tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/world-war-i-1679/articlesWorld War I – The Conversation2024-03-19T14:07:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2255922024-03-19T14:07:40Z2024-03-19T14:07:40ZHow we discovered the wreck of a torpedoed British ship after a 109-year mystery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581637/original/file-20240313-18-d09lmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1879%2C720&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The SS Hartdale is lying at a depth of 80 metres, 12 miles off the coast of Northern Ireland.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Roberts/Unpath’d Waters</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A British cargo ship which was torpedoed and sunk during the first world war has finally surrendered its 109-year-old secret. </p>
<p>The SS Hartdale was steaming from Glasgow to Alexandria in Egypt with its cargo of coal when it was targeted by a German U-boat in March 1915. The location of the ship had long been a mystery, but my colleagues and I have, at last, pinpointed its final resting place. </p>
<p>The old adage that we know more about the surface of the Moon and about Mars than we do about Earth’s deep sea may no longer hold entirely true. But the reality is that we still have a great deal more to learn. </p>
<p>Even our seemingly familiar shallow seafloors near the coast are relatively poorly mapped. Many people may think such areas are well explored, but there are still fundamental questions we can’t answer because detailed surveys haven’t been done.</p>
<p>The UK’s surrounding seas hold a vast underwater graveyard. Thousands of shipwrecks, from centuries of trade and conflict, litter the seabed like silent historical markers. </p>
<p>Surprisingly, even though we know where many wrecks lie, their true identities often remain a mystery. But the <a href="https://unpathdwaters.org.uk">Unpath’d Waters</a> project is now linking maritime archives with existing scientific data to help reveal some of these secrets. </p>
<h2>History meets science</h2>
<p>Scientists are using detailed sonar surveys from more than 100 shipwrecks west of the Isle of Man. Combining this underwater data with historical documents from around the world, researchers are piecing together a massive nautical jigsaw puzzle, finally revealing the true stories of these sunken vessels. </p>
<p>The first successful identification to be made as part of this work is that of the SS Hartdale. When the 105 metre long vessel was torpedoed at dawn on March 13 1915 by the <a href="https://uboat.net/wwi/boats/?boat=27">German submarine U-27</a>, two of its crew were lost and its final location remained unknown.</p>
<p>Researchers began by scanning known wrecks in the attack area, narrowing the possibilities down to less than a dozen. Then, they compared wreck details with official records and diver observations, eliminating candidates one by one until the SS Hartdale emerged as the perfect match. The vessel is lying at a depth of 80 metres, 12 miles off the coast of Northern Ireland.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An old longitudinal section drawing of a ship." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The original plans for the SS Hartdale from 1910, originally named Benbrook.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/archive-library/documents/lrf-pun-w864-0026-p">The Lloyd’s Register Foundation</a></span>
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<p>Important details about SS Hartdale are available online via the <a href="https://hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/archive-library/ships/benbrook-1910-hartdale/search/everywhere:benbrook/page/1">Lloyds Register Foundation</a>. This includes plans for the construction of the ship, formerly known as Benbrook, built for Joseph Hault & Co. Ltd in 1910. This information, together with eye-witness accounts reported in the national press at the time, have proved to be crucial in confirming the wreck’s identity. </p>
<p>The US historian Michael Lowrey also provided the project team with a translated copy of notes extracted from an official German account and scans of U-27’s official war diary made by its commanding officer, <a href="https://uboat.net/wwi/men/commanders/391.html">Kapitänleutnant Bernd Wegener</a>. These contained descriptions of the events leading up to the sinking, coordinates for the attack and the exact location on Hartdale where the torpedo struck its hull – a detail strikingly confirmed by the sonar scan data.</p>
<p>Armed with this compelling evidence, the research team reached a definitive conclusion. The only viable candidate for the SS Hartdale was a previously “unknown” 105 metre long wreck. It has been lying just a few hundred metres to the south of where U-27 launched its fatal attack.</p>
<h2>Unrestricted submarine warfare</h2>
<p>Following its attack on Hartdale, the U-27 went on to play a prominent role in how naval warfare developed during the rest of the first world war. This came during a period of escalating tension in 1915. </p>
<p>Following the sinking of the British ocean liners, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lusitania-British-ship">RMS Lusitania</a> in May, and the <a href="https://wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?11110">SS Arabic</a> in August of that year by U-boats, the way the war at sea was being conducted became increasingly heated and controversial. </p>
<p>Shortly after the SS Arabic was sunk by a different U-boat, the U-27 was itself attacked and destroyed by the Royal Navy Q-ship <a href="https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/the-baralong-incident-29-january-1917/">HMS Baralong</a>. Q-ships were heavily armed merchant ships designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. </p>
<p>The surviving German sailors, including U-27’s commanding officer, were then allegedly executed by British sailors in front of American witnesses. It has since become known as the “Baralong incident”.</p>
<p>German outcry over this event combined with other factors contributed to the start of <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-u-boat-campaign-that-almost-broke-britain">“unrestricted submarine warfare”</a> by Germany in February 1917. This meant that warnings were no longer issued to merchant vessels prior to U-boat attacks and loss of life was significantly increased.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Roberts receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council </span></em></p>The SS Hartdale was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 and its final resting place had long been unknown.Michael Roberts, SEACAMS R&D Project Manager, Centre for Applied Marine Sciences, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2254922024-03-15T12:12:13Z2024-03-15T12:12:13ZTrump wouldn’t be the first presidential candidate to campaign from a prison cell<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580950/original/file-20240311-16-kra9cy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3949%2C2877&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Eugene Debs, center, imprisoned at the Atlanta Federal Prison, was notified of his nomination for the presidency on the socialist ticket by a delegation of leading socialists who came from New York to Atlanta.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/for-the-first-time-in-history-a-candidate-for-president-has-news-photo/530858130?adppopup=true">George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The first trial ever of a former president, the so-called “hush money” case against former president and likely GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, is scheduled to begin with jury selection in New York <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-hush-money-new-york-criminal-case-fbdff18df40920b75873b3a40317f5ee">on March 25, 2024</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/nyregion/alvin-bragg-trump-trial-delay.html">though that may be delayed</a> by a month. Trump faces <a href="https://manhattanda.org/district-attorney-bragg-announces-34-count-felony-indictment-of-former-president-donald-j-trump/">34 felony charges</a> related to alleged crimes involving bookkeeping on a payment to an adult film actress <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/04/nyregion/trump-indictment-annotated.html">during the 2016 presidential campaign</a>.</p>
<p>Trump is unlikely to wind up in an orange jumpsuit, at least not on this indictment, and probably not before November 2024, in any case. Yet if he does, he would not be the first candidate to run for the White House from the Big House. </p>
<p>In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eugene-V-Debs">polled nearly a million votes</a> without ever hitting the campaign trail. </p>
<p>Debs was behind bars in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, serving a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fiery-socialist-challenged-nations-role-wwi-180969386/">10-year sentence for sedition</a>. It was a not a bum rap. Debs had defiantly disobeyed a law he deemed unjust, <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1239/sedition-act-of-1918">the Sedition Act of 1918</a>. </p>
<p>The act was an anti-free speech measure passed <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/espionage-act-of-1917-and-sedition-act-of-1918-1917-1918">at the behest of President Woodrow Wilson</a>. The law made it <a href="https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/40/STATUTE-40-Pg553.pdf">illegal for a U.S. citizen</a> to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States government” or to discourage compliance with the draft or voluntary enlistment into the military.</p>
<p>By the time he was imprisoned for sedition, Eugene Victor Debs had enjoyed a lifetime of running afoul of government authority. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eugene-V-Debs">Born in 1855</a> into bourgeois comfort in Terre Haute, Indiana, he worked as a clerk and a grocer before joining the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in 1875 and finding his vocation as an <a href="https://debsfoundation.org/index.php/landing/debs-biography/">advocate for labor</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520533/original/file-20230412-18-1i8t9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A balding man's profile illustrating an old newspaper article headlined 'There will be work for all and wealth for all willing to work for it.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520533/original/file-20230412-18-1i8t9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520533/original/file-20230412-18-1i8t9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520533/original/file-20230412-18-1i8t9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520533/original/file-20230412-18-1i8t9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520533/original/file-20230412-18-1i8t9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520533/original/file-20230412-18-1i8t9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520533/original/file-20230412-18-1i8t9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eugene Debs ran for president five times, including in 1904, when he wrote this column for The Spokane Press.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88085947/1904-10-26/ed-1/seq-3/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Representing American socialism</h2>
<p>For the next 30 years, Debs was the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/eugene-v-debs-and-the-endurance-of-socialism">face of socialism in America</a>. He <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eugene-V-Debs">ran for president four times</a>, in 1900, 1904, 1908 and 1912, garnering around a million votes in the last cycle.</p>
<p>“The Republican, Democratic, and Progressive Parties are but branches of the same capitalistic tree,” <a href="https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/content/SocialistParty">he told a cheering mass of people</a> in Madison Square Garden in New York during the 1912 campaign. “They all stand for wage slavery.” </p>
<p>In 1916, he opted to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eugene-V-Debs">seek a seat in Congress</a> and deferred to socialist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Allan-L-Benson">journalist Allan L. Benson</a> to head the party’s ticket. Both lost.</p>
<p>In April 1917, when America joined World War I’s bloodbath in Europe, Debs became a fierce opponent of American involvement in what he saw as a death cult orchestrated by rapacious munitions manufacturers. On May 21, 1918, wary of a small but energized and eloquent anti-war movement, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jsch.12219">Wilson signed the Sedition Act into law</a>. </p>
<p>Debs would not be muzzled. On June 18, 1918, in an address in Canton, Ohio, <a href="https://newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-bin/indiana?a=d&d=RPD19180701.1.11&srpos=2&e=01-07-1918-01-07-1918--en-20--1--txt-txIN-%22Eugene+V.+Debs%22------">he declared that</a> American boys were “fit for something better than for cannon fodder.” </p>
<p>In short order, he was arrested and convicted of violating the Sedition Act. At his sentencing, he told the judge he would not retract a word of his speech even if it meant he would spend the rest of his life behind bars. “I ask for no mercy, <a href="https://www.cantondailyledger.com/story/opinion/columns/2018/07/02/eugene-debs-recalled-as-free/11615035007/">plead for no immunity</a>,” he declared. After a brief stint in the West Virginia Federal Penitentiary, he was sent to serve out his sentence at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520552/original/file-20230412-22-mce10q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A vintage newspaper clipping with the headline 'Socialists Declare Old Parties Are Crumbling.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520552/original/file-20230412-22-mce10q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520552/original/file-20230412-22-mce10q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520552/original/file-20230412-22-mce10q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520552/original/file-20230412-22-mce10q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520552/original/file-20230412-22-mce10q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1386&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520552/original/file-20230412-22-mce10q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520552/original/file-20230412-22-mce10q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1386&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Last-minute preelection campaigning on Eugene Debs’ behalf by the Socialist Party is described in the New York Tribune of Oct. 27, 1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030214/1920-10-27/ed-1/?sp=2&q=Socialist+Party+1920&st=image&r=0.205,-0.077,0.823,0.351,0">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Imprisonment only enhanced Debs’ status with his followers. On May 13, 1920, at its national convention in New York, the Socialist Party unanimously nominated “Convict 2253” as its standard-bearer for the presidency. Debs was later given new digits, so the campaign buttons read “For President, Convict No. 9653.”</p>
