New Deal, and the Rise of Totalitarianism and World War II. Teachers should cover the list of topics in the Core Knowledge Sequence for grade 7.

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Teacher Readings

General United States History

A History of the American People—Paul Johnson

America: The Last Best Hope, Volumes I & II—William Bennett

World History by Era, Volumes 7, 8, & 9—Various Authors

Letters of a Nation—Andrew Carroll

American Expansionism

Rough Riders—Theodore Roosevelt (primary source)

The Great War

To illustrate optimism for peace and German inclinations towards war:

The Great Illusion—Norman Angell (primary source)Germany and the Next War—Friedrich von Bernhardi (primary source)

Nicholas and Alexandra—Robert Massie

The Great War Revisited—George Weigel in First Things Magazine

The Guns of August—Barbara Tuchman

The First World War—John Keegan

The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916—Alistair Horne

FirstWorldWar.com

MilitaryFactory.com

The Great War—a BBC Production: See especially video 1 (of 26), “On the Idle Hill of Summer,” available on YouTube (while the Barney Charter School Initiative does not generally recommend showing films in the classroom, they can occasionally be a useful illustration to a lecture.)

America from the Twenties to the New Deal

The Myth of the Robber Barons—Burt Folsom

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New Deal or Raw Deal?—Burt Folsom

Hillsdale College American Heritage Reader: Section VII—America Between the WarsIntroduction and Documents (Age of Play, Scopes Trial, The Modern Temper etc.)

The Rise of Totalitarianism and World War II

The Second World War—John Keegan

The Second World War—Winston Churchill (primary)

The World at War—Thames Television on BBC

Band of Brothers—Stephen Ambrose and HBO Miniseries

Student Readings—General

The Great War

Primary:

“Willy-Nicky Telegrams”—Kaiser Wilhelm II & Tsar Nicholas II

The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness: World War I—Jon Lewis

Secondary:

The War to End All Wars: World War I—Russell Freedman

Ten True Tales: World War I Heroes—Allan Zullo

America from the Twenties to the New Deal

The Rise of Totalitarianism & World War II

Primary:

The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness: World War II—Jon Lewis

With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa—Eugene Sledge

Secondary:

Ten True Tales: World War II Heroes—Allan Zullo

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Band of Brothers—Stephen Ambrose

“The Rise of Adolf Hitler” at TheHistoryPlace.com

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Student Readings—Provided

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American ExpansionismPrimary Sources Only

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The Influence of Sea Power Upon History , Chapter I Admiral Alfred Thayer MahanAbridged

The first and most obvious light in which the sea presents itself from the political and social point of view is that of a great highway; or better, perhaps, of a wide common, over which men may pass in all directions, but on which some well-worn paths show that controlling reasons have led them to choose certain lines of travel rather than others. These lines of travel are called trade routes; and the reasons which have determined them are to be sought in the history of the world.

Notwithstanding all the familiar and unfamiliar dangers of the sea, both travel and traffic by water have always been easier and cheaper than by land. The commercial greatness of Holland was due not only to her shipping at sea, but also to the numerous tranquil water-ways which gave such cheap and easy access to her own interior and to that of Germany. This advantage of carriage by water over that by land was yet more marked in a period when roads were few and very bad, wars frequent and society unsettled, as was the case two hundred years ago. Sea traffic then went in peril of robbers, but was nevertheless safer and quicker than that by land.…

Under modern conditions, however, home trade is but a part of the business of a country bordering on the sea. Foreign necessaries or luxuries must be brought to its ports, either in its own or in foreign ships, which will return, bearing in exchange the products of the country, whether they be the fruits of the earth or the works of men’s hands and it is the wish of every nation that this shipping business should be done by its own vessels. The ships that thus sail to and fro must have secure ports to which to return, and must, as far as possible, be followed by the protection of their country throughout the voyage.

This protection in time of war must be extended by armed shipping. The necessity of a navy, in the restricted sense of the word, springs, therefore, from the existence of a peaceful shipping, and disappears with it, except in the case of a nation which has aggressive tendencies, and keeps up a navy merely as a branch of the military establishment. As the United States has at present no aggressive purposes, and as its merchant service has disappeared, the dwindling of the armed fleet and general lack of interest in it are strictly logical consequences. When for any reason sea trade is again found to pay, a large enough shipping interest will reappear to compel the revival of the war fleet. It is possible that when a canal route through the Central-American Isthmus is seen to be a near certainty, the aggressive impulse may be strong enough to lead to the same result. This is doubtful, however, because a peaceful, gain-loving nation is not far-sighted, and far-sightedness is needed for adequate military preparation, especially in these days.

….It must however be admitted, and will be seen, that the wise or unwise action of individual men has at certain periods had a great modifying influence upon the growth of sea power in the broad sense, which includes not only the military strength afloat, that rules the sea or any part of it by force of arms, but also the peaceful commerce and shipping from which alone a military fleet naturally and healthfully springs, and on which it securely rests.

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“The March of the Flag” Speech, 1898Senator Albert BeveridgeAbridged

It is a noble land that God has given us; a land that can feed and clothe the world; a land whose coastlines would enclose half the countries of Europe; a land set like a sentinel between the two imperial oceans of the globe, a greater England with a nobler destiny.

It is a mighty people that He has planted on this soil; a people sprung from the most masterful blood of history; a people perpetually revitalized by the virile, manproducing workingfolk of all the earth; a people imperial by virtue of their power, by right of their institutions, by authority of their Heaven-directed purposes-the propagandists and not the misers of liberty.

It is a glorious history our God has bestowed upon His chosen people; a history heroic with faith in our mission and our future; a history of statesmen who flung the boundaries of the Republic out into unexplored lands and savage wilderness; a history of soldiers who carried the flag across blazing deserts and through the ranks of hostile mountains, even to the gates of sunset; a history of a multiplying people who overran a continent in half a century; a history of prophets who saw the consequences of evils inherited from the past and of martyrs who died to save us from them; a history divinely logical, in the process of whose tremendous reasoning we find ourselves today.

Therefore, in this campaign, the question is larger than a party question. It is an American question. It is a world question. Shall the American people continue their march toward the commercial supremacy of the world? Shall free institutions broaden their blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in strength, until the empire of our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind?

Have we no mission to perform no duty to discharge to our fellow man? Has God endowed us with gifts beyond our deserts and marked us as the people of His peculiar favor, merely to rot in our own selfishness, as men and nations must, who take cowardice for their companion and self for their deity-as China has, as India has, as Egypt has?

Shall we be as the man who had one talent and hid it, or as he who had ten talents and used them until they grew to riches? And shall we reap the reward that waits on our discharge of our high duty; shall we occupy new markets for what our farmers raise, our factories make, our merchants sell-aye, and please God, new markets for what our ships shall carry?

Hawaii is ours; Puerto Rico is to be ours; at the prayer of her people Cuba finally will be ours; in the islands of the East, even to the gates of Asia, coaling stations are to be ours at the very least; the flag of a liberal government is to float over the Philippines, and may it be the banner that Taylor unfurled in Texas and Fremont carried to the coast.

The Opposition tells us that we ought not to govern a people without their consent. I answer, The rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of selfgovernment We govern the Indians without their consent, we govern our territories without their consent, we govern our children without their

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consent. How do they know what our government would be without their consent? Would not the people of the Philippines prefer the just, humane, civilizing government of this Republic to the savage, bloody rule of pillage and extortion from which we have rescued them?

And, regardless of this formula of words made only for enlightened, selfgoverning people, do we owe no duty to the world? Shall we turn these peoples back to the reeking hands from which we have taken them? Shall we abandon them, with Germany, England, Japan, hungering for them? Shall we save them from those nations, to give them a selfrule of tragedy?

…Will you remember that we do but what our fathers did—we but pitch the tents of liberty farther westward, farther southward-we only continue the march of the flag?

The march of the flag! In 1789 the flag of the Republic waved over 4,000,000 souls in thirteen states, and their savage territory which stretched to the Mississippi, to Canada, to the Floridas…. Jefferson acquired that imperial territory which swept from the Mississippi to the mountains, from Texas to the British possessions, and the march of the flag began!

The infidels to the gospel of liberty raved, but the flag swept on! The title to that noble land out of which Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana have been carved was uncertain: Jefferson, strict constructionist of constitutional power though he was, obeyed the AngloSaxon impulse within him, whose watchword is, ‘‘Forward!’’: another empire was added to the Republic, and the march of the flag went on!...

Then Texas responded to the bugle calls of liberty, and the march of the flag went on! And, at last, we waged war with Mexico, and the flag swept over the southwest, over peerless California, past the Gate of Gold to Oregon on the north, and from ocean to ocean its folds of glory blazed.…

Distance and oceans are no arguments… The ocean does not separate us from lands of our duty and desire—the oceans join us, rivers never to be dredged, canals never to be re paired. Steam joins us; electricity joins us-the very elements are in league with our destiny. Cuba not contiguous? Puerto Rico not contiguous! Hawaii and the Philippines no contiguous! The oceans make them contiguous. And our navy will make them contiguous.

…There was not one reason for the landlust of our statesmen from Jefferson to Grant, other than the prophet and the Saxon within them But, today, we are raising more than we can consume, making more than we can use. Therefore we must find new markets for our produce.

And so, while we did not need the territory taken during the past century at the time it was acquired, we do need what we have taken in 1898 and we need it now. The resource and the commerce of the immensely rich dominions will be increased as much as American energy is greater than Spanish sloth.

In Cuba, alone, there are 15,000,000 acres of forest unacquainted with the ax, exhaustless mines of iron, priceless deposits of manganese, millions of dollars’ worth of which we must buy, today, from the Black Sea districts. There are millions of acres yet unexplored.

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The resources of Puerto Rico have only been trifled with. The riches of` the Philippines have hardly been touched by the fingertips of modern methods. And they produce what we consume, and consume what we produce…They sell hemp, sugar, cocoanuts, fruits of the tropics, timber of price like mahogany; they buy flour, clothing, tools, implements, machinery and all that we can raise and make. Their trade will be ours in time. Do you indorse that policy with your vote?

…The commercial supremacy of the Republic means that this Nation is to be the sovereign factor in the peace of the world. For the conflicts of the future are to be conflicts of trade-struggles for markets—commercial wars for existence….

So Hawaii furnishes us a naval base in the heart of the Pacific; the Ladrones another, a voyage further on; Manila another, at the gates of Asia—Asia, to the trade of whose hundreds of millions American merchants, manufacturers, farmers, have as good right as those of Germany or France or Russia or England; Asia, whose commerce with the United Kingdom alone amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars every year; Asia, to whom Germany looks to take her surplus products; Asia, whose doors must not be shut against American trade. Within five decades the bulk of Oriental commerce will be ours….

There are so many real things to be done-canals to be dug, railways to be laid, forests to be felled, cities to be built, fields to be tilled, markets to be won, ships to be launched, peoples to be saved, civilization to be proclaimed and the Rag of Liberty hung to the eager air of every sea. Is this an hour to waste upon triflers with nature’s laws? Is this a season to give our destiny over to wordmongers and prosperity-wreckers? No! It is an hour to remember our duty to our homes. It is a moment to realize the opportunities fate has opened to us. And so is all hour for us to stand by the Government.

Wonderfully has God guided us Yonder at Bunker Hill and Yorktown. His providence was above us at New Orleans and on ensanguined seas…. His power directed Dewey in the East and delivered the Spanish fleet into our hands, as He delivered the elder Armada into the hands of our English sires two centuries ago. The American people cannot use a dishonest medium of` exchange; it is ours to set the world its example of` right and honor. We cannot fly from our world duties; it is ours to execute the purpose of a fate that has driven us to be greater than our small intentions. We cannot retreat from any soil where Providence has unfurled our banner; it is ours to save that soil for liberty and civilization.

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“The Philippine Question”, 1900Senator Albert BeveridgeAbridged

Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever, “territory belonging to the United States,” as the Constitution calls them. And just beyond the Philippines are China’s illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength and Thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.

This island empire is the last land left in all the oceans. If it should prove a mistake to abandon it, the blunder once made would be irretrievable. If it proves a mistake to hold it, the error can be corrected when we will. Every other progressive nation stands ready to relieve us.

But to hold it will be no mistake. The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East. Lines of navigation from our ports to the Orient and Australia, from the Isthmian Canal to Asia, from all Oriental ports to Australia converge at and separate from the Philippines. They are a self-supporting, dividend-paying fleet, permanently anchored at a spot selected by the strategy of Providence, commanding the Pacific. And the Pacific is the ocean of the commerce of the future. Most future wars will be conflicts for commerce. The power that rules the Pacific, therefore, is the power that rules the world. And, with the Philippines, that power is and will forever be the American Republic.I have cruised more than 2,000 miles through the archipelago, every moment a surprise at its loveliness and wealth. I have ridden hundreds of miles on the islands, every foot of the way a revelation of vegetable and mineral riches.

No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and coconuts, hemp and tobacco, and many products of the temperate as well as the tropic grow in various sections of the archipelago. I have seen hundred of bushels of Indian corn lying in the road fringed with banana trees. The forests of Negroes, Mindanao, Mindora, Paluan and parts of Luzon are invaluable and intact. The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man in the island told me that 40 miles of Cebu’s mountain chain are practically mountains of coal..I have a nugget of gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek. [Beveridge holds up a rock.] ..And this wealth is but a small fraction….

If we are willing to go to war rather than let England have a few feet of frozen Alaska, which affords no market and commands none, what should we not do rather than let England, Germany, Russia, or Japan have all the Philippines? And no man on the spot can fail to see that this would be their fate if we retired….

Self-government is no base and common thing to be bestowed on the merely audacious. It is the degree which crowns the graduate of liberty, not the name of liberty’s infant class, who have not

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yet mastered the alphabet of freedom.. We must act on the situation as it exists, not as we would wish it….

Example for decades will be necessary to instruct them in American ideas and methods of administration. Example, example, always example--this alone will teach them….Mr. President, this question is deeper than any question of party politics; deeper than any question of the isolated policy of our country even; deeper even than any question of constitutional power. It is elemental. It is racial. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth. He has made us adepts in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples. Were it not for such a force as this the world would relapse into barbarism and night. And of all our race. He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America, and it holds for us all the profit, all the glory, all the happiness possible to man. We are trustees of the world’s progress, guardians of its righteous peace. The judgment of the Master is upon us: “Ye have been faithful over a few things; I will make you ruler over many things.”

