1. War as Thrill, and Thrilling Propaganda
We begin with the legacy of the XX century’s great wars, which were formative of modern war, propaganda and militarism.
 If you don’t understand WWI, WWII and the Cold War, you can’t understand war.
Two Main Points today:
War is a thrill, a collective exuberance.
a) Vast majorities were infatuated by nationalist jingoism during wartime (called “patriotism”).
b) Militarism “cures” social lethargy and boredom.
2. Modern war is impossible without propaganda.
a) Propaganda is primarily the victor’s tool.
b) Democracy and greater civic engagement in war gave rise to modern propaganda.

2. “Advertisements for War” in an age of malaise - Tucholsky
He was a prophetic critic of “patriotism”:
“Damn you. And bless you, because you are changing.” – Kurt Tucholsky (1924).
The listless, disenchanted, existential, boredom & passivity that modern life brings cried out for a solution.
Tucholsky memorably described it as a collective hangover.

3. The Spirit of 1914

4. War as Thrill War as solution to Marinetti’s “atavistic ennui.”
energy | movement | youth | speed | regeneration & rejuvination & rebirth
Telling phrase: about “academies” as “cemeteries of empty exertion, calvaries of crucified dreams, registries of aborted beginnings!”

5. Futurist Manifesto
We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness.
Courage, audacity, and revolt will be essential elements of our poetry.
Up to now literature has exalted a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and sleep. We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer’s stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap.
We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A
racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samotthrace.
(5) We want to hymn the man at the wheel, who hurls the lance of his spirit across the Earth, along the circle of its orbit.
(6) The poet must spend himself with ardor, splendor, and generosity, to swell the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
(7) Except in struggle, there is no more beauty. No work without an aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must be conceived as a violent attack on unknown forces, to reduce and prostrate them before man.
(8) We stand on the last promontory of the centuries!… Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed.
(9) We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.
(10) We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.
(11) We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.

6. Excuse me, Miss. But didn’t you just scream?
War in the face of Passivity and Apathy
Excuse me, Miss. But didn’t you just scream?

7. Communication Revolution Enabled Modern Propaganda
Telephone, radio, television – all with international scope.
Polling, surveys, focus groups.
Urbanization enabled newspaper, cartoon, pamphlet circulation.
Mass rallies, demonstrations, marches.
Beware of “technological determinism.” There was nothing inherently necessary about the application of mass media for propaganda in the way it was used. Technology is a tool – what we do with it is a human choice.

8. Propaganda as Fundraiser
The two World Wars involved the mobilization of entire societies for resources, industry.
We especially see this in the case of the USSR / WWII  Stalinist central control was able to hold a weak economy together.
The US spent the most money on the war, an estimated $2.4 trillion 1992 dollars.
Germany spent $1.8 trillion, USSR $1.3 trillion.

9. MILITARY / CIVILIAN (read: politician) RELATIONS ARE RECONFIGURED

10. Propaganda as the Victor’s Tool
Common misperception is that propaganda is something associated with cruel, repressive, silly regimes ruling over gullible, illiterate people (e.g. North Korea, USSR).
Taylor's book reminds us: it ain't so!
Birth of modern American propaganda in the Creel Committee.

11. British and US Propaganda
Among the thousands of Britons hired in 1941 to produce propaganda radio programs was a young George Orwell.
Edward Bernays, Freud’s nephew, was the father of Wilsonian propaganda efforts, one of the most spectacular successes in propaganda history.

12. The Envy of the World
The Creele Commission dominated Hollywood, radio, newspapers, pamphlets, cartoons, scholarship, academic publications… Everything from “Wilsonian self-determination” to the US’s foreign policy in the Western hemisphere (towards Haiti, Mexico) was molded by propaganda efforts to mobilize an isolationist American public for World War I. …it set precedents for all future war propaganda efforts, to this day.

13. Lusitania (1915)

14. German 'Corpse Conversion Factory' (1917)
See Taylor, p

15. Gulf of Tonkin (1964)

16. Nayirah Testimony (1990)

17. HORROR OF THE NEW HOLOCAUST THE PICTURE THAT SHAMES THE WORLD”
Trnopolje, Bosnia (1992)
“BELSEN ‘92!
THE PROOF! Behind the barbed wire, the brutal truth about the suffering in Bosnia.
HORROR OF THE NEW HOLOCAUST
THE PICTURE THAT SHAMES THE WORLD”

18. WMD in Iraq (2003)

19. Sarin Gas Attack in Syria (2013)
See Seymour Hersh's story on it.

20. War as Solution, not as Problem
Mann’s explanation of the rise of fascism, “the pursuit of transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism” (p.13)
nationalism | statism | transcendence cleansing | paramilitarism
Fascist war offered plausible solutions to simultaneous crises in four domains:
Ideological
Economic
Military
Political

21. Ideological Crisis

22. National Liberation, At Home and Abroad
“During World War II, the promotion of national liberation movements among colonial and minority peoples around the world was almost exclusively the work of the Axis powers.” – Stanley G. Payne
Freedom through war was the ultimate emancipatory idea.

23. Subordination of the Individual to the Collectivity
The modern, emancipated individual was thought to be disoriented, immoral and miserable.
War restores the individual to his subordinate position, gives him transcendent, collective purpose and identity.