<p>As Debs’ name was entered into nomination, a wave of emotion swept over the delegates, who cheered for 30 minutes before bursting into a rousing chorus of the “Internationale,” <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1920/05/14/96891587.html?pageNumber=3">the communist anthem</a>. </p>
<h2>A ‘front cell’ campaign</h2>
<p>Debs’ opponents both were better funded and enjoyed freedom of movement: They were <a href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/elections/election1920.html">Warren G. Harding, the GOP junior senator from Ohio, and James M. Cox</a>, governor of Ohio, for the Democrats. </p>
<p>Yet Debs did not let incarceration keep his message from the voters. In a wry response to <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/harding/campaigns-and-elections">Harding’s “front porch” campaign</a> style, in which the Republican candidate received visits from the front porch of his home in Marion, Ohio, the Socialist Party announced that its candidate would conduct <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1920/07/11/issue.html">a “front cell” campaign</a> from Atlanta. </p>
<p>In 1920, broadcast radio was not a factor in electioneering, but another electronic medium was just beginning to be exploited for political messaging. On May 29, 1920, in a carefully choreographed event, newsreel cameras filmed a delegation from the Socialist Party arriving at the Atlanta penitentiary to inform Debs officially of his nomination. The intertitles of the silent screen described “the most unusual scene in the political history of America – Debs, serving a ten-year term for ‘seditious activities,’ accepts Socialist nomination for Presidency.” </p>
<p>After accepting “a floral tribute from Socialist women voters,” the “Moving Picture Weekly” reported, the denim-clad <a href="https://ia801302.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?id=movingpicturewe1014movi_1&itemPath=%2F0%2Fitems%2Fmovingpicturewe1014movi_1&server=ia801302.us.archive.org&page=leaf000474">Debs was shown giving</a> “a final affectionate farewell” before heading “back to the prison cell for nine years longer.” </p>
<p>At motion picture theaters across the nation, audiences watched the staged ritual and, depending on their party registration, reacted with cheers or hisses. </p>
<p>The New York Times was aghast that a felon might canvass for votes from the motion picture screen. </p>
<p>“Under the influence of this unreasoning mob psychology, the acknowledged criminal is nightly applauded as loudly as many of the candidates for the Presidency who have won their honorable eminence by great and unflagging service to the American people,” <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1920/06/12/98297951.html?pageNumber=14">read an editorial from June 12, 1920</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520537/original/file-20230412-16-nukmwa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A vintage telegram regarding President Harding's commutation of Eugene Debs' sentence." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520537/original/file-20230412-16-nukmwa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520537/original/file-20230412-16-nukmwa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520537/original/file-20230412-16-nukmwa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520537/original/file-20230412-16-nukmwa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520537/original/file-20230412-16-nukmwa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520537/original/file-20230412-16-nukmwa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520537/original/file-20230412-16-nukmwa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One year after the election of 1920, President Warren Harding commuted Eugene Debs’ sentence, and he was released from prison on Christmas Day, 1921.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2002697246/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Public opinion turns</h2>
<p>On Nov. 2, 1920, when <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1920">the election results came in</a>, Harding had trounced his Democratic opponent by a record electoral majority, 404 electoral votes to Cox’s 127, with 60.4% of the popular vote to Cox’s 34.1%. Debs was a distant third, but he had won 3.4% of the electorate – 913,693 votes. Debs’ personal-best showing was in the presidential election of 1912, with 6% of the vote. To be fair, that was when he was more mobile.</p>
<p>Even with the Great War over and the Sedition Act repealed by a repentant Congress on Dec. 13, 1920, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1921/02/01/archives/wilson-refuses-to-pardon-debs-rejects-palmers-recommendation-to.html">Wilson, during his final months in office, steadfastly refused</a> to grant Debs a pardon. But public opinion had turned emphatically in favor of the convict-candidate. Harding, who took office in March 1921, finally <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/01/06/warren-harding-eugene-debs/">commuted his sentence</a>, effective on Christmas Day, 1921, along with those of 23 other Great War prisoners of conscience convicted under the Sedition Act.</p>
<p>As Debs exited the prison gates, his <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/471549359/?terms=%22Debs%22%20%22cameras%22%20&match=1">fellow inmates cheered</a>. He raised his hat in one hand, his cane in the other, and waved back at them. Outside, the newsreel cameras were waiting to greet him.</p>
<p>It was the kind of photo op that Donald Trump might relish.</p>
<p><em>This is an update of a story that was originally published on April 18, 2023.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225492/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Doherty does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Can you run for president from a prison cell? One man did in the 1920 election and got almost a million votes.Thomas Doherty, Professor of American Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2249202024-03-10T13:13:33Z2024-03-10T13:13:33ZHow lessons from the First World War could help Ukraine in the war<p>As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its third year, the war’s tactics increasingly seem to match scenes from the First World War: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/nov/07/21st-century-trench-warfare-ukrainian-frontline-in-pictures">soldiers huddle in trenches</a> along stagnant front lines and navigate intense barrages. </p>
<p>Beyond trench warfare, however, the Ukraine conflict resembles the strategic, operational and tactical situation faced by Allied commanders immediately prior to the <a href="https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/about-wwi/hundred-days-offensive">100 Days Offensive</a>, and its lessons remain applicable to contemporary wartime political and military leaders. </p>
<p>The successes produced by the 100 Days Offensive that began in the late summer of 1918 were primarily influenced by the Allies’ reliance on a strategy of maximum effort, flexible campaigns and advances in tactics.</p>
<h2>The 100 Days Offensive</h2>
<p>Having suffered <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA273082.pdf">significant losses</a> in the preceding months, and facing the possibility of growing German strength following the defeat of Russia, Allied leaders prioritized launching a decisive offensive before <a href="http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol13/no2/doc/Goldsworthy-Pages4656-eng.pdf">their own exhaustion</a> forced them to settle for peace. </p>
<p>These strategic considerations led Allied commanders to shift the balance of their forces to seize opportunities along the front. Beginning with a <a href="https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol2/iss2/11/">surprise attack on Amiens</a>, the Allies often rapidly <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/from-amiens-to-armistice-the-hundred-days-offensive">shifted</a> the centre of their offensive efforts. These moves forced the German High Command to commit additional resources along the front, weakening its defences.</p>
<p>While the Allies’ <a href="https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol2/iss2/11/">hurried tempo</a> led to higher casualties, maintaining momentum was critical to eventually piercing the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1179/072924799791201434">Hindenburg Line</a>, the Germans’ most significant prepared defensive position. </p>
<p>Allied tactics forced combat into the open. While aircraft had been introduced prior to 1918, the Allies were able to rely on <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA529831.pdf">near-total control of the air</a>. This allowed Allied forces to more effectively target their <a href="https://media.defense.gov/2010/Oct/13/2001329759/-1/-1/0/AFD-101013-008.pdf">artillery fire and rely on better reconnaissance</a>. </p>
<p>Moreover, the Allies were also able to introduce significant numbers of tanks to the battlefield. This development allowed Allied forces to gain localized fire support at key stages of the offensive and contributed to their string of victories. </p>
<h2>Wartime challenges</h2>
<p>The legacy of the 100 Days Offensive offers several strategic, operational and tactical lessons that remain highly applicable to the Ukrainian War. These include the importance of political timelines, the role of mobility in combat and the necessity of air power and infantry innovation. </p>
<p>Having dedicated a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/24/russia-economy-west-sanctions-00142713">significant portion</a> of its economy to war production, Russia will become more capable of replacing its wartime losses. This shift has occurred just as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/us/politics/military-weapons-ukraine-war.html">United States</a> and <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-military-industry-defense-buildup-war/">Europe</a> have struggled to fulfill orders for ammunition and other equipment for Ukraine due to domestic political complications. </p>
<p>Moreover, Ukraine faces <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraines-budget-2024">growing debt</a> due to the war and lacks <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/04/ukraine-mobilization-zelensky-russia/">large numbers</a> of available service personnel, <a href="http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol13/no2/doc/Goldsworthy-Pages4656-eng.pdf">mirroring</a> the state of the Anglo and French militaries in 1918 and raising doubts as to how long Ukraine can continue to engage in high-intensity combat.</p>
<p>Russia’s strength has also been bolstered by its capacity to enact further rounds of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/11/russia-conscription-military-mobilization-war/">conscription</a> and ongoing public <a href="https://www.norc.org/research/library/new-survey-finds-most-russians-see-ukrainian-war-as-defense-against-west.html">support</a> for the war. In contrast, conscription remains a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/28/world/europe/ukraine-conscription-mobilization-bill.html">highly contentious</a> topic in Ukraine, which may harm its future readiness.</p>
<h2>Lessons for Ukraine</h2>
<p>However, the Allies’ experience in 1918 is instructive. Even a weakened Anglo-Franco-American coalition remained capable of winning dramatic victories over a powerful adversary, so long as its political leaders remained fully committed to the war.</p>
<p>The operational challenges facing Ukraine and Russia are also akin to those faced by the Allies during the war. Russian forces have constructed miles of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-digs-ukraine-prepares-attack-2023-04-27/">prepared defences</a> on its occupied territories, much of which Ukraine has <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/seizing-initiative-ukraine-waging-war-defense-dominant-world">yet to overcome</a>. These defences have contributed to the static position of both militaries and will likely force Ukraine or Russia to shift their forces along the front in bids to make a breakthrough. </p>
<p>While Russia has continued to send waves of <a href="https://www.cna.org/reports/2023/09/training-in-the-russian-armed-forces">unprepared units</a> into <a href="https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/meatgrinder-russian-tactics-second-year-its-invasion-ukraine">intense combat</a>, Kyiv must be careful to conserve its combat power for future offensives. </p>
<p>Further, Ukraine should also maintain its commitment to <a href="https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-kherson-ruse-ukraine-and-the-art-of-military-deception/">misdirection</a>, as it did earlier in the war by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/26/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-disinformation.html">reportedly</a> focusing on Kherson before attacking Kharkiv, to prevent Russian forces from consolidating their lines. This tactic would follow the Allies’ attempt to spread German forces thin and prevent their reinforcement of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1179/072924799791201434">Hindenburg line</a>. </p>
<p>Lastly, the role of air power and innovative infantry tactics remain as critical to contemporary offensives as they were during 1918. Though neither Ukraine nor Russia has been able to establish <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/02/air-defense-shapes-warfighting-in-ukraine.html">complete control</a> over the air, Ukraine’s use of drones has allowed its forces to direct <a href="https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/evolution-not-revolution">pinpoint artillery fire</a> against Russian positions.</p>
<p>Additionally, the relative independence of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26920988">American Expeditionary Forces</a> and the <a href="http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol13/no2/doc/Goldsworthy-Pages4656-eng.pdf">Canadian Corps</a> allowed new tactics to be tested in combat, bolstering their contribution to the offensive. This model will continue to be beneficial to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-military-success-years-of-nato-training-11649861339">Ukraine’s push</a> to allow more junior officers to act on their own during combat. </p>
<p>Over the course of the 100 Days Offensive, the Allies managed to overcome three years of unrelenting trench warfare, along with a prolonged last-ditch German offensive, before bringing the war to an end. This series of events was precipitated by a growing strategic emphasis on waging a decisive campaign, adopting new operational doctrines, and relying on new tactical approaches, all of which remain applicable to the current war.</p>