…That flag has never paused in its onward march. Who dares halt it now—now, when history’s largest events are carrying it forward; now, when we are at last one people, strong enough for any task, great enough for any glory destiny can bestow? Blind indeed is he who sees not the hand of God in events so vast, so harmonious, so benign. Reactionary indeed is the mind that perceives not that this vital people is the strongest of the saving forces of the world; that our place, therefore, is at the head of the constructing and redeeming nations of the earth; and that to stand aside while events march on is a surrender of our interests, a betrayal of our duty as blind as it is base. Craven indeed is the heart that fears to perform a work so golden and so noble; that dares not win a glory so immortal.

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On his decision to annex the PhilippinesPresident William McKinley

When next I realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps, I confess I did not know what to do with them. I sought counsel from all sides-Democrats as well as Republicans-but got little help. I thought first we would take only Manila; then Luzon; then other islands, perhaps, also.

I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way-I don’t know how it was, but it came:

(1) That we could not give them back to Spain-that would be cowardly and dishonorable;

(2) That we could not turn them over to France or Germany, our commercial rivals in the Orient-that would be bad business and discreditable;

(3) That we could not leave them to themselves-they were unfit for self-government, and they would soon have anarchy and misrule worse then Spain’s was; and

(4) That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died.

And then I went to bed and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department (our map-maker), and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States (pointing to a large map on the wall of his office), and there they are and there they will stay while I am President!

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“The White Man’s Burden”Rudyard Kipling (U.K.)

Written upon the annexation of the Philippines by the United States in 1899.

Take up the White Man’s burden - Send forth the best ye breed - Go bind your sons to exileTo serve your captives’ need;To wait in heavy harnessOn fluttered folk and wild -Your new-caught sullen peoples,Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man’s burden - In patience to abideTo veil the threat of terrorAnd check the show of pride;By open speech and simple,An hundred times made plain,To seek another’s profit,And work another’s gain.

Take up the White Man’s burden -The savage wars of peace -Fill full the mouth of famineAnd bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearestThe end for others sought,Watch Sloth and heathen FollyBring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man’s burden -No tawdry rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper - The tale of common things.The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go make them with your living, And mark them with your dead!

Take up the White Man’s burden -And reap his old reward, The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard - The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah slowly !) towards the light:- “Why brought ye us from bondage, “Our loved Egyptian night ?”

Take up the White Man’s burden -Ye dare not stoop to less - Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness; By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent sullen peoples Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man’s burden -Have done with childish days - The lightly proffered laurel, The easy, ungrudged praise. Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years, Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgement of your peers.

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Heart of Darkness , Part I Joseph ConradSelection

I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a Swede, and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore. ‘Been living there?’ he asked. I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Fine lot these government chaps—are they not?’ he went on, speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness. ‘It is funny what some people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes upcountry?’ I said to him I expected to see that soon. ‘So-o-o!’ he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye ahead vigilantly. ‘Don’t be too sure,’ he continued. ‘The other day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too.’ ‘Hanged himself! Why, in God’s name?’ I cried. He kept on looking out watchfully. ‘Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the country perhaps.’

At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare. ‘There’s your Company’s station,’ said the Swede, pointing to three wooden barrack-like structures on the rocky slope. ‘I will send your things up. Four boxes did you say? So. Farewell.’

I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and also for an undersized railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty rails. To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot, where dark things seemed to stir feebly. I blinked, the path was steep. A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless blasting was all the work going on.

A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the

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reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.

Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that chain-gang get out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know I am not particularly tender; I’ve had to strike and to fend off. I’ve had to resist and to attack sometimes—that’s only one way of resisting—without counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into. I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men—men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther. For a moment I stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally I descended the hill, obliquely, towards the trees I had seen.

I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn’t a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do. I don’t know. Then I nearly fell into a very narrow ravine, almost no more than a scar in the hillside. I discovered that a lot of imported drainage-pipes for the settlement had been tumbled in there. There wasn’t one that was not broken. It was a wanton smash-up. At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment; but no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno. The rapids were near, and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved, with a mysterious sound—as though the tearing pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible.

Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.

They were dying slowly—it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now—nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air—and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the trees. Then, glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out

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slowly. The man seemed young—almost a boy—but you know with them it’s hard to tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good Swede’s ship’s biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on it and held—there was no other movement and no other glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck—Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge—an ornament—a charm—a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it? It looked startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.

Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and after a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone.

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“State of the Union Address”containing the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, 1904President Theodore RooseveltSelection

It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power. If every country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show the progress in stable and just civilization which with the aid of the Platt Amendment Cuba has shown since our troops left the island, and which so many of the republics in both Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all question of interference by this Nation with their affairs would be at an end. Our interests and those of our southern neighbors are in reality identical. They have great natural riches, and if within their borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to them. While they thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence cannot be separated from the responsibility of making good use of it.

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The Great WarPrimary Sources

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The Program of Count Cavour, 1846Count Camillo Cavour

The history of every age proves that no people can attain a high degree of intelligence and morality unless its feeling of nationality is strongly developed. This noteworthy fact is an inevitable consequence of the laws that rule human nature….Therefore, if we so ardently desire the emancipation of Italy—if we declare that in the face of this great question all the petty questions that divide us must be silenced—it is not only that we may see our country glorious and powerful but that above all we may elevate her in intelligence and moral development up to the plane of the most civilized nations….This union we preach with such ardor is not so difficult to obtain as one might suppose if one judged only by exterior appearances or if one were preoccupied with out unhappy divisions. Nationalism has become general; it grows daily; and it has already grown strong enough to keep all parts of Italy united despite the differences that distinguish them.

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Speech of the King of Italy, 1861King Victor Emmanuel II

Free, and nearly entirely united, the opinion of civilized nations is favorable to us; the just and liberal principles, now prevailing in the councils of Europe, are favorable to us. Italy herself, too, will become a guarantee of order and peace, and will once more be an efficacious instrument of universal civilization….These facts have inspired the nation with great confidence in its own destinies. I take pleasure in manifesting to the first Parliament of Italy the joy I feel in my heart as king and soldier.

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“Blood and Iron” Speech, 1862Minister President of Prussia Otto von Bismarck

“[W]e are perhaps too ‘educated’ to put up with a constitution; we are too critical....This may sound paradoxical, but it goes to show how difficult it is in Prussia to carry on a constitutional existence….We are too ardent, we like to carry too heavy a weight of armor for our fragile bodies; be we should also make use of it. Germany doesn’t look to Prussian liberalism, but to its power: Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Baden can indulge in liberalism, but no one will expect them to undertake Prussia’s role; Prussia must gather and consolidate her strength in readiness for the favorable moment, which has already been missed several times; Prussia’s boundaries according to the Vienna treaties are not favorable to a healthy political life; not by means of speeches and majority verdicts will the great decisions of the time be made—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 [at the failed Frankfurt Assembly]—but by iron and blood.

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“United States’ Declaration of Neutrality”, 1914President Woodrow Wilson

The effect of the war upon the United States will depend upon what American citizens say and do. Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of impartiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned. The spirit of the nation in this critical matter will be determined largely by what individuals and society and those gathered in public meetings do and say, upon what newspapers and magazines contain, upon what ministers utter in their pulpits, and men proclaim as their opinions upon the street.

The people of the United States are drawn from many nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war. It is natural and inevitable that there should be the utmost variety of sympathy and desire among them with regard to the issues and circumstances of the conflict. Some will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the momentous struggle. It will be easy to excite passion and difficult to allay it. Those responsible for exciting it will assume a heavy responsibility, responsibility for no less a thing than that the people of the United States, whose love of their country and whose loyalty to its government should unite them as Americans all, bound in honor and affection to think first of her and her interests, may be divided in camps of hostile opinion, hot against each other, involved in the war itself in impulse and opinion if not in action.

Such divisions amongst us would be fatal to our peace of mind and might seriously stand in the way of the proper performance of our duty as the one great nation at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play a part of impartial mediation and speak the counsels of peace and accommodation, not as a partisan, but as a friend.

I venture, therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak a solemn word of warning to you against that deepest, most subtle, most essential breach of neutrality which may spring out of partisanship, out of passionately taking sides. The United States must be neutral in fact, as well as in name, during these days that are to try men’s souls. We must be impartial in thought, as well as action, must put a curb upon our sentiments, as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another.

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All Quiet on the Western Front, Chapter 2 Erich Maria RemarqueSelection

Once it was different. When we went to the district-commandant to enlist, we were a class of twenty young men, many of whom proudly shaved for the first time before going to the barracks. We had no definite plans for our future. Our thoughts of a career and occupation were as yet of too unpractical a character to furnish any scheme of life. We were still crammed full of vague ideas which gave to life, and to the war also an ideal and almost romantic character. We were trained in the army for ten weeks and in this time more profoundly influenced than by ten years at school. We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer. At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent, we recognised that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill. We became soldiers with eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us.

After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole gamut of culture from Plato to Goethe. With our young, awakened eyes we saw that the classical conception of the Fatherland held by our teachers resolved itself here into a renunciation of personality such as one would not ask of the meanest servants--salutes, springing to attention, parade-marches, presenting arms, right wheel, left wheel, clicking the heels, insults, and a thousand pettifogging details. We had fancied our task would be different, only to find we were to be trained for heroism as though we were circus-ponies. But we soon accustomed ourselves to it. We learned in fact that some of these things were necessary, but the rest merely show. Soldiers have a fine nose for such distinctions.

By threes and fours our class was scattered over the platoons amongst Frisian fishermen, peasants, and labourers with whom we soon made friends. Kropp, Müller, Kemmerich, and I went to No .9 platoon under Corporal Himmelstoss.

He had the reputation of being the strictest disciplinarian in the camp, and was proud of it. He was a small undersized fellow with a foxy, waxed moustache, who had seen twelve years’ service and was in civil life a postman. He had a special dislike of Kropp, Tjaden, Westhus, and me, because he sensed a quiet defiance.

I have remade his bed fourteen times in one morning. Each time he had some fault to find and pulled it to pieces. I have kneaded a pair of prehistoric boots that were as hard as iron for twenty hours--with intervals of course--until they became as soft as butter and not even Himmelstoss could find anything more to do to them; under his orders I have scrubbed out the Corporals’ Mess with a tooth-brush. Kropp and I were given the job of clearing the barrack-square of snow with a hand-broom and a dust-pan, and we would have gone on till we were frozen had not a lieutenant accidentally appeared who sent us off, and hauled Himmelstoss over the coals. But the only result of this was to make Himmelstoss hate us more. For six weeks consecutively I did guard every Sunday and was hut-orderly for the same length of time. With full pack and rifle I have had to practise on a wet, soft, newly-ploughed field the “Prepare to advance, advance!” and the “Lie down!” until I was one lump of mud and finally collapsed. Four hours later I had to

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report to Himmelstoss with my clothes scrubbed clean, my hands chafed and bleeding. Together with Kropp, Westhus, and Tjaden I have stood at attention in a hard frost without gloves for a quarter of an hour at a stretch, while Himmelstoss watched for the slightest movement of our bare fingers on the steel barrel of the rifle. I have run eight times from the top floor of the barracks down to the courtyard in my shirt at two o’clock in the morning because my drawers projected three inches beyond the edge of the stool on which one had to stack all one’s things. Alongside me ran the corporal, Himmelstoss, and trod on my bare toes. At bayonet-practice I had constantly to fight with Himmelstoss, I with a heavy iron weapon, whilst he had a handy wooden one with which he easily struck my arms till they were black and blue. Once, indeed, I became so infuriated that I ran at him blindly and gave him a mighty jab in the stomach and knocked him down. When he reported me the company commander laughed at him and told him he ought to keep his eyes open; he understood Himmelstoss, and apparently was not displeased at his discomfiture. I became a past master on the parallel bars and excelled at physical jerks;--we have trembled at the mere sound of his voice, but this runaway post-horse never got the better of us.

One Sunday as Kropp and I were lugging a latrine-bucket on a pole across the barrack-yard, Himmelstoss came by, all polished up and spry for going out. He planted himself in front of us and asked how we liked the job. In spite of ourselves we tripped and emptied the bucket over his legs. He raved, but the limit had been reached.

“That means clink,” he yelled.

But Kropp had had enough. “There’ll be an enquiry first,” he said, “and then we’ll unload.”

“Mind how you speak to a non-commissioned officer!” bawled Himmelstoss. “Have you lost your senses? You wait till you’re spoken to. What will you do, anyway?”

“Show you up, Corporal,” said Kropp, his thumbs in line with the seams of his trousers.

Himmelstoss saw that we meant it and went off without saying a word. But before he disappeared he growled: “You’ll drink this!”--but that was the end of his authority. He tried it on once more in the ploughed field with his “Prepare to advance, advance” and “Lie down.” We obeyed each order, since an order’s an order and has to be obeyed. But we did it so slowly that Himmelstoss became desperate. Carefully we went down on our knees, then on our hands, and soon; in the meantime, quite infuriated, he had given another command.

But before we had even begun to sweat he was hoarse. After that he left us in peace. He did indeed always refer to us as swine, but there was, nevertheless, a certain respect in his tone. There were many other staff corporals, the majority of whom were more decent. But above all each of them wanted to keep his good job there as long as possible, and this he could do only by being strict with the recruits.

So we were put through every conceivable refinement of parade-ground soldiering till we often howled with rage. Many of us became ill through it; Wolf actually died of inflammation of the lung. But we would have felt ridiculous had we hauled down our colours. We became hard, suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough--and that was good; for these attributes were just what we

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lacked. Had we gone into the trenches without this period of training most of us would certainly have gone mad. Only thus were we prepared for what awaited us. We did not break down, but adapted ourselves; our twenty years, which made many another thing so grievous, helped us in this. But by far the most important result was that it awakened in us a strong, practical sense of esprit de corps, which in the field developed into the finest thing that arose out of the war—comradeship.

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With Austrian Cavalry on the Eastern FrontOskar Kokoschka (Austria-Hungary)

There was something stirring at the edge of the forest. Dismount! Lead horses! Our line was joined by volunteers, and we beat forward into the bushes as if we were going out to shoot pheasant. The enemy was withdrawing deeper into the forest, firing only sporadically. So we had to mount again, which was always the worst part, for since conscription had been introduced the requisitioned horses were as gun-shy as the reservists who had been called up were wretched horsemen. After all, most of them were used to sitting only on an office chair. In the forests suddenly we were met by a hail of bullets so near and so thick that one seemed to see each bullet flitting past; it was like a startles swarm of wasps. Charge! Now the great day had come, the day for which I too had been longing. I still had enough presence of mind to urge my mount forward and to one side, out of the throng of other horses that had now gone wild, as if chased by ghosts, the congestion being made worse by more coming up from the rear and galloping over the fallen men and beasts. I wanted to settle this thing on my own and to look the enemy straight in the face. A hero’s death—fair enough! But I had no wish to be trampled to death like a worm. The Russians had lured us into a trap. I had actually set eyes on the Russian machine gun before I felt a dull blow on my temple.