24. Subordination of Woman to Man
Nazis insisted that female “emancipation” had led to widespread disorientation and misery for the women themselves (not to mention for German men)
Accordingly, they promised to return women to their “true” roles and to recognize and celebrate the female contribution to the state as mothers and wives.
Hitler: “a woman must be a cute, cuddly, naïve little thing – tender, sweet and stupid.”

25. Economic Crisis

26. Hitler’s Economic Recovery
In 1938, Germany’s federal budget was seven times as large as it had been before the Nazis came to power.
74% of it was for military purposes.
Mann points out that the rise of authoritarianism was mainly a phenomenon of the underdeveloped countries.
“[N]o overall relationship between economic cycles and authoritarian surges in the interwar period” (p.58).
But the rise of fascism was not.
Hyper-militarism culminated in highly developed societies, reversing their economies from catastrophe to fascist boom & growth.

27. Likewise, in the West, Militarism performed an Economic Miracle
In all, the United States manufactured 88,430 tanks during World War II versus 24,800 in Britain and 24,050 in Germany.
Between 1 January 1940 and 14 August 1945 the United States manufactured 303,717 aircraft.
The war consumed:
53% of British GNP
Up to 70% of German GNP
76% of Japanese GNP
60% of Soviet GNP
 The war doubled the American economy in six years.

28. Who are these people?
War empowered an impoverished constituency of fascist societies.

30. Military Crisis

31. Normalization and Order through Violence
Conservatives and liberals cooperated with Mussolini because his government offered “normalization” of Italian life.
Fascist squadri, paramilitary org’s, brought order one beating at a time.
 Paramilitaries brought the war home in peacetime, bringing predictability.

32. Between 1939 and 1945 the Allies dropped 3.4 million tons of bombs
Country
Military
Soviet Union*
8,668,000
China
1,324,000
Germany
3,250,000
Poland
850,000
Japan
1,506,000
Yugoslavia
300,000
Rumania*
520,000
France*
340,000
Hungary*
Austria
380,000
Greece*
Italy
330,000
Czechoslovakia
Great Britain
326,000
USA
295,000
Holland
14,000
Belgium
10,000
Finland
79,000
Canada
42,000
India
36,000
Australia
39,000
Spain**
12,000
Bulgaria
19,000
New Zealand
South Africa
9,000
Norway
5,000
Denmark
4,000
TOTAL
18,370,000
Mann reminds us that merely the scale of the war reconfigured the military nation-state system globally:
Between 1939 and 1945 the Allies dropped 3.4 million tons of bombs
That averages out to be 27,700 tons of bombs a month.
This was the single greatest period of warmaking and statemaking in world history: militarism created a new world.

33. Scale of Destruction was Enormous:
Country
Civilian
Total
Soviet Union*
16,900,000
25,568,000
China
10,000,000
11,324,000
Germany
3,810,000
7,060,000
Poland
6,000,000
6,850,000
Japan
300,000
1,806,000
Yugoslavia
1,400,000
1,700,000
Rumania*
465,000
985,000
France*
470,000
810,000
Hungary*
750,000
Austria
145,000
525,000
Greece*
520,000
Italy
80,000
410,000
Czechoslovakia
400,000
Great Britain
62,000
388,000
USA
295,000
Holland
236,000
250,000
Belgium
75,000
85,000
Finland
79,000
Canada
42,000
India
***
36,000
Australia
39,000
Spain**
10,000
22,000
Bulgaria
2,000
21,000
New Zealand
12,000
South Africa
9,000
Norway
5,000
Denmark
4,000
TOTAL
39,955,000
59,995,000
Scale of Destruction was Enormous:
30-35% of buildings in Poland destroyed
21% of Yugoslavia
40% of dwellings in biggest cities destroyed
In Germany, bombing and shelling had produced 4 billion cubic meters of rubble.

34. Cannon Fodder
By D-Day, 35% of all German soldiers had been wounded at least once, 11% twice, 6% three times, 2% four times and 2% more than 4 times
The average officer slot had to be refilled 9.2 times
Germany lost 136 Generals, which averages out to be 1 dead General every 2 weeks
Germany lost 110 Division Commanders in combat
Air attacks caused 1/3 of German Generals' deaths
84 German Generals were executed by Hitler

35. Political Crisis
“Schmitt was articulating very widespread fears” (Mann, p.76).
Parliamentary democracy was boring, undemocratic and impotent.
 Authoritarian regimes, on the other hand, “worshipped order” (Mann, p.43) and delivered it through paramilitarism.

36. Instead of indirect, mediated parliamentary paralysis, war gives “the people” direct, unmediated representation by a decisive, charismatic leader.
(See Mann p.34 on the love of “organic” political representation.)

37. Summary
3. Fascism – the paradigm of militarism – offered solutions to simultaneous crises in four domains:
Ideological
Subordinating the individual to the collective: the nation.
Mysogyny.
Economic
a) War economy = rich economy.
b) Enriching farmers, lower middle classes, intellectuals.
Military
Paramilitarism at home.
Conquest abroad.
Political
Reinvigorating, re-enchanting politics.
Authoritarianism, order, unity.
War is a thrill, a collective exuberance.
a) Vast majorities were infatuated by nationalist jingoism during wartime (called “patriotism”).
b) Militarism “cures” social lethargy and boredom.
2. Modern war is impossible without propaganda.
a) Propaganda is primarily the victor’s tool.
b) Democracy and greater civic engagement in war gave rise to modern propaganda.

38. War as Organizational Challenge
Next Week:
War as Organizational Challenge