<p>However, perhaps the lasting lesson of the 100 Days Offensive is that the campaign led to victory despite its failure to fully eject German forces from France. Looking towards the third year of the war in Ukraine, it is important to recognize that victory wears many disguises beyond golden laurels.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Long Burnham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ukraine can borrow lessons from the First World War as the war with Russia enters its third year.John Long Burnham, Policy Research Assistant, China Institute, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2112872024-01-11T17:16:14Z2024-01-11T17:16:14ZHedd Wyn: how the life of one of Wales’ most promising poets was cut short by the first world war<p>The names Passchendaele, the Somme and Mametz Wood stand as grim sentinels, forever bound to the unimaginable carnage of the first world war. Almost 500,000 men were killed in three months at Passchendaele, the <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-third-battle-of-ypres-passchendaele#:%7E:text=Casualties%20were%20heavy&text=Casualties%20among%20German%20forces%20were,the%20Third%20Battle%20of%20Ypres.">third battle of Ypres</a>. On the first day of that battle, Wales lost one of its most talented poets. </p>
<p>Born on January 13 1887, Ellis Humphrey Evans was the eldest child of Mary and Evan Evans and one of 11 siblings. He became known by his bardic name, <a href="https://www.ylolfa.com/products/9781784610425/cofiant-hedd-wyn">Hedd Wyn</a> (Blessed Peace). The family lived and worked at a remote farm outside Trawsfynydd in north-west Wales, called <em>Yr Ysgwrn</em>.</p>
<p>Evan Evans bought his son a book on the rules of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-welsh-developed-their-own-form-of-poetry-73299">strict-metre Welsh verse</a> when Hedd Wyn was 11 years old. He read the book with passion and enthusiasm, and soon mastered the difficult and intricate rules of strict-metre verse, known as <em>cynghanedd</em>.</p>
<p>He wrote his first ever <em>englyn</em> (a short four-lined poem in strict-metre) before his 12th birthday. Soon after, he began competing at local <em>eisteddfodau</em>, Welsh cultural festivals which showcase literary and artistic endeavours.</p>
<p>Hedd Wyn spent most of his short life at home. He received little formal schooling. His education was spasmodic and he was frequently absent from school when the weather was bad, as there was a substantial distance between the school and his home.</p>
<p>Hedd Wyn was an inept farmer and shepherd, but he loved looking after the sheep out on the mountain pastures, though only because the solitude and silence gave him ample opportunity to meditate and to write poetry.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="An old black and white photo of a man wearing a suit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hedd Wyn was 30 years old when he was killed.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Conscription</h2>
<p>And then came war. Hedd Wyn’s fate, along with thousands of others, was sealed when parliament passed the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1916/104/contents/enacted">Military Service Act</a> in 1916. This new legislation imposed conscription and was aimed at unmarried men or widowers. </p>
<p>Hedd Wyn had no choice but to enlist. He joined the 15th battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and by July 1917, he was stationed at Fléchin, a small village in northern France. </p>
<p>He and thousands of other soldiers were to participate in one of the major engagements of the war, the third battle of Ypres, otherwise known as the battle of Passchendaele. British troops were to occupy the village of Pilkem on Pilkem Ridge, and the marshlands to the east of Ypres before advancing towards Langemarck. Capturing the village of Pilkem and Pilkem Ridge, and holding both positions, was one of the main objectives of this enormous campaign. </p>
<p>It was during a period of intense fighting on Iron Cross Ridge on July 31 that Hedd Wyn was mortally wounded. </p>
<h2>The National Eisteddfod</h2>
<p>For a Welsh poet, winning the coveted chair at the <a href="https://eisteddfod.wales">National Eisteddfod</a>, an annual festival celebrating arts, language and culture, represents the <a href="https://blog.library.wales/the-chairing-of-the-bard-3/">pinnacle of achievement</a>. The chair is awarded to the winning entrant in the competition for the <em>awdl</em> – poetry written in strict-metre <em>cynghanedd</em> . A crown is awarded separately to those writing in free verse.</p>
<p>Chairing ceremonies are presided over by the archdruid, who reads the adjudicators’ comments before announcing the nom de plume of the winning bard. Nobody knows the true identity of the poet until the archdruid asks them to stand. </p>
<p>Before enlisting, Hedd Wyn had started working on an <em>awdl</em> for the chair at the 1917 National Eisteddfod. Due to the war, the Eisteddfod that year was held in England, in Birkenhead near Liverpool. Hedd Wyn had almost won the chair the previous year in Aberystwyth.</p>
<p>While stationed in France, he finally completed his <em>awdl</em> titled <em><a href="https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/manuscripts/modern-period/yr-arwr-hedd-wyn">Yr Arwr</a></em> (The Hero) and posted it to Birkenhead under his nom de plume, <em>Fleur-de-lis</em>. He was working on the poem until the last possible minute.</p>
<p>A packed crowd was watching the chairing ceremony in Birkenhead in early September, and among them was the prime minister at the time, David Lloyd George, himself a Welsh speaker. Without knowing he had died of his wounds several weeks earlier, the adjudicators had unanimously awarded the chair to Hedd Wyn. </p>
<p>As is customary, the archdruid called out <em>Fleur-de-lis</em> three times. But nobody stood up. Then he solemnly announced that the poet had been killed in battle six weeks earlier. The empty chair was draped in black in front of an emotional crowd. The 1917 eisteddfod became known as <em>Eisteddfod y Gadair Ddu</em> (the Eisteddfod of the Black Chair). </p>
<h2>Hedd Wyn’s legacy</h2>
<p>A volume of Hedd Wyn’s poetry, entitled <em>Cerddi’r Bugail</em> (The Shepherd’s Verses), was published a year later. The first 1,000 copies were sold in five days. Eventually every copy of the 4,000 first edition was sold. </p>
<p>In 1923, a statue, depicting Hedd Wyn as a shepherd, the work of artist L. S. Merrifield, was unveiled by his mother in Trawsfynydd. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lAU8frR8GiA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hedd Wyn was the first Welsh film to be nominated for best foreign language film at the Oscars in 1993.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On St David’s Day 2012, Wales’ then first minister, Carwyn Jones, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-17221011">announced</a> that Hedd Wyn’s home, <em>Yr Ysgwrn</em>, had been bought for the nation, to secure and safeguard the poet’s legacy. Two years later, it was renovated and turned into a <a href="https://yrysgwrn.com/en/">museum</a> by the Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park.</p>
<p>Hedd Wyn was a highly talented poet who wrote exquisite work. His <em>englyn</em> in memory of his friend, Lieutenant D. O. Evans of Blaenau Ffestiniog, for example, became an elegy for all the young men who had fallen on the killing fields of the Great War: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ei aberth nid â heibio – ei wyneb</p>
<p>Annwyl nid â'n ango</p>
<p>Er i'r Almaen ystaenio</p>
<p>Ei dwrn dur yn ei waed o.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It can be translated as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>His sacrifice was not in vain, his dear</p>
<p>Face will always remain,</p>
<p>Although he left a bloodstain</p>
<p>On Germany’s iron fist of pain.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Llwyd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bard Hedd Wyn was killed in action in France in 1917.Alan Llwyd, Professor of Welsh, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2207062024-01-08T16:43:06Z2024-01-08T16:43:06ZBattle of the Somme: new research shows detonating a massive mine under German lines too early led to a British slaughter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568214/original/file-20240108-21-gyo5wk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C503%2C361&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The earth rose in the air to the height of hundreds of feet.': but a delay in the infantry attack meant that hundreds of British troops were killed.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://youtu.be/xQ_OZfaiUlc?si=xtMTD-H-MGOkRRmu">Battle of the Somme</a> began on July 1 1916 with a spectacular explosion under Hawthorn Ridge – a fortified German frontline position west of the village of Beaumont Hamel in northern France. The footage of the explosion remains one of the best-known <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-the-battle-of-the-somme-was-filmed">pieces of film</a> from the whole conflict.</p>
<p>Almost 60ft below the surface, British miners of the 252 Tunnelling Company had hand dug a gallery for more than 900 metres through chalk and packed it with 40,000lbs of ammonal explosives. It was one of 19 mines placed beneath German front positions that were detonated on July 1 1916, to mark the start of the offensive.</p>
<p>But the mine detonation at Hawthorn Ridge, famously captured by military film director <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/geoffrey-malins-and-the-battle-of-the-somme-film">Geoffrey Malins</a>, took place ten minutes before the whistles blew at 7.30am. This controversial decision was made in order to protect the attacking British troops from falling debris. </p>
<p>But disastrously, it allowed the Germans to take the crater and repel their advance, leading to massive losses among the attacking British troops from the 29th infantry division.</p>
<p>Malins recorded his feelings <a href="https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/hawthorn-ridge-a-forensic-investigation-into-the-archaeology-and-history-of-hawthorn-crater/">after the event</a> in the film The Battle of the Somme, released later that summer: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The ground where I stood gave a mighty convulsion, it rocked and swayed … the earth rose in the air to the height of hundreds of feet. Higher and higher it rose, and with a horrible, grinding roar the earth fell back upon itself, leaving in its place a mountain of smoke.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Bringing science to bear on history</h2>
<p>Now, the first scientific study to be carried out at the 107-year-old crater has <a href="http://doi.org/10.1080/15740773.2023.2297202">just been published</a> and has unearthed new details on its history. Our team of researchers, which comprised the authors listed here – scientists from Keele and Staffordshire universities supported by a historian from Goldsmiths, University of London – used a range of cutting–edge technology to examine the site as it has never been seen before.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5SZn0N9Ja-U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Drone footage taken over Hawthorn Crater, Beaumont Hamel, Northern France.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Surveys of the surface examined the crater in detail never before seen at this site. It revealed shell holes clustered to the east of the crater that had been created by British artillery in their attempts to dislodge the Germans from their crater stronghold.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JceuXH0Tpsw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Digital fly-through of ground-based lidar dataset taken at Hawthorn Crater, Beaumont Hamel, Northern France.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other technical surveys greatly enhanced our knowledge of this internationally significant site. Over two field seasons in 2018 and 2019 we carried out magnetic and electrical resistivity <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-do-archaeologists-discover-forgotten-ancient-monuments-47317">geophysical surveys</a>, to identify promising areas for subsequent archaeological excavations. </p>
<p>While, due to the variable topographic conditions and the inevitably metallic debris of the battlefield, these surveys were difficult to carry out, they were incredibly valuable, as they pointed the way for fruitful excavations.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-do-archaeologists-discover-forgotten-ancient-monuments-47317">Explainer: how do archaeologists discover forgotten ancient monuments?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Carried out in the third field season in 2020, these archaeological excavations uncovered hard evidence of the stubborn German defence on that fateful first day on the Somme. Though the early detonation led to the loss of many Württemberg infantrymen of the German 119th Reserve Infantry Regiment, our work uncovered hard evidence of how the newly formed crater was turned to their advantage. </p>
<p>It revealed the still-intact German defensive fire-pits, barbed wire and other materials showing how the Germans quickly built the crater as a new defensive position into their frontline, meaning the chance for the British breakthrough in the early days of the Somme was lost.</p>
<p>An unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) survey – a now common way to <a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-are-using-drones-to-help-predict-coastal-erosion-60135">map scientific areas of interest</a> – also uncovered evidence of a previously unknown “sap” or shallow tunnel, most probably dug by the Germans after they had captured the crater, probing towards the British lines, again showing their mastery of no man’s land after the initial detonation.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TGgmR9oOF7U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Footage explaining the conflict archaeology phase of the investigation at Hawthorn Crater, Beaumont Hamel, Northern France.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>If at first you don’t succeed…</h2>
<p>As the battle dragged on towards winter, a second attempt to capture this new position was tried, and this time, was more successful. A second mine was laid using 30,000lbs of ammonal explosive, and was blown from the same tunnel on November 13 1916. </p>
<p>With no delay this time, and with better planning, the mine was much more effective, aiding the 51st Highland Division to capture Hawthorn ridge and the nearby village. </p>
<p>Our surface surveys mapped out this second crater, merging as it does with the original in today’s landscape. This time, archaeological surveys discovered an empty ammunition box for a Vickers machine gun within the crater, reflecting the period of British occupation of the site.</p>
<p>Our study has provided rarely undertaken scientific investigations of a mine crater, and of the strongpoint the Germans built in no man’s land that doomed the initial British attack to failure. </p>
<p>Our results reinforce the notion that blowing the mine ten minutes early was a very bad idea. While it was intended to protect the attackers from falling debris, it gave the Germans time to capture a valuable strongpoint, ripe for fortification. </p>
<p>It was only with concerted effort four months later, and the second mine and subsequent detonation on November 13, that the Hawthorn redoubt was finally captured by the 51st Highlanders, marking the end of the battle some five days later. This time the mine was exploded immediately before the ground assault began – the early detonation of the July 1 was not repeated. </p>