The sun and the moon were both shining at once and my head ached like mad. What on earth was I to do with this scent of flowers? Some flower—I couldn’t remember its name however I racked my brains. And all that yelling around me and the moaning of the wounded, which seemed to fill the whole forest—that must have been what brought me round. Good lord, they must be in agony! Then I became absorbed by the fact that I couldn’t control the cavalry booth with the leg in it, which was moving about too far away, although it belonged to me. I recognized the boot by the spur: contrary to regulations, my spurs had no sharp rowels. Over the grass there were two captains in Russian uniform dancing a ballet, running up and kissing each other on the cheeks like two young girls. That would have been against regulations in our army. I had a tiny round hole in my head. My horse, lying on top of me, had lashed out one last time before dying, and that had brought me to my senses. I tried to say something, but my mouth was stiff with blood, which was beginning to congeal. The shadows all round me were growing huger and huger, and I wanted to ask how it was that the sun and moon were both shining at the same time. I wanted to point at the sky, but my arm wouldn’t move. Perhaps I lay there unconscious for several days.

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Machine Guns in Action, Russian Poland, 8 October 1914Karl H. Von Wiegand, journalist

Today I saw a wave of Russian flesh and blood dash against a wall of German steel…From the outset of the advance the German artillery began shelling the onrushing mass with wonderfully timed shrapnel.

On came the Slavic swarm—into the range of the German trenches, with wild yells and never a waver. Russian battle flags, the first I had seen, appeared in the front of the charging ranks.Then came a new sound. First I saw a sudden, almost grotesque melting of the advancing line. It was different from anything that had taken place before. The men literally went down like dominoes in a row….

Mounted officers dashed along the line urging the men forward. Horses fell with men. I saw a dozen riderless horses dashing madly through the lines, adding a new terror….Then with the withering fire raking them even as they faltered, the line broke. Panic ensured.

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Sergeant Bell at the First Battle of Ypres on the Western Front, 29 October 1914Sergeant J.F. Bell

If we could not be driven out of the trench, it seemed certain that we would be blown out of it. Shells kept landing near enough in front of or behind the trench…. I slipped over the rear of the trench, to cut across and meet the lads as they emerged from the communication trench, but had only gone about six yards when I received what in the regiment was called the “dull thud.” I thought I had been violently knocked on the head, but, feeling I was not running properly, I looked down and discovered that my right foot was missing. My power of speech had left me…[and] I swooned into the trench…. “Pipe” Adams [tried to help me, but] I persuaded him to go. I then put on a field dressing and a shirt from my pack over my stump and lay down….

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Shelled in Trenches on the Western FrontSecond-Lieutenant Graham Greenwell (U.K.)

As I was about to go across [a trench] I saw a blinding flash in front of me and a great column of flame and earth rose into the sky: the concussion hurled me backwards….I felt shaken to pieces: it was a most horrible feeling of being absolutely dazed and helpless just at the wrong moment….[Next] Conny saved our lives by yelling out, “Look out for the meinenwerfer!” He had just heard the faint sound of its discharge. There was a rush backwards and everyone flung themselves face downwards under any sort of protection that offered. There was another terrific explosion and we were covered with filthy smoke and falling mud and earth

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The Somme: Day One—Through German EyesMatthaus Gerster (Germany)

“Get Ready!”

A few minutes later, when the leading British line was within one hundred yards, the rattle of machine guns and rifle fire broke out from along the whole line of craters…. [A] mass of shells from the German batteries in rear tore through the air and burst among the advancing lines. Whole sections seemed to fall, and the rear formations, moving in closer order, quickly scattered. The advance rapidly crumbled under this hail of shells and bullets. All along the line men could be seen throwing their arms into the air and collapsing, never to move again. Badly wounded rolled about in their agony, and others less severely injured crawled to the nearest shell-hole for shelter.

[Where the British had reached our trenches] some of us continued to fire at point-blank range, others threw hand grenades among them. The British bombers answered back, while the infantry rushed forward with fixed bayonets. The noise of the battle became indescribable. The shouting of orders and the shrill British cheers as they charged forward, could be heard above the violent and intense…machine guns and rifles and the bursting bombs, and above the deep thunderings of the artillery and the shell explosions. With all this were mingled the moans and groans of the wounded, the cries for help and the last screams of death. Again and again the extended lines of British infantry broke against the German defense like waves against a cliff, only to be beaten back.

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The Somme: In Captured German TrenchesPhilip Gibbs, journalist

[Upon entering the trench] I drew back from the fat corpses. They looked monstrous, lying there crumpled up, amidst a foul litter of clothes, stick bombs, old boots, and bottles. Groups of dead lay in ditches which had once been trenches, flung into chaos by that bombardment. They had been bayoneted….Some of the German dead were young boys, too young to be killed for old men’s crimes, and other might have been old or young. One could not tell because they had no faces, and were just masses of raw flesh in rags of uniforms. Legs and arms lay separate without any bodies thereabouts.

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Lance-Corporal Baxter (U.K.) Wins the DCM in the Western FrontRobert Graves (U.K.)

From the morning of September 24th to the night of October 3rd, I had in all eight hours of sleep. I kept myself awake and alive by drinking about a bottle of whisky a day. I had never drunk it before, and have seldom drunk it since; it certainly helped me then. We had no blankets, greatcoats, or waterproof sheets, nor any time or material to build new shelters. The rain poured down. Every night we went out to fetch the dead of the other battalions. The Germans continued indulgent and we had few casualties. After the first day or two the corpses swelled and stank. I vomited more than once while superintending the carrying. Those we could not get in from the German wire continued to swell until the wall of the stomach collapsed, either naturally or when punctured by a bullet; a disgusting smell would float across. The colour of the dead faces changed from white to yellow-grey, to red, to purple, to green, to black, to slimy.

On the morning of the 27th a cry arose from No Man’s Land. A wounded soldier of the Middlesex [battalion] had recovered consciousness after two days. He lay close to the German wire. Our men head it and looked at each other. We had a tender-hearted lance-corporal named Baxter. He was the man to boil up a special Dixie for the sentries of his section when they came off duty. As soon as he heard the wounded Middlesex man, he ran along the trench calling for a volunteer to help fetch him in. Of course, no one would go; it was death to put one’s head over the parapet. When he came running to ask me I excused myself as being the only officer in the company. I would come out with him at dusk, I said—not now. So he went alone. He jumped quickly over the parapet, then strolled across No Man’s Land, waving a handkerchief; the Germans fired to frighten him, but since he persisted they let him come up close. Baxter continued towards them and, when he got to the Middlesex man, stopped and pointed to show the Germans what he was at. Then he dressed the man’s wounds, gave him a drink of rum and some biscuit that he had with him, and promised to be back again at nightfall. he did come back, with a stretcher party, and the man eventually recovered. I recommended Baxter for the Victoria Cross, being the only officer who had witnessed the action, but the authorities thought it worth no more than a Distinguished Conduct Medal.

On Burying the DeadLeonard Thompson (U.K.)

[Upon arriving as replacements at the aftermath of a battle, the land] was full of corpses. Dead Englishmen, lines and lines of them, and with their eyes wide open. We all stopped talking. I’d never seen a dead man before and here I was looking at two or three hundred of them. It was our first fear. Nobody had mentioned this. I was very shocked. I thought of Suffolk [his hometown] and it seemed a happy place for the first time….

We set to work to bury people. We pushed them into the trench but bits of them kept getting uncovered and sticking out, like people in a badly made bed. Hands were the worst: they would escape from the sand, pointing, begging—even waving…. At night…the stench was the worse…. The flies entered the trenches at night.

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U-Boat 202 AttacksAdolf K.G.E. von Spiegel (Germany)

The steamer appeared to be close to us and looked colossal. I saw the captain walking on his bridge, a small whistle in his mouth. I saw the crew cleaning the deck forward, and I saw, with surprise and a slight shudder, long rows of wooden partitions right along all the decks, from which gleamed the shining black and brown backs of horses.

“Oh, heavens, horses! What a pity, those lovely beasts!”

“But it cannot be helped,” I went on thinking. “War is war, and every horse fewer on the Western front is a reduction of England’s fighting power.” I must acknowledge, however, that the thought of what must come was a most unpleasant one, and I will describe what happened as briefly as possible.

There were only a few more degrees top go before the steam would be on the correct bearing. She would be there almost immediately; she was passing us at the proper distance, only a few hundred metres away.

“Stand by for firing a torpedo!” I called down to the control room.

That was a cautionary order to al hands on board. Everyone held his breath.

Now the bows of the steamer cut across the zero line of my periscope—now the forecastle—the bridge—the foremast—funnel—

“Fire!”

A slight tremor when through the boat—the torpedo had gone.

“Beware, when it is released!”

The death-bringing shot was a true one, and the torpedo ran towards the doomed ship at high speed. I could follow its course exactly by the light streak of bubbles which was left in its wake.

“Twenty seconds,” counted the helmsman, who, watch in hand, had to measure the exact interval of time between the departure of the torpedo and its arrival at its destination.

“Twenty-three seconds.” Soon, soon this violent, terrifying thing would happen. I saw that the bubble-track of the torpedo had been discovered on the bridge of the steamer, as frightened arms pointed towards the water and the captain put his hands in front of his eyes and waited resignedly. Then a frightful explosion followed, and we were all thrown against one another by the concussion, and then, like Vulcan, huge and majestic, a column of water two hundred metres high and fifty metres broad, terrible in its beauty and power, shot up to the heavens.

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“Hit abaft the second funnel,” I shouted down to the control room.

Then they fairly let themselves go down below. There was a real wave of enthusiasm, arising from hearts freed from suspense, a wave which rushed through the whole boat and whose joyous echoes reached me in the conning tower. And over there? War is a hard task master. A terrible drama was being enacted on board the ship, which was hard hit and in a sinking condition. She had a heavy and rapidly increasing list toward us.

All her decks lay visible to me. From all the hatchways a storming, despairing mass of men were fighting their way on deck, grimy stokers, officers, soldiers, grooms, cooks. They all rushed, ran, screamed for boats, tore and thrust one another from the ladders leading down to them, fought for the lifebelts and jostled one another on the sloping deck. All starboard boats could not be lowered on account of the list; everyone therefore ran across to the port boats, which, in the hurry and panic, had been lowered with great stupidity either half-full or overcrowded. The men left behind were wringing their hands in despair and running to and fro along the decks; finally they threw themselves into the water so as to swim to the boats.

Then-a second explosion, followed by the escape of white hissing steam from all hatchways and scuttles. The white steam drove the horses mad. I saw a beautiful long-tailed dapple-grey horse take a mighty leap over the berthing rail and land into a fully laden boat. At that point I could not bear the sight any longer, and I lowered the periscope and dived deep.

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Decree of Abdication, March 15, 1917Tsar Nicholas II

In the days of the great struggle against the foreign enemies, who for nearly three years have tried to enslave our fatherland, the Lord God has been pleased to send down on Russia a new heavy trial.

Internal popular disturbances threaten to have a disastrous effect on the future conduct of this persistent war. The destiny of Russia, the honour of our heroic army, the welfare of the people and the whole future of our dear fatherland demand that the war should be brought to a victorious conclusion whatever the cost.

The cruel enemy is making his last efforts, and already the hour approaches when our glorious army together with our gallant allies will crush him. In these decisive days in the life of Russia, We thought it Our duty of conscience to facilitate for Our people the closest union possible and a consolidation of all national forces for the speedy attainment of victory.

In agreement with the Imperial Duma We have thought it well to renounce the Throne of the Russian Empire and to lay down the supreme power. As We do not wish to part from Our beloved son, We transmit the succession to Our brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, and give Him Our blessing to mount the Throne of the Russian Empire.

We direct Our brother to conduct the affairs of state in full and inviolable union with the representatives of the people in the legislative bodies on those principles which will be established by them, and on which He will take an inviolable oath.

In the name of Our dearly beloved homeland, We call on Our faithful sons of the fatherland to fulfil their sacred duty to the fatherland, to obey the Tsar in the heavy moment of national trials, and to help Him, together with the representatives of the people, to guide the Russian Empire on the road to victory, welfare, and glory.

May the Lord God help Russia!

(SIGNED)

NICHOLAS II

(COUNTER-SIGNED)

FREDERICKS, MINISTER OF THE IMPERIAL COURT

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The Great WarSecondary Sources

The Unification of Italy: 1860 and 1870

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Jonathan Rogers

The unification of Germany under Otto von Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm I wasn’t the only dramatic new national event in Europe. Another new nation was being formed to the south of Germany, and the story may surprise you.

How old is “Italy?” Your first guess is probably, “really, really old.” After all, when we think of Italian history, it’s hard not to think of the Roman Empire, which is kind of the ultimate expression of Italian civilization. But remember, Rome was just one city that ended up ruling all of Italy, along with the rest of the Mediterranean world; Italy wasn’t really a nation. And after the Fall of Rome…

Italy has had a run of rough luck throughout history. Geographically, it’s a tough place to rule as one united country. It has mountains running down its center that basically split the peninsula in half, and the Northern and Southern regions have surprisingly different climates, economies, histories, and cultures. The Northwest and Northeast of Italy are located next to historically strong powers like France and Austria.

From the Fall of Rome until the mid-1800’s, Italy was hardly ever united, and never under an actual Italian power, but only by foreign Empires. Italy spent most of its time as a collection of kingdoms (foreign as often as not) and local city-states and republics. Places like Venice, Genoa, Sicily, Naples, and Florence were fiercely independent; and sometimes strong powers in their own right. A few writers and statesmen occasionally talked about a united Italy, but that was about it. Perhaps the oddest off these “mini-countries,” was the Papal States, which was run by the Roman Catholic Pope himself, and included the city of Rome.

The French Revolution helped unleash ideas of Nationalism in Italy, just as it had in Germany. People began to talk about being “Italian,” and not just “Florentine,” “Roman,” “Venetian,” “Genoese,” etc. There were a number of uprisings and demonstrations by “Italian

Patriots;” some that ended quite bloodily, especially in 1848. One of these Revolutionary leaders was Giuseppe Mazzini, who helped incite riots and demonstrations, and spread pro-Italian literature and pamphlets. Frankly, he spent almost as much time out of Italy in exile, as he did in Italy.