<p>It was a lesson learned the hard way. More than 3 million men fought in the Battle of the Somme, a million of whom were killed or injured, making it one of the deadliest battles in human history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Pringle receives funding from the HLF, the Nuffield Foundation, Royal Society, NERC, EPSRC and EU Horizon2020. He is affiliated with the Geological Society of London. Jamie works for Keele University.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristopher Wisniewski is affiliated with the Geological Society of London.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Doyle is Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary War Heritage Group, and is Emeritus Professor at London South Bank University</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Paul Cassella does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thanks to modern geological exploration technology we can piece together the events of July 1 1916 when a tactical error came with massive cost to the British army.Jamie Pringle, Reader in Forensic Geoscience, Keele UniversityJohn Paul Cassella, Lecturer in Forensic Investigation & Analysis, Professor of Forensic Science Education, Atlantic Technological UniversityKristopher Wisniewski, Lecturer in Forensic Science, Keele UniversityPeter Doyle, Professor and Lecturer in Military History, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2194802024-01-01T20:33:41Z2024-01-01T20:33:41ZHow do we commemorate the New Zealand Wars? The history of Anzac Day can be a guide<p>Despite 2023 having been the sixth year a national day of commemoration for the New Zealand Wars was observed, it’s debatable how many New Zealanders really knew much about it.</p>
<p>Historians and Māori leaders are <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/477605/nz-wars-commemoration-risks-being-overlooked-kaumatua">now worried</a> about the mixed impact of the day – known as Te Pūtake o te Riri – amid wider fears it is already slipping from public attention.</p>
<p>The day was conceived as an important step towards greater public awareness of the <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/new-zealands-19th-century-wars/introduction">major 19th-century conflicts</a> between Māori and the settler government. It was first named He Rā Maumahara in 2016, “in honour of those who made sacrifices in wars and conflicts within Aotearoa New Zealand”.</p>
<p>The day was given its new name after consultation with <a href="https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?keywords=iwi">iwi</a>, and October 28 designated as the annual date of observance. Unlike Anzac Day, however, Te Pūtake o te Riri was not made an official holiday – and this may partly explain its struggle for wider recognition. </p>
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<h2>A question of timing</h2>
<p>The day’s name is a compound of “Te Pūtake”, meaning the root or cause, and “te riri”, the anger or conflict. It emphasises Māori experiences, and each year’s commemoration is hosted by different <a href="https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?keywords=hapu">hapū</a> and iwi. </p>
<p>In 2023, for example, it focused on <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/500858/tauranga-hosts-te-putake-o-te-riri-commemoration-of-new-zealand-wars">Ngai-te-rangi perspectives</a> of the battle of Pukehinahina – “Gate Pā” – in Tauranga.</p>
<p>Despite an initial groundswell of interest and support, COVID inevitably disrupted observance of the day. But there have also been questions about the choice of October 28 in the first place.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-parihaka-to-he-puapua-its-time-pakeha-new-zealanders-faced-their-personal-connections-to-the-past-164553">From Parihaka to He Puapua: it’s time Pākehā New Zealanders faced their personal connections to the past</a>
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<p>Historian <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/85963084/historian-says-land-wars-day-should-be-held-in-taranaki-where-the-wars-began">Danny Keenan argues</a> the date – which marks the signing in 1835 of <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/declaration-of-independence-taming-the-frontier">He Whakaputanga</a>, the Declaration of Independence – dilutes the focus on what were first and foremost military conflicts.</p>
<p>Sociologist and Māori educationalist Joanna Kidman also blames a <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/501128/they-don-t-know-the-history-nzers-know-more-about-foreign-wars-than-our-own">lack of basic understanding</a> by Pākehā New Zealanders of the New Zealand Wars, and the continued emphasis on World War I and other 20th-century conflicts.</p>
<h2>Evolution of Anzac Day</h2>
<p>The comparison with the first world war invites an intriguing question: what lessons might we learn from the history of our <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-lessons-about-old-wars-keeping-the-complex-story-of-anzac-day-relevant-in-the-21st-century-204013">most visible war commemoration</a>, Anzac Day?</p>
<p>In fact, April 25 itself has had its own ups and downs, shaped by New Zealanders’ shifting connection to the British Empire. The rhetoric and practice of a national commemoration, led by the prime minister, didn’t appear until the 1990s. </p>
<p>Indeed, in 1965, the 50th anniversary of Gallipoli, there were real doubts Anzac Day could survive the passing of the last Anzac veterans.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-lessons-about-old-wars-keeping-the-complex-story-of-anzac-day-relevant-in-the-21st-century-204013">New lessons about old wars: keeping the complex story of Anzac Day relevant in the 21st century</a>
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<p>Instead, it has survived as a sacred day – helped perhaps by the 1920 Anzac Day Act which made it an official public holiday. (The Act also banned public entertainment and other “profane” activities such as drinking in pubs and horse racing on April 25.) </p>
<p>The day’s remit was expanded in 1949 to commemorate all wars fought by New Zealand soldiers since the Boer War (1899-1902). But there was ongoing debate over whether the RSA and government had the right to make New Zealanders observe any particular “sacred” activity. </p>
<p>The law was liberalised in 1966 to allow people to do what they wanted after morning services ended at 11am. It was recognised that moving from solemnity to relaxation might avoid the risk of people simply rejecting the remembrance entirely.</p>
<h2>War memorials and public memory</h2>
<p>The growing public ownership of Anzac Day ran parallel to the decline of Armistice Day, which marked the end of the World War I on November 11. </p>
<p>On a par with April 25 until the 1940s, there was a near-immediate collapse in public support when the government moved observance to the nearest Sunday. This
suggests legislative status can be a significant factor in shaping attitudes to remembering the past.</p>
<p>The survival of Anzac Day, unlike November 11, also reflected the physical landscape of commemoration. No New Zealand town was too small to claim a local memorial to the fallen. As the sculptor Brett Graham has noted, war memorials became the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3luVxJQYGA8">dominant sculptural form</a> of public life. </p>
<p>Nowadays, they are among the nation’s most prominent public sites, including the Auckland War Memorial Museum, the Pukeahu National War Memorial in Wellington, and Christchurch’s Bridge of Remembrance.</p>
<p>These memorial sites have retained their importance due to the efforts and investment of dedicated groups. Veterans and other social networks, expanded over the years to reflect a more diverse New Zealand, have been vital to the evolution of Anzac ritual. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/solidarity-and-difference-how-anzac-day-reflects-an-ever-changing-new-zealand-159210">Solidarity and difference — how Anzac Day reflects an ever-changing New Zealand</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Gallipoli and national unity</h2>
<p><a href="https://flintandsteelmag.com/article/protest-and-patriotism/">Protests on Anzac Day</a> (against war but also other social issues) also raised new questions about the purpose of the commemoration and its role in public life.</p>
<p>Significantly, the Gallipoli story – the central focus of our Anzac mythology – has been adapted and retold by each generation. Speeches, newspaper accounts, memoirs and official histories initially forged this mythical element, complete with heroes and martyrs, as well as villains (the German-Ottoman forces, later the British Empire itself). </p>
<p>In the 1980s, playwrights, documentary makers and film directors re-visualised the imperial Anzac story as appealing nationalist myths. Māori Television (Whakatā Māori) established a national Anzac Day broadcast in 2005, deepening the <a href="https://theconversation.com/solidarity-and-difference-how-anzac-day-reflects-an-ever-changing-new-zealand-159210">shared cultural languages and motifs</a> of April 25.</p>
<p>Since the 1990s, successive governments – especially Helen Clark’s in the early 2000s – invested in Anzac Day as a commemoration of national unity. </p>
<p>A key milestone was the repatriation of the <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/34145/the-unknown-warrior">unknown warrior</a> in 2004, observed by 100,000 New Zealanders who lined the streets of Wellington for the funeral procession and burial at Pukeahu. The state-funded Anzac Centenary in 2015 was the largest commemoration in New Zealand history.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566129/original/file-20231217-25-fhip6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566129/original/file-20231217-25-fhip6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566129/original/file-20231217-25-fhip6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566129/original/file-20231217-25-fhip6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566129/original/file-20231217-25-fhip6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566129/original/file-20231217-25-fhip6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566129/original/file-20231217-25-fhip6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">New Zealand Wars Memorial on Marsland Hill, New Plymouth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<h2>Need for a national policy</h2>
<p>What would a comparable state investment in New Zealand Wars commemoration look like? Some have suggested Te Pūtake o te Riri will never achieve the necessary public attention until it becomes a statutory holiday. </p>
<p>There are other challenges, too. As Joanna Kidman noted, many New Zealand Wars cemeteries, memorials and battlefields have been neglected or are on private land. Increasing public access to these sites will require a coordinated – and expensive – effort by local councils and central government. </p>
<p>It’s not enough, though, simply to transplant Anzac cultural and political symbols and language onto Te Pūtake o te Riri – an unknown warrior of our colonial conflicts, resting in Pukeahu’s Hall of Memories, for example. </p>
<p>Ngāti Maniapoto historian Kawhia Te Murahi has called for a <a href="https://www.teaonews.co.nz/2021/10/28/te-putake-o-te-riri-helping-this-nation-come-to-terms-with-its-history/">unique “blending” of Māori and Pākehā tikanga</a> and <a href="https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?&keywords=kawa">kawa</a> for the day. </p>
<p>The issues raised all point to the need for a national policy on the commemoration of the New Zealand Wars – guided by iwi, with critical input from scholars – that enhances community relationships.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/learning-to-live-with-the-messy-complicated-history-of-how-aotearoa-new-zealand-was-colonised-172219">Learning to live with the 'messy, complicated history' of how Aotearoa New Zealand was colonised</a>
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<h2>New ways of remembering</h2>
<p>In 2023, a <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/501275/ceremony-bestows-78-sets-of-medals-to-descendants-of-28th-maori-battalion">striking example</a> of the potential for war commemoration to take new directions took place at Te Rau Aroha, the museum at Waitangi dedicated to the contribution of Māori to the nation’s involvement in wars since 1840.</p>
<p>After its service on October 28, the museum hosted whānau descendants of 28th Māori Battalion veterans who had never claimed their medals for serving in World War II.</p>
<p>By choosing Te Pūtake o te Riri for the ceremony, the organisers were able to bridge past and present through themes of service, sacrifice and citizenship. As trusted institutions of public memory, museums are ideally placed to tell the stories of the New Zealand Wars.</p>
<p>Commemoration doesn’t happen by chance – it reflects the work of individuals, networks and institutions dedicated to promoting and framing a society’s defining narratives.</p>
<p>Both local initiative and state investment are important here. Above all, communities want to remember and commemorate the nation’s violent past. Anyone contributing to changes in public commemorative culture needs to understand this, and be guided by history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219480/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rowan Light does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A national day for commemoration of the New Zealand Wars has struggled for attention and public engagement. So did Anzac Day once, and its survival can provide useful lessons.Rowan Light, Lecturer in History, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2174622023-11-10T16:34:34Z2023-11-10T16:34:34ZPalestine march: some opponents are politicising the Cenotaph to sow divisions – and it could work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558828/original/file-20231110-15-auyr0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Poppy wreaths placed around the Cenotaph on Whitehall.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/poppies-cenotaph-london-20472367">David Burrows|Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The pro-Palestine protest planned to take place in London on Armistice Day has <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/alex-chalk-armistice-palestine-protest-row-b2442956.html">met</a> with <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/united-kingdom-london-pro-palestine-rally-thats-dividing-britain/">opposition</a> from <a href="https://theconversation.com/suella-braverman-why-the-home-secretary-cant-force-the-police-to-cancel-a-pro-palestine-march-217399">politicians</a> and media pundits alike. </p>
<p>Organisers of the Armistice Day protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/06/organisers-of-pro-palestine-marches-fear-ban-on-saturdays-protest-in-london">have said</a> the march will not go near the Cenotaph on Whitehall. Opponents, meanwhile, have argued that it nonetheless poses a “threat” to the national war memorial.
The journalist Matt Ridley <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/any-protest-which-threatens-the-cenotaph-is-a-travesty/">has said</a> that “any protest which threatens the Cenotaph is a travesty”. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has echoed this sentiment, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67305535">saying</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is a clear and present risk that the Cenotaph and other war memorials could be desecrated, something that would be an affront to the British public and the values we stand for. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Cenotaph was first dedicated after the first world war and was later re-dedicated after the second world war. Each November, it is the focal point of official Armistice commemorations. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/53180?language=en">research explores</a> how war memorials in Britain and elsewhere are visible - and sometimes contested - sites of political and civic ritual. They are valued specifically because they usher sacred sentiment into public discourse. And as a result, they can on occasion find themselves at the centre of highly public disputes.</p>
<h2>Sacred shrines of the secular age</h2>
<p>For some, fears of memorial desecration have already been borne out. On November 6 2023, “Free Palestine” graffiti was <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rochdale-cenotaph-manchester-palestine-protest-b2443611.html">daubed</a> on the war memorial in Rochdale, Lancashire, and poppy wreaths damaged.</p>
<p>Similar fears have been voiced before. Back in 2016, the producers of the BBC’s Top Gear were <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/top-gear-cenotaph-stunt-sparks-fury-as-show-bosses-defend-matt-le-blanc-scenes-a6929806.html">criticised in the press</a> when a video emerged of car stunts being filmed within sight of the Cenotaph. Former commander of British forces in Afghanistan Colonel Richard Kemp, <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/652363/Top-Gear-bosses-slammed-war-veteran-filming-scenes-near-memorial-London-Matt-LeBlanc">reportedly characterised this</a> as “a shocking desecration of one of our most sacred sites”</p>
<p>Such comments show the deep and sometimes complicated relationship the British public has with monuments and memorials commemorating 20th-century war. For many people, these are the sacred national shrines of an increasingly secular age. </p>
<p>Dedicated to the dead, they are solemn sites of remembrance re-sanctified in ceremony and ritual each November 11. Many have their origins in the 1920s. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An archival photograph in colour London's Cenotaph war memorial on Whitehall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Cenotaph in 1961.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/cars-parked-on-side-of-the-road-near-building-during-daytime-ZfS2wDzfI6A">Annie Spratt|Unsplash</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the Cenotaph was unveiled on November 11 1920 in a ceremony of national remembrance <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/the-cenotaph/history/">led by King George V</a>. The word comes from the Greek <em>kenotaphion</em>, which means “empty tomb”. It is as such that Lutyens conceived of his paired down monument, a symbolic form deliberately chosen as non-denominational.</p>
<p>It was first built as a temporary structure of wood and plaster for the Victory Parade of <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembrance-day-the-enduring-nature-of-the-first-two-minute-silence-126698">July 1919</a>. Around a million people made a pilgrimage to it in the week after the parade. </p>
<p>This outpouring of public grief was crucial to the establishment of a permanent Cenotaph, the following year, with the monument rebuilt in <a href="https://theconversation.com/portland-stone-how-a-creamy-british-limestone-became-a-symbol-of-empire-and-elitism-163763">Portland stone</a>. This fact is central to understanding the monument’s powerful place in modern British culture.</p>
<p>For many contemporaries, it was not simply an imposition from government but something which had been established as a result of collective and communal grief. In other words, it was the work of the people, not just of politicians. </p>
<p>Communal grief, albeit it on a smaller scale, was seen at many other locations across the country. In the towns and villages of Britain and its empire, <a href="https://www.ukwarmemorials.org/index.html">local communities</a> undertook the work of commemoration.</p>
<p>Historian Thomas Laqueur <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691029252/commemorations">has suggested</a> that these commemorative activities were part of the “democracy of death” because the war memorials of the 1920s carried the names of the <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151162682.pdf">“common soldier”</a> – that is, ordinary people. </p>
<p>They were a feature of a new era of democratisation which saw new legislation introduced, including the <a href="https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/the-representation-of-the-people-act-1918-a-democratic-milestone-in-the-uk-and-ireland/">Representation of the People Act</a> (1918), which extended the right to vote specifically to women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification and to all men over the age of 21. </p>
<p>As such, these structures have come to play an important role in the civic life of many communities. </p>
<p>Any thing perceived as in some way encroaching upon them thus risks becoming seen as a “threat”. This might be an activity (car stunts) that causes noise and disturbance nearby. Or it might be an event (such as a protest) that has the potential to disrupt a time-honoured ritual. </p>
<p>The route of the planned pro-Palestine march will not take protestors anywhere near the Cenotaph. And yet, despite the Western Front Association, which organises Armistice Day commemorations, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/08/organiser-of-armistice-day-event-at-cenotaph-hopes-pro-palestine-protest-can-go-ahead">saying</a> the march should be allowed to go ahead, it clearly remains an emotive issue for many. </p>
<p>This public sentiment is precisely why politicians invoke the Cenotaph – those wishing to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/braverman-palestine-protest-armistice-far-right-b2444454.html">stoke divisions</a> know it will be a successful gambit. Ultimately, the ongoing debate over the protest shows that even the nation’s war memorials can become drawn into the increasingly fractious politics of post-Brexit Britain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217462/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Edwards has previously received funding from the ESRC, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, the US Army Military History Institute, and the US Naval War College. Sam is a Trustee of Sulgrave Manor (Northamptonshire) and The American Library (Norwich). </span></em></p>Politicians wishing to stoke divisions invoke the Cenotaph knowing it will be a successful gambit because so many find solace in its meaning.Sam Edwards, Reader in Modern Political History, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2116572023-09-14T12:30:25Z2023-09-14T12:30:25ZThe importance of shining a light on hidden toxic histories<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548169/original/file-20230913-23-64mqmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C2927%2C1970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Activists in Newark, N.J., offer tours that teach visitors about the city's legacy of industrial pollution and environmental racism.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-aerial-view-of-newark-new-jersey-shows-smoke-news-photo/635229321?adppopup=true">Charles Rotkin/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Indianapolis proudly claims <a href="https://www.wthr.com/article/entertainment/hoosiers-remember-elvis-presley-indianapolis-concert-amid-new-movie-buzz/531-503bd6a9-c645-4704-bfad-7577126aaad6">Elvis’ last concert</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kWIa8wSC0">Robert Kennedy’s speech</a> in response to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and the Indianapolis 500. There’s a 9/11 memorial, a <a href="https://www.indianawarmemorials.org/explore/medal-of-honor-memorial/">Medal of Honor Memorial</a> and a statue of former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning.</p>
<p>What few locals know, let alone tourists, is that the city also houses one of the largest dry cleaning <a href="https://www.epa.gov/superfund/what-superfund">Superfund sites</a> in the U.S.</p>
<p>From 1952 to 2008, Tuchman Cleaners laundered clothes <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.638082">using perchloroethylene</a>, or PERC, a neurotoxin and possible carcinogen. Tuchman operated a chain of cleaners throughout the city, which sent clothes to a facility on Keystone Avenue for cleaning. It was also the location where used solution was stored in underground tanks.</p>
<p>Inspectors noted the presence of volatile organic compounds from leaking tanks and possible spills as early as 1989. By 1994, an underground plume had spread to a nearby aquifer. By the time the EPA became involved in 2011, the <a href="https://response.epa.gov/site/site_profile.aspx?site_id=7130">underground chemical plume</a> had seeped more than a mile underneath a residential area, reaching a well that supplies drinking water to the city.</p>
<p>When geographer <a href="https://liberalarts.iupui.edu/departments/geography/directory/owen-dwyer/">Owen Dwyer</a>, earth scientist <a href="https://science.iupui.edu/people-directory/people/filippelli-gabriel.html">Gabe Filippelli</a> and I investigated and wrote about the social and environmental <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003365259-24/dirty-laundry-toxic-heritage-dry-cleaning-indianapolis-indiana-elizabeth-kryder-reid-owen-dwyer-gabriel-filippelli?context=ubx&refId=242e9f98-2f2d-4587-9449-99734e77a875">history of dry cleaning in Indianapolis</a>, we were struck by how few people outside of the dry cleaning and environmental management fields were aware of this environmental damage. </p>
<p>There are no markers or memorials. There is no mention of it – or any other accounts of contamination – in Indianapolis’ many museums. This kind of silence has been called “<a href="https://www.orionmagazine.org/article/environmental-amnesia/">environmental amnesia</a>” or “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24906248">collective forgetting</a>.”</p>
<p>Societies celebrate heroes and commemorate tragedies. But where in public memory is environmental harm? What if people thought about it not only as a science or policy problem, but also as a part of history? Would it make a difference if pollution, along with biodiversity loss and climate change, was seen as part of our shared heritage? </p>
<h2>The slow violence of contamination</h2>
<p>Environmental harm often takes place gradually and out of sight, and this could be one reason why there’s so little public conversation and commemoration. In 2011, Princeton English professor <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674072343">Rob Nixon</a> came up with a term for this kind of environmental degradation: slow violence. </p>
<p>As underground storage tanks leak, <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003365259-10/ghost-wrecks-anthropocene-enduring-toxic-legacy-pacific-war-matthew-carter-ashley-meredith-augustine-kohler-ranger-walter-bill-jeffrey-paul-heersink?context=ubx&refId=9df11100-ce32-4e00-b590-5b9769b00df2">shipwrecks corrode</a>, coal ash ponds seep and <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003365259-6/toxic-heritage-forever-confronting-pfas-contamination-toxicity-lived-experience-thomas-pearson-daniel-renfrew?context=ubx&refId=ef6c0e6a-b9da-4008-9689-9a43a2dc3055">forever chemicals spread</a>, the creeping pace of poisoned soil and water fails to garner the attention that more dramatic environmental disasters attract.</p>
<p>Certain interests benefit from hiding the costs of pollution and its remediation. Sociologists <a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/sites-unseen">Scott Frickel and James R. Elliott</a> have studied urban pollution, and they highlight three reasons for its pervasiveness and persistence. </p>
<p>First, in cities, small factories, auto repair shops, dry cleaners and other light industries sometimes only stay open for a decade or two, making it challenging to regulate them and track their environmental impacts over time. By the time contamination is discovered, many facilities have long been shuttered or purchased by new owners. And the polluters have a direct financial interest in not being connected with it, since they could be held liable and forced to pay for cleanup.</p>
<p>Similarly, urban neighborhoods tend to have shifting demographics, and local residents are often not aware of historical pollution. </p>
<p>Finally, it can simply be politically expedient to look the other way and ignore the consequences of pollution. Cities may be concerned that publicizing toxic histories discourage investment and depress property values, and politicians are hesitant to fund projects that may have a long-term benefit but short-term costs. Indianapolis, for example, tried for decades to avoid mitigating the raw sewage flowing into the White River and Fall Creek, arguing it was too expensive to deal with. Only when required by a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2013-09/documents/indy0610-cd.pdf">consent decree</a> did the city start to address the problem.</p>
<p>Toxic legacies are also difficult to track because their effects may be hidden by distance and time. Anthropologist Peter Little <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/burning-matters-9780190934552?cc=us&lang=en&">traced the outsourcing of electronics waste recycling</a>, which is shipped from the places where electronics are bought and used, to countries such as Ghana, where labor is cheap and environmental regulations lax. </p>
<p>Then there are the toxic traces of military conflicts, which linger long after the fighting has stopped and troops have returned home. Historian and geologist Daniel Hubé has documented <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19475020.2017.1393347">the long-term environmental impact of World War I munitions</a>. </p>
<p>At the end of the war, unused and unexploded bombs and chemical weapons had to be disposed of. In France, at a site known as <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003365259-25/cleaning-battlefields-times-war-polluted-soils-times-peace-case-study-silent-visible-toxic-legacy-great-war-daniel-hub%C3%A9-tobias-bausinger?context=ubx&refId=630129c7-e447-48fd-a959-24bf0bae1d83">Place à Gaz</a>, hundreds of thousands of chemical weapons were burned. Today, the soils have been found to have extraordinarily high levels of arsenic and other heavy metals. </p>