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Count Camillo Cavour

Real movement towards unification started in the 1850’s with the King and Prime Minister of Piedmont-Sardinia (Piedmont is in Northwest Italy, and Sardinia is an island to the West of the Italian Peninsula). The King’s name was Victorio Emmanuel II, and the Prime Minister’s was Count Camillo di Cavour. Together, they built up the Kingdom of Piedmont, and began working to bring in the other Italian provinces.

They had to contend with both French and Austrian influence, and skillfully managed to play the two great powers off each other. In 1859 they managed to get the Austrians and French to go to war against each other, which ended up weakening both Empires and leaving the Italians with more room to conduct their own affairs. A series of Plebiscites in 1860 helped formally bring many Northern Italian city-states into the Kingdom of Piedmont. A Plebiscite is a popular vote by all the citizens of a region or country on an important matter. In this case, the citizens of local states were voting to join the growing kingdom of Piedmont. Pro-Nationalists like Giuseppe Mazzini had been working to convince the public that Italian unification was better than remaining independent and separate, and Prime Minister Cavour was successful at persuading the nationalists that Piedmont had the best chance of accomplishing their goals.

Meanwhile, in Southern Italy, a dramatic red figure was at work. The most famous individual in this story by far is Giuseppe Garibaldi. Garibaldi was a soldier of fortune and very strong Italian Patriot, who saw himself as doing whatever was necessary to build a united Italy along Democratic Republican lines. He and his followers wore bright red shirts, grey trousers, and scarves as a sort of nationalist uniform. With the secret support of Cavour, and only about a thousand of these “Red Shirts” at his command, Garibaldi landed in Sicily in 1860.

Sicily and Southern Italy were called the “Kingdom of the Two Sicilies,” and had been under the royal house of Bourbon for quite some time. The royal government was deeply unpopular and ineffective at meeting the demands of

farmers and the middle-class, and as a result Garibaldi’s revolutionaries were met with enthusiasm. Garibaldi defeated the royalist forces in Sicily, and then landed in Southern Italy. In one of the most famous images of the unification of Italy, Garibaldi marched up the coast towards Rome as if he were a victorious liberator.

The Bourbon king in Naples was overthrown, and Sicily and Naples voted in Plebiscites to join the kingdom of Piedmont. The Papal States soon followed, though Rome itself remained under the control of the Pope (who had support from France). Aside from Rome, the only other state

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Victorio Emmanuel II

outside Piedmont’s control was Venice, which for the time being was still an Austrian possession.

Enough of Italy was now under the control of Emmanuel and Cavour, that on March 17th, 1861, the new Kingdom of Italy was formally announced. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Emmanuel, and Cavour are often called “the Four Fathers” of modern Italy, though Cavour’s skillful manipulation of politics probably makes him the most important person in the story.

Rome and Venice remained outside the Kingdom of Italy for a time, until bigger events in Europe moved in Italy’s favor. You may recall Bismarck’s three wars against Denmark, Austria, and France. In the 1866 war against Austria, Italy supported Bismarck’s Prussia against Austria, and as part of the peace treaty, Italy received Venice as a reward for backing the winners. Then, in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck’s Prussia smashed the power of France, and established itself as the new dominant power in Central Europe. This enabled Bismarck to formally proclaim the new German Empire, but it also allowed the Kingdom of Italy to finish its own unification. Once defeated, French support for the Pope in Rome was severely weakened, and Italy was able to occupy the city in the Fall of 1870. Rome was the final piece of the new Italian nation.

The Pope is still in Rome of course. The Roman Catholic Church was granted a small piece of the city around the Vatican (the area containing St. Peter’s Cathedral and the official residences of the Pope). To this day, “Vatican City” is technically its own independent mini-country, inside the city of Rome itself.

The Italians are very proud of their united country, and celebrate the figures of Mazzini, Victorio Emmanuel II, Count Cavour, and Garibaldi. Since unification, Italy hasn’t quite lived up to their hopes as a leading power in Europe, even though Italian leaders have made much about being inheritors of the old Roman Empire. Victorio Emmanuel has a very large monument in Rome at one end of the Old Roman Forum, and we can wonder if the monument is really worth of the legacy of the ancient Caesars who came before, but for the first time in a very long time, Italy is its own nation.

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The Unification of Germany and Otto von BismarckJonathan Rogers

The wars of Napoleon after the French Revolution were the last big wars in Europe, and ended in 1815, with the battle of Waterloo. The French Revolution had tried to destroy all the old kingdoms and monarchs of Europe, the Revolutionaries had wanted Republics and Democracies, somewhat similar to what America had established with our own Revolution. Napoleon took over France and proclaimed an Empire, and almost conquered all of Europe before he was defeated.

After the war, the European countries all got together at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and tried to keep things in place the way they had been before the French Revolution, preserving their kingdoms and monarchies. Across Europe, most countries had some sort of royal ruler (King, Duke, Emperor, etc), and at most, only limited government and representation for their subjects, usually in the form of a Parliament with elected representatives (similar to our own House of Representatives in Congress).

As the 1800’s went along, the Industrial Revolution started to affect Europe just like it had in America. Factories were built, new goods produced and businesses started, huge cities grew up with hundreds of thousands of workers. Steamships and railroads carried goods, telegraph lines could transmit wires by messages long distances.

The rulers of Europe tried to cope with these changes, and tried to strengthen their countries against potential enemies. One of the ideas indirectly unleashed by the French Revolution was Nationalism, which is similar to patriotism, but with one important difference. A patriot is someone who loves their country (very properly, too). A Nationalist is someone who thinks “my country is the best, no matter what.” Nationalism and the desire for national greatness was a growing trend in Europe, and perhaps nowhere more so, than in Germany.

Nationalism was a growing idea in Germany, because there was no Germany. If that’s confusing, don’t worry, it should be. There was no German country, but there was a Germany culture, language, and people. Germany as an idea and region (the same way there is an England or France), had been around for a long time; a very long time. The idea of Germany, and a German language, had been around since before the Roman Empire.

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1815 - No Germany Here

But there had never been one country or kingdom that we could call “Germany.” The area had always been ruled by one or two large Empires, or was simply a large collection of small and independent states, kingdoms, or principalities. They were all more or less German in the sense of the language they spoke and the culture they shared (with the usual regional differences, just like our North and South), but they had different rulers. Places like Bavaria, Saxony, Hesse, Mecklenburg, Hanover, were like small countries, but also German at the same time. Throughout the 1800’s, there was a growing desire to turn these independent countries, into one large country actually called Germany. In many ways, this was in response to the French Revolution’s ideas, and also a desire amongst Germans to rival France as the greatest nation of Europe.

Of these German states, the largest and most powerful by far was Prussia. Prussia was a Kingdom in what we would call Central and Eastern Germany, and had been around for several hundred years. It had a strong military tradition, and was famous for the skill and discipline of its soldiers. As the largest of the German states, it was probably natural that it would be the state to unite all of Germany into one country.

Forging all the separate states in Germany into one country was a tall order, and would require a uniquely impressive figure. That man was Otto von Bismarck, and he did more to shape the map of Europe than anyone else in second half of the 1800’s. He was an incredibly skilled politician and statesman, who took a very hard-nosed and realistic approach to politics. Through a series of internal political reforms, and outward wars and diplomatic arrangements, he used the Kingdom of Prussia to gain control of the individual German states and create a new Germany.

Bismarck (born, 1815, died, 1898) was born into a minor noble family (called Junkers in German), and worked his way up through the Prussian government after studying law and history in school (where he didn’t study very hard, to be honest). He became an experienced diplomat, serving as ambassador to Russia and France, and in 1862, became the Foreign Minister to the King of Prussia (King Wilhelm I). This made him one of the most powerful advisors to the King, and he was able to shape and control much of Prussia’s politics, both at home and abroad.

Bismarck was a stern figure, imposing, intelligent and persuasive. He had a tremendous moustache, and often wore the understated outfit of a country gentleman. He was a stickler for formality and “doing things the right way.” He even had a controversy with a political rival, over who should be seated at dinner first based on rank and privilege, and got into more than his fair share of duels (even carrying a scar from one of them). He disdained people and ideas that he thought were beneath him. Once, during a session of the Prussian Parliament (called the “Diet”) when the angry members of the legislature began shouting at him, he calmly snubbed them by taking out the newspaper and reading it while blatantly ignoring them. They stopped shouting.

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Younger Bismarck

Nicknamed the “Iron Chancellor,” Bismarck usually got what he wanted. His strong, stern personality seemed to embody the character of the Germany that he created. As the chief minister in Prussia, he forged a compromise with the more pro-democracy elements in the Diet, giving them a lot of what they wanted in terms of social reforms (including one of the first government-sponsored pension retirement programs in Europe). But mostly he worked to keep his domestic political opponents happy and off his back so he could focus on foreign policy; and the unification of Germany. In a famous speech, Bismarck said that, “The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.”

Bismarck meant that the blood of soldiers and the iron of their weapons would prove decisive.

Bismarck helped lead Prussia through several wars and diplomatic arrangements that brought the other German states under Prussian control, and the final creation of Germany. Prussia defeated Denmark in 1864 in a short war that brought in the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein (the Germans have wonderful names for their provinces). Bismarck then used diplomacy to isolate Austria (the second-largest German power) and then win a second war in 1866 that firmly established Prussia as the dominant German state. He began organizing many of the rest of the German provinces for further integration with Prussia, but would finally establish the new country of Germany, after one of Prussia’s great achievements; the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.

Through most of the 1800’s, France was considered the strongest power of Europe. It was one of the largest countries, and had a great history as one of the chief military powers of the continent (any country with a figure like Napoleon in its history will be taken seriously). Though Great Britain had become a truly “great” power, with the world’s best navy, largest colonies, and most advanced economy, the British tried not to get too involved in the politics of central Europe most of the time. As a result, France was the chief central European power, and even controlled two territories that were historically considered German (they were called Alsace and Lorraine). In addition, with Bismarck creating a new, powerful German state, France was becoming very nervous about a potential new rival; things looked like they were on a collision course. If Prussia could beat France, even in a small-scale war, it would establish Prussia as a leading power on the continent, and give Bismarck the influence to unite the rest of the German provinces into a new country.

Bismarck engineered war with France, provoking the war while making sure that Prussia didn’t take the blame for starting it. In a controversy over the next ruler of Spain and whether or not a member of the German royal family would take the crown, Prussia and France got into a dispute. France didn’t want a relative of the Prussian royal family ruling Spain, since that would, in effect, surround France with potential enemies. When the French ambassador sent a letter to King Wilhelm explaining their opposition, Bismarck saw his chance. He edited the letter to make

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it appear as if the French were insulting the Prussians, and released it to the German newspapers. The French were furious by this underhanded move, and were forced to declare war. The trick of this is that Bismarck wanted war with France all along; he just wanted to goad the French into declaring war first, so Prussia wouldn’t look like the aggressor.

France expected to win. The French Foreign minister said that “We go to war with a light heart,” suggesting the confidence that the French felt. After all, they were the same country that Napoleon Bonaparte had led to victory so many times not so long ago. They were in for a rude surprise. Prussia didn’t just have a brilliant leader in Bismarck; they had a number of brilliant generals and a newly reformed army, which was very well trained and equipped. The Prussians used railroads to move their troops around and concentrate in key places before the French could react; and their powerful artillery pieces and excellent rifles gave them a decisive battlefield advantage when matched with their discipline and leadership. The Prussians won a few big battles, and advanced into France. After several months of tough resistance, Paris itself was captured by the Prussian’s. In the peace treaty that followed, France had to give up Alsace-Lorraine, and pay a hefty war fine of 5 billion francs. The French sulked in the humiliation of their defeat, and waited for the next war, dreaming of the chance to retake their lost provinces in Alsace-Lorraine and avenge their wounded pride. Not all of the lessons learned during the war, were remembered, but the legacy of the war cast a shadow that would last until the next one.

The shocking victory catapulted Prussia to fame and power, and gave Bismarck the chance to finish uniting the German states. In January of 1871, the new German state was officially announced as the Second German Empire. King Wilhelm I was hailed as Kaiser of Germany, from the German word for Caesar.

The new German Empire changed the game in Europe. People often describe European politics as resting on a “balance of power” format, where the peace and security of the

continent rests on making sure that no one country can become dominant over the others. Oftentimes in European history, when one nation rises up and becomes powerful, it forces many of the other states to unite against it, for fear that the dominant power will take over the others. For a long time, France had been the dominant power, and people had made their plans accordingly. But suddenly, Germany was the country to watch out for.

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United Germany in 1871

New, united Germany was larger, and stronger than almost any other nation in the world. It had a large population, a large economy, and a very powerful military. Its presence threatened to cause a large-scale war several times in the late 1800s. In many ways, Bismarck was the most important figure in keeping the peace in Europe until his retirement.

Bismarck guided the Kaisar Wilhelm I, and his son Wilhelm II after him, until 1890. With the goal of German unification achieved, Bismarck sought to protect and preserve his new state, and prevent a large-scale war in Europe. He was a very savvy politician and diplomat, who knew how to play the “balance of power” game. Bismarck always made sure that Germany had outright alliances, or potential alliances in case things went wrong. He also knew not to make Germany too much of a threat, in case that might drive several other countries together against him. One of his chief concerns was to make sure that France and Russia didn’t team up. With France on Germany’s Western Border, and Russia to the East, a Franco-Russian alliance would be a huge problem for Germany.

Bismarck created a strong working alliance with the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and kept Russia and France separate, even forging a secret treaty with Russia. While he was in office, he managed to keep the peace in Europe despite several political crises; usually involving territories in Eastern Europe and the Balkans (and we shall see what role these have to play later…).

Finally, in 1890, his time in office came to an end. The new German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, was not as wise as his father, but stubborn and proud, and he resented taking orders from Bismarck. In the elections of 1890, Bismarck’s domestic political program was roundly defeated, and he was eventually forced to resign. He retired to his estates in Prussia in the countryside, now rich and famous, where he lived for another 8 years.