<p>More than a century after the end of the war, little grows on the contaminated, barren land.</p>
<h2>Toxic tours and teaching moments</h2>
<p>There’s a growing movement to make toxic histories more visible.</p>
<p>In Providence, Rhode Island, artist Holly Ewald founded the <a href="http://www.upparts.org/">Urban Pond Procession</a> to call attention to Mashapaug Pond, which was contaminated by <a href="https://medallicartcollector.com/gorham.shtml">a Gorham Silver factory</a>. She worked with community partners to create wearable sculptures, puppets and giant fish, all of which were carried and worn in an annual parade that took place from 2008 to 2017.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People march along a sidewalk playing instruments and holding signs featuring fish." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548175/original/file-20230913-3869-qv2hbs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548175/original/file-20230913-3869-qv2hbs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548175/original/file-20230913-3869-qv2hbs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548175/original/file-20230913-3869-qv2hbs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548175/original/file-20230913-3869-qv2hbs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548175/original/file-20230913-3869-qv2hbs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548175/original/file-20230913-3869-qv2hbs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Urban Pond Procession took place each summer for 10 years in Providence, R.I.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Mary Beth Meehan, UPP Collection, Providence Public Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cultural anthropologist Amelia Fiske collaborated with artist Jonas Fischer to create the graphic novel “<a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487509538/toxic/">Tóxico</a>,” which will be published in 2024. It depicts petroleum pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon, as well as the struggles of those fighting for environmental justice. </p>
<p>Toxic tours can educate the public about the histories, causes and consequences of environmental harm. For example, <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003365259-31/environmental-justice-tours-transformative-narratives-struggle-solidarity-activism-ana-isabel-baptista?context=ubx&refId=7e43d2ce-0c5c-41a4-a9b6-40ce10c0848c">Ironbound Community Corporation</a> in Newark, New Jersey, offers a tour of severely contaminated sites, such as the location of the former <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/08/nyregion/newark-s-toxic-tomb-six-acres-fouled-dioxin-agent-orange-s-deadly-byproduct.html">Agent Orange factory</a>, where the sediment in the sludge is laced with the carcinogen dioxin. The tour also goes by a detention center <a href="https://www.epa.gov/brownfields/overview-epas-brownfields-program">that’s built on a brownfield</a>, which has only undergone industrial-level remediation because that’s the standard all prisons are held to.</p>
<p>In 2017, the <a href="https://www.humanitiesactionlab.org/">Humanities Action Lab</a> organized “<a href="https://climatesofinequality.org/">Climates of Inequality</a>,” a traveling exhibit co-curated by more than 20 universities and local partners exploring environmental issues affecting communities around the world. The <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003365259-34/toxic-heritage-reparations-activating-memory-environmental-climate-justice-liz-%C5%A1ev%C4%8Denko?context=ubx&refId=e2e664c7-b4d9-4497-b4a4-6d4f5dd1b009">exhibit</a> brings attention to polluted waterways, the impacts of climate change, ecological damage on Indigenous lands and the ways in which immigrant agricultural workers experience heat stress and chronic pesticide exposure. The exhibits also explore the affected communities’ resilience and advocacy.</p>
<p>These stories of pollution and contamination, and their effects on people’s health and livelihoods, represent only a sampling of current efforts to curate toxic heritage. As sociologist Alice Mah writes in her foreword to “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Toxic-Heritage-Legacies-Futures-and-Environmental-Injustice/Kryder-Reid-May/p/book/9781032429977">Toxic Heritage</a>”: “Reckoning with toxic heritage is an urgent collective task. It is also unsettling work. It requires confronting painful truths about the roots of toxic injustice with courage, honesty, and humility.”</p>
<p>I see public commemoration of hidden toxic histories as a way to push back against denial, habituation and amnesia. It creates a space for public conversation, and it opens up possibilities for a more just and sustainable future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211657/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Kryder-Reid receives funding from Indiana University and the Fulbright Program.</span></em></p>Societies celebrate heroes and commemorate tragedies. But why is there so little public acknowledgment of environmental disasters?Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2030432023-04-20T20:02:10Z2023-04-20T20:02:10ZLess than illustrious: remembering the Anzacs means also not forgetting some committed war crimes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521466/original/file-20230418-18-f96w6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C14%2C4923%2C3594&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Captured German trenches near Messines, June 1917.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daily Herald Archive / Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>It was observed […] that the English had slain wounded and captured German prisoners.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So reads a disturbing war diary entry of the Bavarian 18th Regiment from June 7 1917, quoting one Schütze (Rifleman) Jakob Eickert of the 2. Machine Gun Company.</p>
<p>Another Bavarian soldier, Karl Kennel, was nearly one of those slain. He later wrote to the Red Cross that he and his friend Friedrich Christoffel were wounded when enemy troops bombed their dugout. </p>
<p>They emerged, belts unbuckled in surrender, and begged for mercy. Christoffel was on his knees with hands raised when a soldier pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger. Kennel escaped death by rolling into a shell hole.</p>
<p>The Bavarians were fighting the New Zealand Division that day in 1917, at the very bloody Battle of Messines. Both Eickert and Kennel were describing New Zealand soldiers’ actions – then, as now, war crimes.</p>
<p>These days, New Zealanders and Australians tend to place their soldiers on pedestals on Anzac Day. We are led to believe these mostly volunteer civilian soldiers were an exceptional body of fighting men (something the men themselves also believed). But this reputation came at a price.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luckier than some: wounded German soldiers captured at Messines arrive at the New Zealand field hospital.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Turnbull Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘It was quite common’</h2>
<p>Anzac soldiers should have known such killing of enemy prisoners was forbidden. The British Manual of Military Law, which codified the <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/hague-conv-iv-1907">1907 Hague Convention</a> on land warfare, forbade soldiers from killing or wounding an enemy who had surrendered at their own discretion. “This prohibition is clear and distinct”.</p>
<p>Furthermore, officers and men alike were expected to know these regulations. Yet as I show in my book, Taking the Ridge: Anzacs and Germans at the Battle of Messines 1917, New Zealand soldiers’ diaries and memoirs confirm that killing prisoners and the wounded was a feature of the fighting at Messines, and likely elsewhere.</p>
<p>Some diary entries were matter of fact: “Our fellows used the steel [bayonet] a great deal so there were not so many prisoners as there might have been,” wrote one soldier. “Lots of Germans were bayoneted on the ground, wounded men. It was quite common,” wrote another.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-urgent-rethink-is-needed-on-the-idealised-image-of-the-anzac-digger-107003">An urgent rethink is needed on the idealised image of the ANZAC digger</a>
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</em>
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<p>One wrote of speaking to a German he took prisoner: “He was like the rest, full of the tales of British cruelty to prisoners. They all expect to be killed and I am afraid I saw some very dirty work done, which might account for the tales they hear.”</p>
<p>Others simply distanced themselves from such actions: “I’m proud to say it never entered my head to [kill wounded men] or shoot down people with their hands up,” wrote one.</p>
<p>There are also examples of compassion and soldiers comforting wounded Germans. But other actions were contingent on the circumstances – a case of “them or us”. When Rifleman Edward Miller and his officer struck a dugout of “Fritzes”, for example, they took prisoner a solitary German. But they took no chances with another group of Germans, one holding up a white handkerchief – they were “finished off”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521733/original/file-20230418-20-a8a1m6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521733/original/file-20230418-20-a8a1m6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521733/original/file-20230418-20-a8a1m6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521733/original/file-20230418-20-a8a1m6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521733/original/file-20230418-20-a8a1m6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521733/original/file-20230418-20-a8a1m6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521733/original/file-20230418-20-a8a1m6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The past on a pedestal: commemoration service at the Messines Ridge (British) Cemetery in 2007.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeffrey McNeill</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Officially sanctioned’</h2>
<p>The New Zealanders sent some 300 prisoners to the rear in the battle. But that is only half the number the adjacent British 25th Division took prisoner. The discrepancy suggests particularly savage fighting by the New Zealanders.</p>
<p>Individuals must bear responsibility for their actions, but so must their commanders. The New Zealanders’ senior officers’ support for killing prisoners tended to be tacit. A bloodcurdling lecture on bayonet use by the Scottish firebrand Major Ronald Campbell to the New Zealanders before the Somme attack in 1916 gives some insight. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anzacs-behaving-badly-scott-mcintyre-and-contested-history-40955">Anzacs behaving badly: Scott McIntyre and contested history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Campbell had discouraged taking prisoners. Rather, soldiers should bayonet surrendering enemy soldiers when they put they hands up – “that’s your chance to stick him in the soft part of the belly where the bayonet goes in easily and comes out quickly”, Campbell instructed.</p>
<p>The New Zealand Division’s commander, General Andrew Russell, approved: “Lecture by Major Campbell on bayonet fighting – very good indeed.” Captain Lindsay Inglis, a law clerk before the war and a brigadier in the next war, did not. He wrote in his diary:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It would be interesting to know to what extent [these lectures were] responsible for deeds of the kind which even in war amount to nothing less than brutal murder […] We were astonished that it should have been officially sanctioned.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anzac-legend-has-blinded-australia-to-its-war-atrocities-its-time-for-a-reckoning-151022">The Anzac legend has blinded Australia to its war atrocities. It's time for a reckoning</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Lest we forget</h2>
<p>Airing this dirty laundry may seem inappropriate for Anzac Day, especially as many men did not commit war crimes. But knowing what happened in battle provides a more complete understanding of their experience. </p>
<p>War is brutal. Despite headlines at the time proclaiming Messines a great New Zealand victory “for extraordinarily light losses”, some 3,700 New Zealanders were killed or wounded in the battle. Around 3,600 of the Bavarians opposite them were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Only three officers and 30 men of the three Bavarian front-line battalions returned.</p>
<p>And war is still brutal today, with similar consequences. Investigations into the behaviour of Australian and New Zealand troops in Afghanistan in recent decades only underline the contemporary relevance of older misdeeds. </p>
<p>This includes the inquiry into the conduct of New Zealand SAS troops during <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/operation-burnham-soldiers-operating-overseas-given-new-orders-for-handling-detainees/NDOHKTNOJJF6LIOFXDHY7GUNIQ/">Operation Burnham</a>, and the Australian <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook47p/BreretonReport">Brereton Report</a>, which found serious breaches of ethical, legal, professional and moral responsibilities by Australian Defence Force soldiers. </p>
<p>By acknowledging this kind of behaviour has occurred during past wars, the public will perhaps be less reluctant to accept evidence that it can still happen. It should also mean the military itself will work to ensure it doesn’t happen again in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203043/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey McNeill is the author of Taking the Ridge: Anzacs and Germans at the Battle of Messines 1917 (Rifleman Press, 2022) from which some of the material in this article is drawn.</span></em></p>Evidence shows New Zealand’s first world war soldiers killed both surrendering and wounded German soldiers. Their actions, condoned at the highest level, cast a long shadow.Jeffrey McNeill, Senior Lecturer in Resource & Environmental Planning, Massey UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1994162023-03-26T23:54:46Z2023-03-26T23:54:46ZPip Williams shows how World War I transformed women’s lives, in a new novel that captures the ‘poetic materiality’ of books<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517520/original/file-20230326-26-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C2190%2C1465&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pip Williams</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andre Goosen</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pip Williams <a href="https://affirmpress.com.au/publishing/the-dictionary-of-lost-words/">describes</a> her new novel, <a href="https://affirmpress.com.au/publishing/the-bookbinder-of-jericho/">The Bookbinder of Jericho</a>, as both follow-up and companion to her 2020 debut, <a href="https://affirmpress.com.au/publishing/the-dictionary-of-lost-words-new-format/">The Dictionary of Lost Words</a>. </p>