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Europe in the Summer of 1914

1894: Imperial RussiaRobert MassieAbridged from Nicholas and Alexandra

From the Baltic city of St. Petersburg, built on a river marsh in a far northern corner of the empire, the Tsar ruled Russia. So immense were the Tsar’s dominions that, as night began to fall along their western borders, day already was breaking on their Pacific coast. Between these distant frontiers lay a continent, 1/6 of the land surface of the globe. Through the depth of Russia’s winters, millions of tall pine trees stood silent under heavy snows. In the summer, clusters of white-trunked birch trees rustled their silvery leaves in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. Rivers, wide and flat, flowed peacefully through the grassy plains of European Russia toward a limitless southern horizon. Eastward, in Siberia, even mightier rivers rolled north to the Artic, sweeping through forests where no human had ever been, and across desolate marshes of frozen tundra.

Here and there, thinly scattered across the broad land, lived the 130 million subjects of the Tsar: not only Slavs but Balts, Jews, Germans, Georgians, Armenians, Uzbeks, and Tartars. Some were clustered in provincial cities and towns, dominated by onion-shaped church domes rising above the white-walled houses. Many more lived in straggling villages of unpainted log huts. Next to doorways, a few sunflowers might grow. Geese and pigs wandered freely through the muddy street. Both men and women worked all summer, planting and scything the high silken grain before the coming of the first September frost. For six interminable months of winter, the open country became a wasteland of freezing whiteness. Inside their huts, in an atmosphere think with the aroma of steaming clothes and boiling tea, the peasants [poor farmers] sat around their huge clay stoves and argued and pondered the dark mysteries of nature and God.

In the country[side], the Russian people lived their lives under a blanket of silence. Most died in villages where they were born. [3/4] of them were peasants. When famine came and the black earth cracked for lack of rain, and the grain withered and crumbled to dust still on the stalks, then the peasants tore the thatch [sod] from their roofs to feed their livestock and sent their sons trudging into town to look for work. In famine, the hungry moujiks [peasants] wrapped themselves in ragged cloaks and stood all day in silence along the snowy roads. Noble ladies, warm in furs, drove their troikas [sleds] through the stricken countryside, delivering with handsome gestures of their slender arms a spray of silver coins. Soon, along came the tax collector to gather up the coins and ask for others.

When the moujiks grumbled, squadrons of Cossacks [famed Russian horsemen/cavalry] rode into town, with lances in their black-gloved hands and whips and sabers swinging from their saddles. Troublemakers were flogged, and bitterness flowed with blood. Landowner, police, local governor…were roundly cursed by Russia’s peasants. But never the Tsar. The Tsar, far away in a place nearer heaven than earth, did no wrong [in the peasants’ minds]. He was the Batiushka-Tsar, the Father of the Russian people….

As the end of the [19th] century approached, the life of many of these scattered towns and villages was stirring. The railroad was coming. During these years, Russia built railroads faster than any other country in Europe. As in the American West, railroads bridged the vast spaces,

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linked farms to cities, industries to markets. Travelers could step aboard a train in Moscow and, after a day in a cozy compartment, sipping tea and watching the snowbound countryside floast past, descend onto a station platform in St. Petersburg. In 1891, the Imperial government had begun the construction of Russia’s greatest railway, the Trans-Siberian. Beginning in the eastern suburbs of Moscow, the ribbon of track would stretch more than four-thousand miles to the Pacific Ocean.

…For millions of Russians, most of the drama and panoply [I will ask you what this word means] of life on earth were found in the Orthodox [Catholic] Church. In the great cathedrals of Russia, peasant women with kerchiefs over their heads could mingle with the princesses in furs and jewels. People of every class and age stood for hours holding candles, their minds and senses absorbed in the overwhelming display taking place around them. From every corner of the church, golden icons glittered in the glowing light. From the iconostasis, a high screen before the altar, from the miters and crosses of gold-robed bishops, blazed diamonds and emeralds and rubies. Priests with long beards trailing down their chests walked among the people, swinging smoking pots of incense. The service was…a linked succession of hymns, drawing unbelievable power from the surging notes of the deepest basses. Dazzled by sights and smells, washed clean by the soaring music, the congregation came forward at the end of the service to kiss the soft hand of the bishop and have him paint a cross in holy oil upon their foreheads. The Church offered the extremes of emotion, from gloom to ecstasy. It taught that suffering was good, that drabness and pain were inevitable….

…[In 1694], Tsar Peter the Great had forcibly wrenched the nation from its ancient Slav heritage and thrust it into the culture of Western Europe. On the marshes of the Neva River, Peter built a new city [St. Petersburg], intended to become Russia’s “Window on [looking to] Europe.”

…Peter’s city was built on water. It spread across nineteen islands, chained by arching bridges, laced by winding canals…. [The River Neva] “moved silently and swiftly like a slab of smooth grey metal” [through the city]….

Called the Venice of the North, the Babylon of the Snows, St. Petersburg was European, not Russian. Its architecture, its styles, its morals and its thought were Western [European, not Russian/Slavic]…[Its Italian architects] had molded huge baroque palaces in red and yellow, pale green or blue and white, placing them amid ornate gardens on broad and sweeping boulevards….Massive public buildings were lightened by ornamented windows, balconies, and columned doorways….

St. Petersburg was a northern city where the Artic latitudes played odd tricks with light and time. Winter nights began early in the afternoon and lasted until the middle of the following morning. Icy winds and whiling snowstorms swept across the flat plain surrounding the city to lash the walls and in windows of the [palaces] and freeze the River Neva hard as steel. Over the baroque spires and the frozen canals danced the strange fires of the aurora borealis [Northern Lights]. Occasionally a brilliant day would break the gloomy monotony. The sky would turn a slivery blue and the crystal snowflakes on the trees, rooftops, and gilded domes would sparkle with sunlight so bright that the eye could not bear the dazzling glare. Winter was a great leveler.

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Tsar, minister, priest, and factory worker all layered themselves in clothing and, upon coming into the street, headed straight to the samovar [Russian teapot] for a glass of hot tea.

Summer in St. Petersburg was as light as the winters were dark. For 22 hours the atmosphere of the city was suffused with light. By eleven in the evening the colors of the day had faded into a milky haze of silver and pearl, and the city…slept in silence. Yet those who were up after midnight could look to the east and see, as a pink line against the horizon, the beginning of the next dawn. Summer could be hot in the capitol. Windows opened to catch the river breezes also brought the salt air of the Gulf of Finland [Baltic Sea], the aromas of spice and tar, the sound of carriage wheels, the shouts of street vendors, the peal of bells from a nearby church.

St. Petersburg was the center of all that was advanced, all that was smart and much that was cynical in Russian life. Its great opera and ballet companies, its symphonies and chamber orchestras played the music of Tchaikovsky…; its citizens read Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. But society [cared more for French than Russian culture] and the best clothing and furniture were ordered from Paris. Russian noblemen had huge country estates [and vacationed in Italy]….Men went to the race track and the gambling clubs. Ladies slept until noon [then] received their hairdressers….Love affairs flourished, accompanied by the ceaseless rustle of delicious gossip.

Society went every night to the Imperial Ballet at the gorgeous blue-and-gold Maryinksy Theatre….After the theatre, ladies and their escorts bundled themselves into furs in little, bright red sleighs and sped noiselessly over the snows to restaurants for supper and dancing....

The “ball season” in St. Petersburg began on New Year’s Day and lasted until the beginning of Lent. Through these winter weeks, the aristocracy of the capitol moved through a staggering round of concerts, banquets, balls, ballets, operas, private parties and midnight suppers….There were receptions at which officers in brilliant uniforms with blazing decorations and old ladies in billowing satin dresses milled about in high-ceilinged rooms, plucking glasses of champagne from passing servants, and filling their plates with cold sturgeon, chicken creams, stuffed eggs, and three different kinds of caviar…. There were balls, a swirl of waltzes and gypsy music, of flashing jewels and blue, green, and scarlet officer uniforms….

At the height of the season, ladies put on their diamonds in the morning, attended church, received at luncheon,…and went home to dress for a ball. Traditionally, the finest balls were given by the Tsar at the Winter Palace. The Winter Palace…[had] great columns of jasper and marble [that] supported high gilded ceilings, hung with immense crystal and gold chandeliers. Outside, in the intense cold of a January night, the whole three blocks of the Winter Palace would be flooded with light. An endless procession of carriages drew up, depositing passengers who handed their furs or cloaks to attendants and then ascended the wide marble staircases, covered with thick velvet carpets. Along the walls [indoors]…were palm trees….

The three thousand guests included court officials in black, gold-laced uniforms, generals whose chests sagged with medals from the Turkish wars….At a great court ball, the passion of Russian women for jewels was displayed on every head, neck, ear, wrist, finger, and waist.

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An Imperial ball began precisely at 8:30 in the evening, when the Grand Master of Ceremonies appeared and tapped loudly three times on the floor with an ebony staff, embossed in gold with the double-headed eagle of the tsar. The sound brought an immediate hush. The great mahogany doors inlaid with gold swung open, the Grand Master of Ceremonies cried out, “Their Imperial Majesties,” and hundreds of dresses rustled as ladies sank into a deep curtsy. [And out stepped the Tsar and his wife, the Tsarina, the Emperor and Empress of Russia.]

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Trenchesfirstworldwar.com

After the initial great battles and long marches by huge armies, the front “stabilized” into a long line of trenches on each side facing each other between “No Man’s Land.” There were occasional big battles whenever one side launched a major attack attempting to break through the enemy trench lines. But most of the time, each army contented themselves with defending their trenches and harassing their opponents with sniper fire and the occasional artillery bombardment. For men in the trenches, life was full of dirt, death, disease, and boredom.

Life in the trenches during the Great War took many forms, and varied widely from sector to sector and from front to front. Undoubtedly, it was entirely unexpected for those eager thousands who signed up for war in August 1914.

A War of Movement?

Indeed, the Great War—a phrase coined even before it had begun—was expected to be a relatively short affair and, as with most wars, one of great movement. The Great War was typified, however, by its lack of movement.

Not that there wasn’t movement at all on the Western Front; the war began dramatically with sweeping advances by the Germans through Belgium and France en route for Paris. However, stalemate and trench warfare soon set in and the expected war of movement wasn’t restored until towards the close of the war, although the line rippled as successes were achieved at a local level. So what was life actually like for the men serving tours of duty in the line, be they front line, support or reserve trenches?

Daily Death in the Trenches

Death was a constant companion to those serving in the line, even when no raid or attack was launched or defended against. In busy sectors the constant shellfire directed by the enemy brought random death, whether their victims were lounging in a trench or lying in a dugout (many men were buried as a consequence of such large shell-bursts).

Similarly, novices were cautioned against their natural inclination to peer over the parapet of the trench into No Man’s Land. Many men died on their first day in the trenches as a consequence of a precisely aimed sniper’s bullet.

It has been estimated that up to one third of Allied casualties on the Western Front were actually sustained in the trenches. Aside from enemy injuries, disease wrought a heavy toll.

Rat Infestation

Rats in their millions infested trenches. There were two main types, the brown and the black rat. Both were despised but the brown rat was especially feared. Gorging themselves on human remains (grotesquely disfiguring them by eating their eyes and liver) they could grow to the size

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of a cat. Men, exasperated and afraid of these rats (which would even scamper across their faces in the dark), would attempt to rid the trenches of them by various methods: gunfire, with the bayonet, and even by clubbing them to death.

It was futile however: a single rat couple could produce up to 900 offspring in a year, spreading infection and contaminating food. The rat problem remained for the duration of the war (although many veteran soldiers swore that rats sensed impending heavy enemy shellfire and consequently disappeared from view).

Frogs, Lice, and Worse

Rats were by no means the only source of infection and nuisance. Lice were a never-ending problem, breeding in the seams of filthy clothing and causing men to itch unceasingly. Even when clothing was periodically washed and deloused, lice eggs invariably remained hidden in the seams; within a few hours of the clothes being re-worn the body heat generated would cause the eggs to hatch.

Lice caused Trench Fever, a particularly painful disease that began suddenly with severe pain followed by high fever. Recovery—away from the trenches—took up to twelve weeks. Lice were not actually identified as the culprit of Trench Fever until 1918.

Frogs by the score were found in shell holes covered in water; they were also found in the base of trenches. Slugs and horned beetles crowded the sides of the trench. Many men chose to shave their heads entirely to avoid another prevalent scourge: nits. Trench Foot was another medical condition peculiar to trench life. It was a fungal infection of the feet caused by cold, wet and unsanitary trench conditions. It could turn gangrenous and result in amputation. Trench Foot was more of a problem at the start of trench warfare; as conditions improved in 1915 it rapidly faded, although a trickle of cases continued throughout the war.

The Trench Cycle

Typically, a battalion would be expected to serve a spell in the front line. This would be followed by a stint spent in support, and then in reserve lines. A period of rest would follow—generally short in duration—before the whole cycle of trench duty would start afresh. In reality the cycle was determined by the necessities of the situation. Even while at rest men might find themselves tasked with duties that placed them in the line of fire.

Others would spend far longer in the front line than usual, usually in the more ‘busy’ sectors. As an example—and the numbers varied widely—a man might expect in a year to spend some 70 days in the front line, with another 30 in nearby support trenches. A further 120 might be spent in reserve. Only 70 days might be spent at rest. The amount of leave varied, with perhaps two weeks being granted during the year.

Stand To and the Morning HateThe daily routine of life in the trenches began with the morning ‘stand to.’ An hour before dawn everyone was roused from slumber by the company orderly officer and sergeant and ordered to

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climb up on the fire step to guard against a dawn raid by the enemy, bayonets fixed. This policy of stand to was adopted by both sides, and despite the knowledge that each side prepared itself for raids or attacks timed at dawn, many were actually carried out at this time.

Accompanying stand to, as the light grew, was the daily ritual often termed the ‘morning hate.’ Both sides would often relieve the tension of the early hours with machine gun fire, shelling and small arms fire, directed into the mist to their front: this made doubly sure of safety at dawn.

Rum, Rifles, and the Breakfast TruceWith stand to over, in some areas rum might then be issued to the men. They would then attend to the cleaning of their rifle equipment, which was followed by its inspection by officers.

Breakfast would next be served. In essentially every area of the line at some time or other each side would adopt an unofficial truce while breakfast was served and eaten. This truce often extended to the wagons which delivered such sustenance.

Truces such as these seldom lasted long; invariably a senior officer would hear of its existence and quickly stamp it out. Nevertheless it persisted throughout the war, and was more prevalent in quieter sectors of the line.

Inspection and Chores

With breakfast over the men would be inspected by either the company or platoon commander. Once this had been completed NCOs would assign daily chores to each man (except those who had been excused duty for a variety of reasons). Example—and necessary—daily chores included the refilling of sandbags, the repair of the duckboards on the floor of the trench, and the draining of trenches.

Particularly following heavy rainfall, trenches could quickly accumulate muddy water, making life ever more miserable for its occupants as the walls of the trench rapidly became misshapen and were prone to collapse. Pumping equipment was available for the draining of trenches; men would also be assigned to the repair of the trench itself. Still others would be assigned to the preparation of latrines.

Daily Boredom

Given that each side’s front line was constantly under watch by snipers and look-outs during daylight, movement was logically restricted until night fell. Thus, once men had concluded their assigned tasks they were free to attend to more personal matters, such as the reading and writing of letters home. Meals were also prepared. Sleep was snatched wherever possible—although it was seldom that men were allowed sufficient time to grab more than a few minutes rest before they were detailed to another task.

Dusk: Stand To, Supply, and MaintenanceWith the onset of dusk the morning ritual of stand to was repeated, again to guard against a surprise attack launched as light fell.

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This over, the trenches became a hive of activity. Supply and maintenance activities could be undertaken, although danger invariably accompanied these as the enemy would be alert for such movement. Men would be sent to the rear lines to fetch rations and water.

Other men would be assigned sentry duty on the fire step. Generally men would be expected to provide sentry duty for up to two hours. Any longer and there was a real risk of men falling asleep on duty—for which the penalty was death by firing squad.

Patrolling “No Man’s Land”

Patrols would often be sent out into No Man’s Land, [the land separating the enemies’ trenches]. Some men would be tasked with repairing or adding barbed wire to the front line. Others however would go out to assigned listening posts, hoping to pick up valuable information from the enemy lines.

Sometimes enemy patrols would meet in No Man’s Land. They were then faced with the option of hurrying on their separate ways or else engaging in hand to hand fighting. They could not afford to use their handguns while patrolling in No Man’s Land, for fear of the machine gun fire it would inevitably attract, deadly to all members of the patrol.

Relieving Men at the Front

Men were relieved front-line duty at night-time, too. Relieving units would wind their weary way through numerous lines of communications trenches, weighed down with equipment and trench stores (such as shovels, picks, corrugated iron, duckboards, etc.). The process of relieving a line could take several frustrating hours.

The Smell

Finally, no overview of trench life can avoid the aspect that instantly struck visitors to the lines: the appalling reek given off by numerous conflicting sources. Rotting carcasses lay around in their thousands…. Overflowing latrines would similarly give off a most offensive stench. Men who had not been afforded the luxury of a bath in weeks or months would offer the pervading odour of dried sweat. The feet were generally accepted to give off the worst odour. Trenches would also smell of creosol or chloride of lime, used to stave off the constant threat of disease and infection. Add to this the smell of cordite, the lingering odour of poison gas, rotting sandbags, stagnant mud, cigarette smoke, and cooking food... yet men grew used to it, while it thoroughly overcame first-time visitors to the front.

For an eventual exam, memorize the following features of this trench diagram: artillery, communications trench, reserve trench/support trench, concrete block house, dug-outs, front-line trench, barbed wire, No Man’s Land, reconnaissance aircraft.

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A Forest After Bombardment by German ArtilleryAlistair Horne, historian

The wood presented an appalling sight. Nothing about it was any longer recognizable. It looked as if a huge sledge-hammer had pounded every inch of the ground over and over again (note: Later it was estimated that 80,000 heavy shells had fallen in a rectangle 500 by 1,000 yards). Most of the fine oaks and beeches had been reduced to jagged stumps a few feet high…. From the few branches that remained hung the usual horrible testimony of a heavy bombardment in the woods; the shredded uniforms, dangling gravid with some unnamable human remnant still within; sometimes just the entrails of a man, product of a direct hit. It seemed impossible that any human being could have survived…. Yet some had. Like a colony of ants in sandy soil, stamped on repeatedly by an enraged child, they had been buried and reburied, yet always some…had miraculously struggled to the surface again….[T]heir rifle barrels filled with dirt and useless, boxes of hand grenades and cartridges buried under the debris,…[they themselves] exhausted from digging out their comrades….One of them when dug out ran off screaming with mad laughter, crazed by the bombardment.

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On Industrial WarAlistair Horne, historian

[The new weapons of the industrial revolution had a sickening effect on the bodies of men.] It was bad enough to be wounded at all, but at least a bullet was a relatively clean agent. If you were hit by either a rifle or a machine gun, the chances were that either you were killed outright, or eventually you returned to life more or less in one piece. However,…bullet wounds were the minority; the greater part of casualties were caused by the terrible effects of shell-fire….[T]he crude iron of the shells…shattered into huge ragged chunks that sometimes two men would be unable to lift. The effect on the soft human carapace of impact with these whirling fragments may be imagined: “…men squashed, cut in two, or divided from top to bottom, blown into showers by an ordinary shell….” It was only astonishing how much such mutilation flesh could suffer and survive….

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On Medicine and Aid StationsAlistair Horne, historian

If a badly injured man survived the brutal jolting in the two-man handcarts used by the French to collect the wounded, the crude attention of over-worked medicos in the clearing stations, and the long bumping about in the ambulances with their solid tires and unyielding springs, even then his prospects were poor…. [Surgery] was often as crude as the steel that made it necessary. Over-worked surgeons operating under impossible conditions instantly divided the wounded into three categories; those who would die anyway, and were therefore not worth operating on; those who would probably survive, but would be of no further use to the war effort; and those who could eventually be returned to duty. On this third category, the doctors lavished most of their attention…. The second category was just patched up as well as time would allow. The results were often horrifying.

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America from the Twenties to the New DealPrimary Sources

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We are at one in wishing a living wageCorrespondence between a Union Leader and a Protestant Bishop, 1920

(Primary source from America in Class, a project of the National Humanities Center)

In February 1920 during a period of crippling labor strikes, Bishop William Quayle of the Methodist Episcopal Church accused the labor movement—and specifically Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor—with threatening the “very existence of our republican form of government.” Gompers responded to the clergyman and a brief correspondence ensued. It did not end well. The AFL published the letters later that year as Letters to a Bishop.

Quayle to Gompers, March 17, 1920

Dear Mr. Gompers: …I believe in the honorableness of labor and the dishonorableness of indolence [laziness]. I believe that an American Citizen has a right to a job if he is honest, industrious, and capable, and that no man or men or set of men have a right to hinder him in getting it. I believe in labor’s right to organize as I believe in money’s right to organize. But I do not believe in the right of organized labor or organized capital to do unjustly by any man or set of men of the United States people. I do not believe in the autocracy of a Kaiser [German emperor] or a President or a group of labor or a group of capital. I believe the United States Government is for all United States people and when any interest or individual or organization interferes with the rights of the American People, then that interest or man or organization must go….

During the recent strikes and proposed strikes, for instance the coal strike, …I never heard the slightest intimation in any quarter [i.e., comment from any union leader] of the rights of the American People. It was proposed to freeze them by giving them no coal, and it was proposed by giving them no transportation, to freeze them and starve them. It need not require any acute observation to know that that was a thing unthinkable and which never should occur again. A few hundred thousand men cannot be tolerated to administer the Government for their own special and private purposes. Government by threat cannot continue if a Republic is to continue….

We are at one in wishing a living wage and first-class social and family conditions for the American people. Wages should be as high as the well-being, that is continuance, of business and the rights of consumers will permit. When they go beyond this and consider only the wishes of the man demanding wages, they become an infringement on the stability of business and the living rights of the body of the American people.

Gompers to Quayle, May 22, 1920

Dear Sir: …The trade union movement came into being as a movement of hunger. It was made necessary by conditions…. As it became possible to secure more food, other hungers demanded satisfaction. They demanded satisfaction through the union, because they could get it through no other agency. The demands were for more and better food, for better clothes and for better

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homes. It required a struggle to satisfy these needs. The struggle was frequently most bitter in character. This was so because at every step of the way it was necessary to overcome the stubborn opposition of employers who were resolved not to recede and not to relinquish any of the powers and privileges which they possessed….

There are in the American Federation of Labor and the railroad brotherhoods something more than five million workers. It may be said safely that these five million workers represent families having a total of twenty-five million persons. The American labor movement thus speaks with authority directly for approximately one fourth of the population of our country. Practically all of the remainder of those who work for wages in the industries of the nation are unable to speak for themselves, because they have no channel through which they can make themselves heard. These voiceless millions are in no sense unlike those who have organized themselves and created for themselves an ability to speak. Their aspirations and their needs are the same. The organized labor movement does speak with understanding and with authority for the wage-earners of our country. The wage-earners of our country must be included in any use of the term “the people.” …They do seek to remove oppression and to extend in every possible direction the practices of democracy, to which our country is committed. I ask you to think more deeply concerning this and to see if after such thought your conclusions ought not be reversed.

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Main Street (excerpt)Sinclair Lewis, 1920

(Primary source from America in Class, a project of the National Humanities Center)

In his best-selling novel, Sinclair Lewis modeled the midwestern town of “Gopher Prairie” on his home town of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Unlike the usual portrayal of small-town America, Gopher Prairie was not an ideal haven of the best America had to offer. Its residents were narrow-minded, unreflective, and fearful of everything “modern.” In this scene, Carol Kennicott, newly arrived from Minneapolis and the guest of honor at a welcoming party (she had married the town doctor), daringly questions her new neighbors on controversial issues of the day—including the capital-labor divide.

“Do you approve of union labor?” Carol inquired of Mr. Elder [the town banker].

“Me? I should say not! It’s like this: I don’t mind dealing with my men if they think they’ve got any grievances—though Lord knows what’s come over workmen nowadays—don’t appreciate a good job. But still, if they come to me honestly, as man to man, I’ll talk things over with them. But I’m not going to have any outsider, any of these walking delegates, or whatever fancy names they call themselves now—bunch of rich grafters, living on the ignorant workmen! Not going to have any of those fellows butting in and telling me how to run my business!”

Mr. Elder was growing more excited, more belligerent and patriotic. “I stand for freedom and constitutional rights. If any man don’t like my shop [workplace], he can get up and git. Same way, if I don’t like him, he gits. And that’s all there is to it. I simply can’t understand all these complications and hoop-tedoodles and government reports and wage-scales and God knows what all that these fellows are balling up the labor situation with, when it’s all perfectly simple. They like what I pay ‘em, or they get out. That’s all there is to it!”

“What do you think of profit-sharing?” Carol ventured.

Mr. Elder thundered his answer, while the others nodded, solemnly and in tune, like a shop-window of flexible toys, comic mandarins and judges and ducks and clowns, set quivering by a breeze from the open door: “All this profit-sharing and welfare work and insurance and old-age pension is simply poppycock. Enfeebles a workman’s independence—and wastes a lot of honest profit. The half-baked thinker that isn’t dry behind the ears yet, and these suffragettes and God knows what all buttinskis there are that are trying to tell a businessman how to run his business, and some of these college professors are just about as bad, the whole kit and bilin’ of ‘em are nothing in God’s world but socialism in disguise! And it’s my bounden duty as a producer to resist every attack on the integrity of American industry to the last ditch. Yes— SIR!” Mr. Elder wiped his brow.

Dave Dyer added, “ Sure! You bet! What they ought to do is simply to hang every one of these agitators, and that would settle the whole thing right off. Don’t you think so, doc?”

“You bet,” agreed [Will] Kennicott.

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My Life and WorkHenry Ford, 1922

(Primary source from America in Class, a project of the National Humanities Center)

As fervently anti-union as most American industrialists of the period, automobile manufacturer Henry Ford outlined his views of the labor-capital impasse in his 1922 memoir.

Take, for instance, this whole matter of union labor and the right to strike.

The workingmen, except those few who have been inoculated with the fallacious doctrine of “the class war” and who have accepted the philosophy that progress consists in fomenting discord in industry (“When you get your $12 a day, don’t stop at that. Agitate for $14. When you get your eight hours a day, don’t be a fool and grow contented; agitate for six hours. Start something! Always start something!”), have the plain sense which enables them to recognize that with principles accepted and observed, conditions change. The union leaders have never seen that. They wish conditions to remain as they are, conditions of injustice, provocation, strikes, bad feeling, and crippled national life. Else, where would be the need for union officers? Every strike is a new argument for them; they point to it and say, “You see! You still need us.”

…There is a change coming. When the union of “union leaders” disappears, with it will go the union of blind bosses—bosses who never did a decent thing for their employees until they were compelled. If the blind boss was a disease, the selfish union leader was the antidote. When the union leader became the disease, the blind boss became the antidote. Both are misfits, both are out of place in well-organized society. And they are both disappearing together.

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Historical Catechism of American UnionismInternational Workers of the World (IWW), 1923

(Primary source from America in Class, a project of the National Humanities Center)

In contrast to the American Federation of Labor, which affirmed its commitment to worker equity within the capitalist system, the IWW espoused the Marxist goals of destroying capitalism and achieving the global takeover of the “means of production.” In these excerpts from its 1923 “catechism”—a Q&A compilation of a group’s beliefs—the IWW rejects the possibility of capital-labor accord.

15. Should the employer be permitted in a labor union?

No more than a coyote in a sheepfold.

16. Why?

Because the interest of the boss is to that of the worker as the interest of the coyote is to that of the sheep. The union cannot serve the worker and the boss at the same time, though many of the workers believe it can be done.

17. Why can’t the union serve both the employer and the employees?

Because their interests are opposed. The boss wants low wages, while the workers want high wages; the employer wants the workers to speed up, while the worker does not wish to. So that it would be impossible for the union to serve these opposing interests….

20. Is there an employers’ side to every industrial question?

Well, if there is, let them look out for their side. We have all we can do to attend to ours.

21. Then you have no regard for the employers’ interest?

The only regard to be felt for them is to regard them as our enemies, economically.

22. Should they be fought all the time?

That is what a union is, if it is anything at all—a fighting weapon of the workers. People do not take fighting weapons to a picnic; they do take them to a battlefield—and that is just what modern industry is. There is an unceasing battle between the working class and the employing class. The union is the weapon with which the workers wage battle in behalf of their interests….

201. When was the I.W.W. organized?

In Chicago, June 27, 1905, with an initial membership of somewhere about 50,000.

202. Is it purely [an] economic organization?

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Yes. Originally it declared for political as well as economic action by the workers, but at the fourth convention (1908), the idea of political action was discarded, and the I.W.W. decided to devote itself exclusively to industrial action. This won for it the hostility of the politicians. In fact, it has succeeded in antagonizing every anti-labor and pseudo-labor element in society since it refused to be a breeding ground for fallacies.