<p>There is an overlap of place and profession, and some shared characters, between the novels. The Dictionary of Lost Words began in the late 19th century and covered several decades. The Bookbinder of Jericho illuminates a key period of history experienced by the characters in the previous book: it spans 1914 and the start of the World War I, finishing in the new world that had begun emerging by 1920. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Bookbinder of Jericho – Pip Williams (Affirm Press)</em></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517491/original/file-20230326-3093-6v1207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517491/original/file-20230326-3093-6v1207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517491/original/file-20230326-3093-6v1207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517491/original/file-20230326-3093-6v1207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517491/original/file-20230326-3093-6v1207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517491/original/file-20230326-3093-6v1207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517491/original/file-20230326-3093-6v1207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517491/original/file-20230326-3093-6v1207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Both novels are located in Oxford; both are set within the publishing industry – on the creation and editorship side for Dictionary of Lost Words, and on the production side for The Bookbinder of Jericho. Both are told through the experiences of young women who participate in the book world: the former as daughter of one of the editors of the <a href="https://www.oed.com/">Oxford English Dictionary</a>, the latter as a bookbinder for Oxford University Press, which printed the dictionary. </p>
<p>Both novels, therefore, inhabit a world of language, meaning-making and storytelling. And both women are keen social critics, captivated by the nature and the effects of written language. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-the-dictionary-of-lost-words-by-pip-williams-132503">Book review: The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Bindery girls</h2>
<p>Peggy, the eponymous “bookbinder”, lives with her identical twin sister Maude in Jericho, a fringe suburb built on the banks of the canal on the edge of Oxford, prone to flooding and disease. As an industrial area, it was also the location for Oxford University Press, and hence a convenient home for its staff. </p>
<p>Peggy and Maude live on the canal, in a houseboat their mother named “Calliope” after the muse of poetry: appropriate enough, since the boat is crammed with books, manuscripts and sections, all of them products of the literary impulse. </p>
<p>The orphaned daughters of an Oxford scholar (their otherwise unidentified father) and a <a href="https://bookbindersmuseum.org/bookbinding-and-the-working-woman/">former bindery girl</a>, they work side by side in the Clarendon Press, doing “women’s work”: folding the printed sheets into sections, gathering sections into text blocks, and stitching the blocks before they are bound and sent into the world. </p>
<p>Peggy feels bound herself – to her sister Maude, for whom she has adopted the role of carer. Williams describes Maude, who communicates through echolalia, the repetition of heard fragments, as autistic. As Peggy insists, Maude “wasn’t simple, despite what people thought”. Rather, she possesses the ability to focus entirely on what fascinates her. She can fold pages and napkins and birds with a skill approaching art – and though occasionally she forgets what she’s folding, and transforms a folio into a fan, Peggy is always ready to fix the problem. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517492/original/file-20230326-26-olpgkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517492/original/file-20230326-26-olpgkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517492/original/file-20230326-26-olpgkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517492/original/file-20230326-26-olpgkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517492/original/file-20230326-26-olpgkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517492/original/file-20230326-26-olpgkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517492/original/file-20230326-26-olpgkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517492/original/file-20230326-26-olpgkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Orphaned sisters Peggy and Maude work as bindery girls, like their mother before them. (The women pictured are working at Kingsport Press in the US. Photo by Pauline Minga.)</span>
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<p>Peggy is also bound by the limitations of her class and gender. Though she’s possessed of a fine intellect, her education was very limited, and she can’t imagine even being approved to enter the nearby women’s college, let alone become a student. She is definitively Town; they are Gown. And as a mere bindery girl, she is considered good enough only to fold printed sheets into what will become a book. </p>
<p>This she finds immensely frustrating, as we see on the first page of the preface. “Scraps”, she says. “That’s all I got. Fragments that made no sense without the words before or the words after.” And that is indeed all she gets because, as the forewoman scolds, “Your job is to bind the books, not read them”. </p>
<p>But as a bindery girl, Peggy is skilled at reading “upside down and sideways”, a skill that is both truth and metaphor, since it signals her ability to see from a different point of view. Which she does: her perspective is different from her peers in the Press, from her managers, and from the refugees and wounded soldiers she will support. </p>
<h2>Women and World War I</h2>
<p>A rich cast of characters inhabit the novel. One is Lotte, a Belgian refugee from Louvain, where she was university librarian; she has seen what no one should see. Another is Gwen, an Oxford student who wears her privilege lightly and, with Peggy, works as a volunteer to support the wounded. </p>
<p>Among those is Peggy’s love interest Bastiaan, introduced as “the Invisible Man”, who gradually returns, broken and scarred, to himself. And actor and activist suffragette Tilda, who first appeared in the Dictionary of Lost Words, emerges now as the twins’ “aunt”, probably their mother’s lover. Here she serves as a nurse on the front. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517493/original/file-20230326-14-yoplkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517493/original/file-20230326-14-yoplkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517493/original/file-20230326-14-yoplkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517493/original/file-20230326-14-yoplkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517493/original/file-20230326-14-yoplkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517493/original/file-20230326-14-yoplkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517493/original/file-20230326-14-yoplkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517493/original/file-20230326-14-yoplkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>Through the eyes and accounts of each character, a different perspective is offered on the seemingly endless narrative of that war; a perspective that is upside down and sideways, perhaps; a perspective Williams brings to the role of women in this war. </p>
<p>Her women don’t remain in the traditional roles of nurse or grieving mother, but are full participants. They have faced the guns, they are on the frontlines trying to keep soldiers alive. On the home front, they are running the factories, rehabilitating the wounded and the traumatised. </p>
<p>But her account can’t avoid what we know so well about that catastrophic war: all its pointlessness, all the loss. Toward the end, when Spanish flu had added to the misery, and deaths were multiplying at home as well as on the war front, and Peggy’s aspirations to enter university seem to have been quashed, she reflects on the limits of language in the face of such experiences:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Loss</em>. The Concise Dictionary simply defined it as: <em>Detriment, disadvantage. See lose</em>, the entry said. I turned back a few pages. <em>Lose: Be deprived of, cease by negligence, misadventure, separation, death.</em> It didn’t quite explain the feeling I had. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>That “feeling” runs like a thread from the very first line of the novel to (almost) its end, because her sharp intelligence combined with her illegitimate birth and her poverty add up to a life of thwarted expectations. </p>
<p>Still, she says, “I want more”, but then adds, “Who doesn’t?” And sometimes we do get a little more. Peggy’s empathy and reflexivity, her capacity to observe closely and to make sense of literature and argument, highlights the “more” that is rapidly approaching for her and other women. The right to vote. Changing social mores and hierarchies. A gradual decolonising of the world and of individuals’ minds. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/it-makes-one-feel-and-realise-what-a-dreadful-thing-war-is-a-nurses-story-51581">'It makes one feel and realise what a dreadful thing war is' – a nurse's story</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The poetic materiality of books</h2>
<p>This is a hopeful story. But for me, despite the excellent crafting of this narrative of social history, what makes it stand out is its unwavering attention to books, and the making of books. Williams beautifully describes the practices and traditions and rituals associated with what was a trade, then a craft, and is now an increasingly arcane art. </p>
<p>Her focus is on the women’s side of the business, but it recognises the work of writers, readers, editors, compositors, foundry men, mechanics, press specialists: all the army of experts required in the process of moving from idea to material object. </p>
<p>The materiality of books and of the tools used in their construction is also beautifully depicted. She notes the density of rag paper; the swirl of a typeface; the heft and texture of a bone folder; the feel and aroma of leather binding; the luscious sheen of gold lettering. She notes the sensuality of the work. The gathering of books and sections is done as a kind of dance; and as her posh friend Gwen says, “You smell like a new book, it’s positively intoxicating.”</p>
<p>In the author’s note at the end of the book, Williams writes of the books that appear in the novel:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They were not sought or chosen with any great care. Rather, they presented themselves in the course of my work.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And, therefore, “The books play themselves”: they are real-life characters, who work alongside the fictional characters, to craft this story.</p>
<p>If I had to say what I think the novel is about, I could say the first world war, or the struggle for women’s rights, or sisterhood. But for me this novel is mostly a paean to the poetic materiality of books. It makes visible the long, slow, skilful labour involved in building a book; it traces the life that book might lead through decades or more of use: of instructing and distracting, entertaining and creating empathy. </p>
<p>Books might be the canvas on which their readers draft their own dreams, their own thoughts, and their own decisions. But, viewed through the eyes of a bookbinder, they become material beings, with their own life cycles, their own physicality – and their own relationships with us, their readers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jen Webb receives funding from Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Pip Williams’ follow-up to her internationally bestselling debut novel explores World War I, women’s rights and sisterhood – but what makes it special is its unwavering attention to the making of books.Jen Webb, Dean, Graduate Research, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2013042023-03-15T12:30:15Z2023-03-15T12:30:15ZUkraine war: ‘false flag’ operations – long used as weapons of mass distraction under the rules of conflict<p>The alarmist tone of recent tit-for-tat reports from the war in Ukraine has refocused attention on so-called “false flag operations” and their legality under international law.</p>
<p>At the beginning of March, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/02/russia-blames-ukraine-fighting-near-border">Ukraine dismissed as “provocation”</a> a Russian claim that Ukrainian “terrorists” or “sabotage groups” were behind a series of disputed attacks and exchanges of fire in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk regions, near the Ukrainian frontier.</p>
<p>Overnight on March 9-10, Russia launched a barrage of 81 missiles against targets all over Ukraine, including six hypersonic missiles, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/09/ukraine-war-missile-strikes-attacks-hit-kyiv-power-out-odesa-kharkiv">labelling them retribution</a> for those earlier attacks.</p>
<p>In the week of the first anniversary of the start of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, the <a href="https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-23-2023">Institute for the Study of War published a report</a> claiming that Moscow was setting up attacks on Belarusian territory and inside the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-moldova-could-be-the-first-domino-in-a-new-russian-plan-for-horizontal-escalation-201604">Moldovan secessionist republic of Transnistria</a> to make it look as though they had been carried out by Ukrainian troops. </p>
<p>This would potentially justify Belarus’ formal entry into the war on Russia’s side. In turn, this would force Ukraine to divert troops and materiel away from the currently “hot” military operations in Donbas towards the northwestern and southwestern frontiers of the country.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-moldova-could-be-the-first-domino-in-a-new-russian-plan-for-horizontal-escalation-201604">Ukraine war: Moldova could be the first domino in a new Russian plan for horizontal escalation</a>
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<p>On February 19, Russia’s Ministry of Defence <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/19/russia-again-accuses-ukraine-of-planning-false-flag-attack">alleged</a> that Ukraine was preparing to stage an unspecified “nuclear incident” on Ukrainian territory with radioactive substances imported from an unnamed European country, in order to blame it on the Kremlin. </p>
<p>But no evidence supporting such allegations was produced and, needless to say, no such incidents have actually taken place.</p>