203. What are its principles?

The basic principle is recognition of the class struggle. because of this it is a militant labor organization. it is attempting to organize the working class for victory over the capitalist class. Its preamble [to the 1905 IWW constitution], as amended by the fourth convention and endorsed by the membership, is:

PREAMBLE: The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.

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America from the Twenties to the New DealSecondary Sources

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The Roaring TwentiesHarlan Hogan & Richard Hawksworth

It was a time of stark and sometimes startling contrasts, in American life. World War One was over. Women got the right to vote. Fashion took a liberal turn. Alcohol was outlawed. Babe Ruth was king of the ballpark, Charles Lindbergh of the skies. Jazz filled the air—and the airwaves. And just about everybody who could afford it, went to the movies in “The Roaring ‘20s.”

Chapter 1 - Road to Recovery

The Roaring Twenties has the reputation as a decade of play and prosperity. Though unemployment was low and many Americans were better off financially, real wealth was concentrated among just a few families. Sixty percent of America’s riches were owned by only two percent of the people. The 27,500 wealthiest families had as much money as the twelve million poorest. With the end of World War One, the country desperately wanted to return to normal. But prices shot upward with the increased demand for goods and services, while wages were still low due to a ban on raises and labor strikes during the war.

Now that the war had ended, strikes over higher wages resumed. In September 1919 Boston Police walked off patrol, citing lousy pay and long hours. Their subsequent absence triggered a free-for-all of looters and vandals. In turn, city officials granted no negotiation; the police force was replaced without the option to return. That same month 343,000 steel workers staged a nation-wide strike, only to taste a violent defeat. When substitute workers were hired, rioting erupted resulting in the mobilization of federal troops. Eighteen steelworkers lost their lives in the struggle; the walkout lasted four months with no reward. As labor unrest spread across the country some Americans felt it was being fostered by communists—radicals who believed in an economic and social system where prosperity is owned by everyone, and the needs of the whole are more important than those of the individual. Other citizens grew increasingly suspicious of immigrants, fearing they too, might be communists.

This so-called “Red Scare” was at a high during the Presidential election of 1919. And Ohio Lieutenant governor, Warren G. Harding’s campaign promise of, “A return to normalcy” was just what the country wanted to hear and believe.

Warren G. Harding: “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution but restoration...”

Handsome, good-natured and well spoken, Harding and his running mate, Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts easily defeated the democratic ticket of James Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Harding’s proposal of a “return to normalcy” meant going back to pre-progressive era policies. He was opposed to the federal government’s interference in business affairs, and most social reforms. He rejected Woodrow Wilson’s plea that America should actively participate in the League of Nations.

Warren G. Harding: “We seek no part in directing the destinies of the Old World.”

Harding’s isolationist policy, keeping America out of world affairs, was popular and his successors, Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover followed his lead through the decade. Harding’s cabinet was filled with pro-business appointees including Herbert Hoover,

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head of the Commerce Committee, Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State and Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury.

In 1923 he presented Congress his, “Mellon Plan” which, on the surface, sought a general reduction in income taxes. In fact, the plan cut the top income tax bracket level from 50 per cent to 25, while only reducing the lowest bracket from four percent to three. Congressman William P. Connery of Massachusetts was outraged.

William P. Connery: “When I see a provision in this Mellon tax bill which is going to save Mr. Mellon himself $800,000 on his income tax and his brother $600,000 on his, I cannot give it my support.”

Nevertheless, the Mellon Plan passed, as did his proposal to raise tariffs on imported goods to one of the highest levels in history. Americans soon stopped buying foreign-made products and that made it almost impossible for France and Great Britain to repay their war debts to the United States. Meanwhile, Secretary of Commerce Hoover aggressively helped American businesses recover from the war effort, while Secretary of State Hughes convinced the leading world powers to reduce the size of their navies.

Despite these recoveries and Harding’s popularity, by the end of his third year scandal rocked his administration. His old poker buddies from Ohio, whom he’d handed jobs in government, were caught taking bribes. Harding expressed his disappointment.

Warren G. Harding: “I have no trouble with my enemies...but my friends...they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights.”

The worst offense of the notorious, “Ohio Gang” involved Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall. During the Progressive Era, oil-rich public lands, located in Teapot Dome, Wyoming and Elk Hill, California were set aside for use by the Navy. Fall transferred control of those lands to his Interior Department and then secretly leased them to oil companies in exchange for a hundred thousand dollars in bonds, cattle and cash.

By the summer of 1923—Harding, now saddened, confused and disillusioned by the betrayal of his friends, left Washington for a goodwill trip to Alaska. Upon his return to San Francisco, he became ill and died on August second.

Chapter 2 - Boom Times

Harding’s vice-president, Calvin Coolidge assumed office. A simple, honest, and quiet man he once joked about his subdued demeanor.

Calvin Coolidge: “I have never been hurt by what I haven’t said.”

“Silent Cal” as Coolidge was nicknamed, was elected President one year later receiving almost 16 million votes, and would have easily won a second term, but unexpectedly decided not to run.

With Coolidge at the helm, continuing Harding’s pro-business policies, it was “boom times” for the American economy. Over forty percent on the world’s wealth belonged to Americans, with

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eleven thousand millionaires living in America by 1926. Low interest rates meant that the construction of plants, homes and office buildings soared. By the end of the era, construction had begun on the mammoth 102-story Empire State Building.

Meanwhile, on the streets below, millions of Americans learned to drive. At the beginning of the Roaring Twenties there were only eight million automobiles registered in the U.S. by the end of the decade, more than twenty three million. Henry Ford made a bold prediction.

Henry Ford: “When I’m through everybody will be able to afford one, and about everyone will have one.”

America’s new love affair with the car spurred production of rubber, steel, glass, and gasoline. A mobile America wanted new roads, new destinations, and new places to live—the suburbs. Auto making became a major American industry. To meet demand automakers perfected the assembly line method of manufacturing and many other industries followed their lead. “Scientific Management” championed by Frederick Taylor, revolutionized American business by identifying the most time-efficient ways to complete a task, increase production beyond the rate of technology.

Farmers adopted modern methods of production, but with an entirely different result. Larger, more efficient farms, utilizing more farm machinery than human laborers, created an overproduction of farm commodities. Many farmers had borrowed money to expand their farms and buy equipment when demand was high during the war. Now, falling prices and income forced many into bankruptcy.

Congressmen from farm states unified as “The Farm Bloc” and proposed price supports and legislation to aid farmers. Repeatedly, President Coolidge vetoed their attempts. Farmers wished that “Silent Cal” would just remain silent. His remarks brought them little consolation.

Calvin Coolidge: “Well, farmers have never made much money. I don’t believe we can do much about it.”

Urban workers were much better off than farmers, despite a decline in labor union membership, average wages increased by twenty percent. A more startling increase was in the number of homes with electricity. Between 1913 and 1927 the number grew by 465%. Soon, moderately priced electrical conveniences like vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and refrigerators were found in more and more American households.

Chain stores like Sears and J.C. Penney did a brisk business selling ready-made clothes, and “grocery cafeterias,” like Piggly Wiggly—the forerunner of the modern supermarket—offered everything from canned foods to sliced bread. Advertising lured consumers into the stores and readily available credit using the: “Installment Plan,” made buying easy. Americans suddenly found they had much more time for community and leisure activities.

Telephones, and later, radios became common in most middle-class homes. Mass transit—streetcars and subways—provided mobility for city-dwellers and the airplane was used to move mail from coast to coast. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew his airplane, from continent to continent. “Lucky Lindy’s” solo 3,614-mile flight across the Atlantic Ocean to Paris ensured his place as America’s new hero. Four million people witnessed Charles Lindbergh’s triumphant

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return to America, showering him with thousands of pounds of ticker tape, as he paraded up Broadway. Lindbergh’s flight also captured the imagination of the public and stirred their interest in flying.

Charles Lindbergh: “I look forward to the day when transatlantic flying will be a regular thing.”

Soon, the single-engine Lockheed Vega and the Ford Tri-Motor airplanes were carrying as many as ten passengers. An already mobile America became even more so. By the end of the Roaring Twenties, 43 airlines were operating in the United States.

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The Rise of Totalitarianism & World War IIPrimary Sources

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“Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” Speech, May 13, 1940Prime Minister Winston ChurchillSelection

In this crisis I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today. I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make allowance, all allowance, for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”

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“We Shall Fight on the Beaches” Speech, June 4, 1940Prime Minister Winston ChurchillSelection

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

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“Their Finest Hour” Speech, June 18, 1940Prime Minister Winston ChurchillSelection

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

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State of the Union Address, “Four Freedoms” Speech, January 6, 1941Presidents Franklin D. RooseveltSelection

To change a whole nation from a basis of peacetime production of implements of peace to a basis of wartime production of implements of war is no small task. And the greatest difficulty comes at the beginning of the program, when new tools, new plant facilities, new assembly lines, and new ship ways must first be constructed before the actual materiel begins to flow steadily and speedily from them

When the dictators, if the dictators, are ready to make war upon us, they will not wait for an act of war on our part. They did not wait for Norway or Belgium or the Netherlands to commit an act of war. Their only interest is in a new one-way international law, which lacks mutuality in its observance, and, therefore, becomes an instrument of oppression. The happiness of future generations of Americans may well depend upon how effective and how immediate we can make our aid felt. No one can tell the exact character of the emergency situations that we may be called upon to meet. The Nation’s hands must not be tied when the Nation’s life is in danger. We must all prepare to make the sacrifices that the emergency-almost as serious as war itself— demands. Whatever stands in the way of speed and efficiency in defense preparations must give way to the national need. A free nation has the right to expect full cooperation from all groups. A free nation has the right to look to the leaders of business, of labor, and of agriculture to take the lead in stimulating effort, not among other groups but within their own groups. The best way of dealing with the few slackers or trouble makers in our midst is, first, to shame them by patriotic example, and, if that fails, to use the sovereignty of Government to save Government. As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone. Those who man our defenses, and those behind them who build our defenses, must have the stamina and the courage which come from unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. The mighty action that we are calling for cannot be based on a disregard of all things worth fighting for. The Nation takes great satisfaction and much strength from the things which have been done to make its people conscious of their individual stake in the preservation of democratic life in America. Those things have toughened the fibre of our people, have renewed their faith and strengthened their devotion to the institutions we make ready to protect. Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world.

I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call. A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes.In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind

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of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb. To that new order we oppose the greater conception—the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear. Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change—in a perpetual peaceful revolution—a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions—without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society. This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

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Attack At Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941Commander Mitsuo Fuchida (Japan)

Commander Mitsuo Fuchida led the first wave of the air attack and published his recollections in 1951. These were later published in English in 1955. We join his story as he approaches the Hawaiian coast:

”One hour and forty minutes after leaving the carriers I knew that we should be nearing our goal. Small openings in the thick cloud cover afforded occasional glimpses of the ocean, as I strained my eyes for the first sight of land. Suddenly a long white line of breaking surf appeared directly beneath my plane. It was the northern shore of Oahu.

Veering right toward the west coast of the island, we could see that the sky over Pearl Harbor was clear. Presently the harbor itself became visible across the central Oahu plain, a film of morning mist hovering over it. I peered intently through my binoculars at the ships riding peacefully at anchor. One by one I counted them. Yes, the battleships were there all right, eight of them! But our last lingering hope of finding any carriers present was now gone. Not one was to be seen.

It was 0749 when I ordered my radioman to send the command, ‘Attack!’ He immediately began tapping out the pre-arranged code signal: ‘TO, TO, TO...’

Leading the whole group, Lieutenant Commander Murata’s torpedo bombers headed downward to launch their torpedoes, while Lieutenant Commander Itayay’s fighters raced forward to sweep enemy fighters from the air. Takahashi’s dive-bomber group had climbed for altitude and was out of sight. My bombers, meanwhile, made a circuit toward Barbers Point to keep pace with the attack schedule. No enemy fighters were in the air, nor were there any gun flashes from the ground.

The effectiveness of our attack was now certain, and a message, ‘Surprise attack successful!’ was accordingly sent to Akagi [Flagship of the Japanese attack fleet] at 0753. The message was received by the carrier and duly relayed to the homeland, ...

The attack was opened with the first bomb falling on Wheeler Field, followed shortly by dive-bombing attacks upon Hickam Field and the bases at Ford Island. Fearful that smoke from these attacks might obscure his targets, Lieutenant Commander Murata cut short his group’s approach toward the battleships anchored east of Ford Island and released torpedoes. A series of white waterspouts soon rose in the harbor.

Lieutenant Commander Itaya’s fighters, meanwhile, had full command of the air over

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Pearl Harbor. About four enemy fighters which took off were promptly shot down. By 0800 there were no enemy planes in the air, and our fighters began strafing the airfields.

My level-bombing group had entered on its bombing run toward the battleships moored to the cast of Ford Island. On reaching an altitude of 3,000 meters, I had the sighting bomber take position in front of my plane.

As we closed in, enemy antiaircraft fire began to concentrate on us. Dark gray puffs burst all around. Most of them came from ships’ batteries, but land batteries were also active. Suddenly my plane bounced as if struck by a club. When I looked back to see what had happened, the radioman said: ‘The fuselage is holed and the rudder wire damaged.’ We were fortunate that the plane was still under control, for it was imperative to fly a steady course as we approached the target. Now it was nearly time for ‘Ready to release,’ and I concentrated my attention on the lead plane to note the instant his bomb was dropped. Suddenly a cloud came between the bombsight and the target, and just as I was thinking that we had already overshot, the lead plane banked slightly and turned right toward Honolulu. We had missed the release point because of the cloud and would have to try again.

While my group circled for another attempt, others made their runs, some trying as many as three before succeeding. We were about to begin our second bombing run when there was a colossal explosion in battleship row. A huge column of dark red smoke rose to 1000 meters. It must have been the explosion of a ship’s powder magazine. [This was the Battleship Arizona] The shock wave was felt even in my plane, several miles away from the harbor.

We began our run and met with fierce antiaircraft concentrations. This time the lead bomber was successful, and the other planes of the group followed suit promptly upon seeing the leader’s bombs fall. I immediately lay flat on the cockpit floor and slid open a peephole cover in order to observe the fall of the bombs. I watched four bombs plummet toward the earth. The target - two battleships moored side by side - lay ahead. The bombs became smaller and smaller and finally disappeared. I held my breath until two tiny puffs of smoke flashed suddenly on the ship to the left, and I shouted, ‘Two hits!’

When an armor-piercing bomb with a time fuse hits the target, the result is almost unnoticeable from a great altitude. On the other hand, those which miss are quite obvious because they leave concentric waves to ripple out from the point of contact, and I saw two of these below. I presumed that it was battleship Maryland we had hit.’

As the bombers completed their runs they headed north to return to the carriers. Pearl

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Harbor and the air bases had been pretty well wrecked by the fierce strafings and bombings. The imposing naval array of an hour before was gone. Antiaircraft fire had become greatly intensified, but in my continued observations I saw no enemy fighter planes.

The Bataan Death March, 1942Captain William Dyess (U.S.A.)

The war came to the Philippines the same day it came to Hawaii and in the same manner—a surprise air attack. In the case of the Philippines, however, this initial strike was followed by a full-scale invasion of the main island of Luzon three days later. By early January, the American and Filipino defenders were forced to retreat to a slim defensive position on the island’s western Bataan Peninsula

The American and Filipino forces fought from an untenable position until formally surrendering to the Japanese on April 9. The Japanese immediately began to march some 76,000 prisoners (12,000 Americans, the remainder Filipinos) northward into captivity along a route of death. When three American officers escaped a year later, the world learned of the unspeakable atrocities suffered along the 60-mile journey that became known as the Bataan Death March.

Captain William Dyess was a fighter pilot stationed on Luzon when the Japanese invaded. Captured when the American forces on Bataan surrendered, he joined the Death March and was interned by the Japanese. As the prisoners were herded north they collided with advancing Japanese troops moving to the south, forcing a brief halt to the march:

“Eventually the road became so crowded we were marched into a clearing. Here, for two hours, we had our first taste of the oriental sun treatment, which drains the stamina and weakens the spirit.

The Japs seated us on the scorching ground, exposed to the full glare of the sun. Many of the Americans and Filipinos had no covering to protect their heads. I was beside a small bush but it cast no shade because the sun was almost directly above us. Many of the men around me were ill.

When I thought I could stand the penetrating heat no longer. I was determined to have a sip of the tepid water in my canteen. I had no more than unscrewed the top when the aluminum flask was snatched from my hands. The Jap who had crept up behind me poured the water into a horse’s nose-bag, then threw down the canteen. He walked on among the prisoners, taking away their water and pouring it into the bag. When he had enough he gave it to his horse.”

The parade of death continues its journey as its members inevitably succumb to the heat,

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the lack of food and the lack of water:

“The hours dragged by and, as we knew they must. The drop-outs began. It seemed that a great many of the prisoners reached the end of their endurance at about the same time. They went down by twos and threes. Usually, they made an effort to rise. I never can forget their groans and strangled breathing as they tried to get up. Some succeeded. Others lay lifelessly where they had fallen.

I observed that the Jap guards paid no attention to these. I wondered why. The explanation wasn’t long in coming. There was a sharp crackle of pistol and rifle fire behind us.

Skulking along, a hundred yards behind our contingent, came a ‘clean-up squad’ of murdering Jap buzzards. Their helpless victims, sprawled darkly against the white, of the road, were easy targets.

As members of the murder squad stooped over each huddled form, there would be an orange ‘flash in the darkness and a sharp report. The bodies were left where they lay, that other prisoners coming behind us might see them.

Our Japanese guards enjoyed the spectacle in silence for a time. Eventually, one of them who spoke English felt he should add a little spice to the entertainment.

‘Sleepee?’ he asked. ‘You want sleep? Just lie down on road. You get good long sleep!’

On through the night we were followed by orange flashes and thudding sounds.”

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The “LeMay Bombing Leaflet” - Office of War Information Notice #2106,America’s Warning to the People of Hiroshima August 1, 1945

On August 1, 1945, five days before the bombing of Hiroshima, the U.S. Army Air Force dropped one million leaflets over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities warning that those cities were going to be destroyed within a few days and advising the residents to leave to save their lives. One side of the leaflet had a photo of five U.S. bombers unloading bombs and a list of the targeted cities. The other side had the text. The English version of the leaflet is included in an article at the CIA website, “The Information War in the Pacific, 1945,” by Josette H. Williams. OWI stands for Office of War Information:

Front side of OWI notice #2106, dubbed the “LeMay bombing leaflet,” which was delivered to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities on 1 August 1945. The Japanese text on the reverse side of the leaflet carried the following warning:

“Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend. In the next few days, some or all of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed by American bombs. These cities contain military installations and workshops or factories which produce military goods. We are determined to destroy all of the tools of the military clique which they are using to prolong this useless war. But, unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America’s humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives. America is not fighting the Japanese people but is fighting the military clique which has enslaved the Japanese people. The peace which America will bring will free the people from the oppression of the military clique and mean the emergence of a new and better Japan. You can restore peace by demanding new and good leaders who will end the war. We cannot promise that only these cities will be among those attacked but some or all of them will be, so heed this warning and evacuate these cities immediately.”

(See Richard S. R. Hubert, “The OWI Saipan Operation,” Official Report to US Information Service, Washington, DC 1946.)

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German Surrender Documents ending World War II, May 8, 1945

ACT OF MULITARY SURRENDER 1. We the undersigned, acting by authority of the German High Command, hereby surrender unconditionally to the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and simultaneously to the Supreme High Command of the Red Army all forces on land, at sea, and in the air who are at this date under German control.2. The German High Command will at once issue order to all German military, naval and air authorities and to all forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European time on 8th May 1945, to remain in all positions occupied at that time and to disarm completely, handing over their weapons and equipment to the local allied commanders or officers designated by Representatives of the Allied Supreme Commands. No ship, vessel, or aircraft is to be scuttled, or any damage done to their hull, machinery or equipment, and also to machines of all kinds, armament, apparatus, and all the technical means of prosecution of war in general.3. The German High Command will at once issue to the appropriate commanders, and ensure the carrying out of any further orders issued by the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and by the Supreme Command of the Red Army.4. This act of military surrender is without prejudice to, and will be superseded by any general instrument of surrender imposed by, or on behalf of the United Nations and applicable to GERMANY and the German armed forces as a whole.5. In the event of the German High Command or any of the forces under their control failing to act in accordance with this Act of Surrender, the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and the Supreme High Command of the Red Army will take such punitive or other action as they deem appropriate.6. This Act is drawn up in the English, Russian and German languages. The English and Russian are the only authentic texts.Signed at Berlin on the 8 day of May, 1945 Von FriedeburgKeitelStumpffOn behalf of the German High Command IN THE PRESENCE OF: A.W.TedderOn behalf of the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force Georgi ZhukovOn behalf of the Supreme High Command of the Red Army At the signing also were present as witnesses: F. de Lattre-TassignyGeneral Commanding in ChiefFirst French Army Carl SpaatzGeneral, CommandingUnited States Strategic Air Force

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A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America, May 8, 1945

The Allied armies, through sacrifice and devotion and with God’s help, have wrung from Germany a final and unconditional surrender. The western world has been freed of the evil forces which for five years and longer have imprisoned the bodies and broken the lives of millions upon millions of free-born men. They have violated their churches, destroyed their homes, corrupted their children, and murdered their loved ones. Our Armies of Liberation have restored freedom to these suffering peoples, whose spirit and will the oppressors could never enslave. Much remains to be done. The victory won in the West must now be won in the East. The whole world must be cleansed of the evil from which half the world has been freed. United, the peace-loving nations have demonstrated in the West that their arms are stronger by far than the might of dictators or the tyranny of military cliques that once called us soft and weak. The power of our peoples to defend themselves against all enemies will be proved in the Pacific was as it has been proved in Europe. For the trimuph of spirit and of arms which we have won, and of its promise to peoples everywhere who join us in the love of freedom, it is fitting that we, as a nation, give thanks to Almighty God, who has strengthened us and given us the victory. NOW, THEREFORE, I, HARRY S. TRUMAN, President of the United States of America, do hereby appoint Sunday, May 13, 1945 to be a day of prayer. I call upon the people of the United States, whatever their faith, to unite in offering joyful thanks to God for the victory we have won and to pray that He will support us to the end of our present struggle and guide us into the way of peace. I also call upon my countrymen to dedicate this day of prayer to the memory of those who have given their lives to make possible our victory. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington this eighth day of May in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-five and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and sixty-ninth.

| THE GREAT SEAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA |

By the President:Harry S. Truman

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The Rise of Totalitarianism & World War IISecondary Sources

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Germans Elect NazisTheHistoryPlace.com

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis waged a modern whirlwind campaign in 1930 unlike anything ever seen in Germany. Hitler traveled the country delivering dozens of major speeches, attending meetings, shaking hands, signing autographs, posing for pictures, and even kissing babies.

Joseph Goebbels brilliantly organized thousands of meetings, torchlight parades, plastered posters everywhere and printed millions of special edition Nazi newspapers.

Germany was in the grip of the Great Depression with a population suffering from poverty, misery, and uncertainty, amid increasing political instability.

For Hitler, the master speech maker, the long awaited opportunity to let loose his talents on the German people had arrived. He would find in this downtrodden people, an audience very willing to listen. In his speeches, Hitler offered the Germans what they needed most, encouragement. He gave them heaps of vague promises while avoiding the details. He used simple catchphrases, repeated over and over. His campaign appearances were carefully staged events. Audiences were always kept waiting, deliberately letting the tension increase, only to be broken by solemn processions of Brownshirts with golden banners, blaring military music, and finally the appearance of Hitler amid shouts of “Heil!” The effect in a closed in hall with theatrical style lighting and decorations of swastikas was overwhelming and very catching.

Hitler began each speech in low, hesitating tones, gradually raising the pitch and volume of his voice then exploding in a climax of frenzied indignation. He combined this with carefully rehearsed hand gestures for maximum effect. He skillfully played on the emotions of the audience bringing the level of excitement higher and higher until the people wound up a wide-eyed, screaming, frenzied mass that surrendered to his will and looked upon him with pseudo-religious adoration.

Hitler offered something to everyone: work to the unemployed; prosperity to failed business people; profits to industry; expansion to the Army; social harmony and an end of class distinctions to idealistic young students; and restoration of German glory to those in despair. He promised to bring order amid chaos; a feeling of unity to all and the chance to belong. He would make Germany strong again; end payment of war reparations to the Allies; tear up the treaty of Versailles; stamp out corruption; keep down Marxism; and deal harshly with the Jews.

He appealed to all classes of Germans. The name of the Nazi Party itself was deliberately all inclusive—the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

All of the Nazis, from Hitler, down to the leader of the smallest city block, worked tirelessly, relentlessly, to pound their message into the minds of the Germans.

On election day September 14, 1930, the Nazis received 6,371,000 votes—over eighteen percent of the total—and were thus entitled to 107 seats in the German Reichstag. It was a stunning victory for Hitler. Overnight, the Nazi Party went from the smallest to the second largest political party in Germany.

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It propelled Hitler to solid national and international prestige and aroused the curiosity of the world press. He was besieged with interview requests. Foreign journalists wanted to know—what did he mean—tear up the Treaty of Versailles and end war reparations?—and that Germany wasn’t responsible for the First World War?

Gone was the Charlie Chaplin image of Hitler as the laughable fanatic behind the Beer Hall Putsch. The beer hall revolutionary had been replaced by the skilled manipulator of the masses.

On October 13, 1930, dressed in their brown shirts, the elected Nazi deputies marched in unison into the Reichstag and took their seats. When the roll-call was taken, each one shouted, “Present! Heil Hitler!”

They had no intention of cooperating with the democratic government, knowing it was to their advantage to let things get worse in Germany, thus increasing the appeal of Hitler to an ever more miserable people.

The Reichstag Building Burns, giving Hitler the “crisis” he needs to be made dictator

Göring and Goebbels, with Hitler’s approval, then hatched a plan to cause panic by burning the Reichstag building and blaming the Communists. The Reichstag was the building in Berlin where the elected members of the republic met to conduct the daily business of government.

The exact sequence of events will never be known, but Nazi storm troopers under the direction of Göring were also involved in torching the place. They had befriended the arsonist and may have known or even encouraged him to burn the Reichstag that night. The storm troopers, led by SA leader Karl Ernst, used the underground tunnel that connected Göring’s residence with the cellar in the Reichstag. They entered the building, scattered gasoline and incendiaries, then hurried back through the tunnel.

The deep red glow of the burning Reichstag caught the eye of President Hindenburg and Vice-Chancellor Papen who were dining at a club facing the building. Papen put the elderly Hindenburg in his own car and took him to the scene.

Hitler was at Goebbels’ apartment having dinner. They rushed to the scene where they met Göring who was already screaming false charges and making threats against the Communists.

At first glance, Hitler described the fire as a beacon from heaven.

“You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in German history...This fire is the beginning,” Hitler told a news reporter at the scene.

After viewing the damage, an emergency meeting of government leaders was held. When told of the arrest of the Communist arsonist, Van der Lubbe, Hitler became deliberately enraged.

“The German people have been soft too long. Every Communist official must be shot. All Communist deputies must be hanged this very night. All friends of the Communists must be locked up. And that goes for the Social Democrats and the Reichsbanner as well!”

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Hitler left the fire scene and went straight to the offices of his newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, to oversee its coverage of the fire. He stayed up all night with Goebbels putting together a paper full of tales of a Communist plot to violently seize power in Berlin.

At a cabinet meeting held later in the morning, February 28th, Chancellor Hitler demanded an emergency decree to overcome the crisis. He met little resistance from his largely non-Nazi cabinet. That evening, Hitler and Papen went to Hindenburg and the befuddled old man signed the decree “for the Protection of the people and the State.”

The Emergency Decree stated: “Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”

Immediately, there followed the first big Nazi roundup as truckloads of SA and SS roared through the streets bursting in on known Communist hangouts and barging into private homes. Thousands of Communists as well as Social Democrats and liberals were taken away into ‘protective custody’ to SA barracks where they were beaten and tortured.

“I don’t have to worry about justice; my mission is only to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” Hermann Göring declared on March 3rd, 1933.

Fifty-one anti-Nazis were murdered. The Nazis suppressed all political activity, meetings and publications of non-Nazi parties. The very act of campaigning against the Nazis was in effect made illegal.

“Every bullet which leaves the barrel of a police pistol now is my bullet. If one calls this murder, then I have murdered. I ordered this. I back it up. I assume the responsibility, and I am not afraid to do so,” declared Hermann Göring.

Nazi newspapers continued to print false evidence of Communist conspiracies, claiming that only Hitler and the Nazis could prevent a Communist takeover. Joseph Goebbels now had control of the State-run radio and broadcast Nazi propaganda and Hitler’s speeches all across the nation.

The Nazis now turned their attention to election day, March 5th.

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