<h2>False flags</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-60434579">False flag operations</a> – hostile statements made or acts committed with the intention of pinning the blame on another party, usually one’s adversary – are a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-false-flag-attacks-and-did-russia-stage-any-to-claim-justification-for-invading-ukraine-177879">long-recognised tactic</a> of organised warfare. They aim to deceive the enemy in order to gain a military advantage. As such there is nothing inherently illegal about them within the framework of <a href="https://www.redcross.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/protecting-people-in-armed-conflict/international-humanitarian-law#:%7E:text=IHL%20is%20a%20set%20of,means%20and%20methods%20of%20warfare.">international humanitarian law (IHL)</a>.</p>
<p>The term “false flag” probably originated in naval warfare dating back to the 16th century. A warship might occasionally fly the flag of a neutral – or even enemy – nation in order to get as close as possible to a hostile warship before opening fire. </p>
<p>The practice made sound military sense in an age when the range of warships’ cannons was quite limited. It was highly desirable to close with an enemy ship in order to disable and, if possible, board it in order to take it as a prize. As a tool in the hands of the weaker party to a conflict, it could also help to even the odds.</p>
<p>Such conduct, and other similar acts of deception, were not considered illegal, provided the correct flag was flown during actual combat. </p>
<p>This practice continued into both world wars. In 1914 the <a href="https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1915/march/exploits-emden">German light cruiser SMS Emden</a>, possessing a distinctive three-funnel silhouette, rigged up a fourth (dummy) funnel to make herself look more like a British light cruiser of equivalent class. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white shot of a German world war II cruiser" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515142/original/file-20230314-2786-trsl5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515142/original/file-20230314-2786-trsl5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515142/original/file-20230314-2786-trsl5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515142/original/file-20230314-2786-trsl5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515142/original/file-20230314-2786-trsl5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515142/original/file-20230314-2786-trsl5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515142/original/file-20230314-2786-trsl5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The German cruiser Kormoran photographed from the deck of a U-boat during the second world war. The Kormoran employed a ‘ruse de guerre’ to sink HMAS Sydney in November 1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_auxiliary_cruiser_Kormoran#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1985-074-27,_Hilfskreuzer_Kormoran.jpg">Bundesarchiv Bild</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>In 1941 the <a href="https://news.usni.org/2012/09/21/false-flags-history">German commerce raider Kormoran</a> used the call-sign and flag of a Dutch merchantman to tempt the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney to approach as close as possible. This reduced Sydney’s advantages of superior gun range and heavier armour; Kormoran hoisted the German battle ensign on opening fire, resulting in Sydney’s loss with all 645 of its crew. </p>
<h2>The legal position</h2>
<p>So-called <em>ruses de guerre</em> (“tricks of war”) like this have long been permitted by IHL. They were first acknowledged in the <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/liebercode-1863">1863 Lieber Code</a> (the first attempt to codify the rules of war, by US academic Francis Lieber during the American Civil War). In modern warfare, they are expressly allowed by <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/hague-conv-iv-1907/regulations-art-24?activeTab=default">Article 24 of the 1907 Hague Regulations</a> and <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/article-37?activeTab=1949GCs-APs-and-commentaries">Article 37(2) of the 1977 1st Additional Protocol</a> to the Geneva Conventions. The International Committee of the Red Cross also recognises this as a <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule57">rule of customary IHL</a>.</p>
<p>But to be considered legal such acts must not violate another rule of IHL. In particular a false flag action must not constitute perfidious or treacherous behaviour – abusing a flag, emblem or uniform to claim protection under IHL when no such protection is warranted. An example would be concealing weapons in or firing them from an ambulance painted with the Red Cross (a protected emblem under the Geneva Conventions, reserved for designating medical units or facilities).</p>
<p>Improper use of Red Cross insignia, like other acts of perfidy, is clearly a war crime and can be prosecuted as such under international law (as in the <a href="http://www.worldcourts.com/imt/eng/decisions/1946.08.09_United_States_v_Hagendorf.htm">1946 Trial of Heinz Hagendorf</a>, who was convicted of firing on US troops from a German ambulance marked with the red cross in January 1945. </p>
<p>The wearing of enemy uniform, on the other hand, has been subject to much controversy. A famous post-World War II trial involved the acquittal of SS <a href="https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/united-states-military-court-germany-trial-skorzeny-and-others">Lieutenant-Colonel Otto Skorzeny</a>. The German officer (who was also famous for the daring 1943 paratroop raid which <a href="https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/operation-eiche-benito-mussolini-the-gran-sasso-raid/">freed Benito Mussolini</a> from pro-Allied custody) had dressed his men in US uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. He was found not guilty, on the grounds that they did not actually fight while wearing the wrong uniform.</p>
<h2>Weapon of distraction?</h2>
<p>The interpretation and application of these rules, depending as they do on notions of honour and good faith in warfare, may seem anachronistic in the 21st century. In particular, the omnipresence of modern media and observation technology makes it harder for a belligerent to get away with this behaviour. </p>
<p>But the continuing discussion of Russian false flag operations in Ukraine and mutual denunciations for propaganda shows that it still has a place on the modern battlefield. It’s one way of distracting attention when all is not going according to plan. So the Kremlin’s escalating use of such tactics may, in that sense, be a sign of a campaign that is not going well.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201304/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Turns does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>‘False flag’ operations are as old as war itself – and are legal under the rules of war.David Turns, Senior Lecturer in International Law, Cranfield UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2004102023-02-23T19:55:31Z2023-02-23T19:55:31ZQuilts from the Second World War tell the stories of the Canadian women who sewed them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511523/original/file-20230221-24-o43ah.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C23%2C1588%2C1245&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women sew a quilt at the Quilting Bee Demonstration at the Canadian National Exhibition circa 1940</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Canadian National Exhibition Archives)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/quilts-from-the-second-world-war-tell-the-stories-of-the-canadian-women-who-sewed-them" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In 1992, in Esher Library southwest of London, England, Josephine Andrews and her mother, Christine, collected blankets to donate to Kurdish refugees of the Gulf War. </p>
<p>Among the pile of donations, the two women <a href="https://hapticandhue.com/canadas-forgotten-quilts/">discovered a patchwork quilt</a> that stood out for its vibrant cornflower blue stitches, embroidery and floral patterned fabrics, as well as the remarkable cloth label inscribed by hand: “W. V. S. WINONA CIRCLE GRACE UNITED CHURCH GANANOQUE, ONT. CANADA.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511524/original/file-20230221-28-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman sits on a bench carrying a quilt" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511524/original/file-20230221-28-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511524/original/file-20230221-28-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511524/original/file-20230221-28-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511524/original/file-20230221-28-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511524/original/file-20230221-28-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511524/original/file-20230221-28-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511524/original/file-20230221-28-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Josephine Andrews displays the Winona Circle Quilt sewn by women in Gananoque, Ont., during the Second World War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Town of Gananoque Civic Collection)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Made across the Atlantic in Ontario during the Second World War, this quilt was a historical artifact that the Andrews safeguarded for three decades before repatriating it in 2021 to Gananoque, Ont., a small tourist town east of Kingston with a rich military history.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.stratfordbeaconherald.com/news/local-news/second-world-war-red-cross-quilt-repatriated-to-gananoque/wcm/83f4fa07-da0d-4f29-bd7b-4d4c2694e13b/amp/">The quilt’s repatriation</a> has fuelled the retrieval of additional lost quilts, each with its own story to tell. Quilts made of different pieces of cloth, like the Winona Circle, tell the story of the women’s resourcefulness and artistic capacities in the face of the war’s rationing and shortages.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511526/original/file-20230221-18-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A close up of a quilt tag that reads" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511526/original/file-20230221-18-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511526/original/file-20230221-18-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511526/original/file-20230221-18-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511526/original/file-20230221-18-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511526/original/file-20230221-18-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511526/original/file-20230221-18-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511526/original/file-20230221-18-m9n2or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail of the hand-written label on the Winona Circle Quilt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Quilt-making during the war</h2>
<p>During the Second World War, Canadian women made an estimated 400,000 quilts, though the <a href="https://www.redcross.ca/history/artifacts/canadian-red-cross-quilt">Canadian Red Cross’</a> provincial records of the quilt production are incomplete with several years missing, and there are probably many more. </p>
<p>These quilts were shipped overseas to provide comfort not only for the soldiers on the front lines and in hospitals, but predominantly for <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.6240/concentric.lit.2016.42.2.04">British families who had lost their homes</a> in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz054">German bombing of England</a>. Today, these surviving quilts are extremely valuable for the stories they convey about Canadian women’s war labour and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09612020903138351">artistic expression</a>.</p>
<p>The deft yet varied stitching patterns of the Winona Circle quilt tell us that it was the product of a community of war quilters. During the mid-19th century <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quilting%20bee">quilting bees</a> rose to prominence as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/48694435">feminized social practices</a> and spaces of <a href="https://doi.org/10.3138/CHR.82.3.431">neighbourly connection</a>. </p>
<p>Quilting bees gained new popularity during the First and Second World Wars. Women’s Institutes, the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/imperial-order-daughters-of-the-empire">Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire</a>, the Canadian Red Cross and countless community and private groups mobilized women and opened make-shift workspaces including in libraries, homes and schools for charitable war-time production.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511527/original/file-20230221-24-sdfw2h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A colourful quilt." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511527/original/file-20230221-24-sdfw2h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511527/original/file-20230221-24-sdfw2h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511527/original/file-20230221-24-sdfw2h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511527/original/file-20230221-24-sdfw2h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511527/original/file-20230221-24-sdfw2h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511527/original/file-20230221-24-sdfw2h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511527/original/file-20230221-24-sdfw2h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Andover and Perth Quilt made in Perth-Andover, N.B.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Private Collection)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Telling women’s stories</h2>
<p>As cultural artifacts, these war quilts unearth a myriad of information about their creators and users. The details embedded in the quilts tell a story of the women’s collective war effort. These quilts are a testament to a broader legacy of Canadian women whose volunteer work was sidelined, under-recorded and under-researched after the war. As beautiful lost artifacts, these quilts are a visual emblem of Canadian women’s heritage which is too often <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40004302">forgotten in the masculine scholarly accounts of war</a> and nation building.</p>
<p>The quilts highlight women’s labour during world wars. Second World War quilters greatly benefited from the teachings of those who had honed their skills during the First World War, making <a href="https://activehistory.ca/2017/07/red-crosses-and-white-cotton-memory-and-meaning-in-first-world-war-quilts/">signature quilts</a> and stitching donors’ names with red thread into white quilts, echoing the Red Cross brand.</p>
<p>Raffled to raise funds for the war effort, most of these quilts remained at home in the communities that made them. In contrast, the Second World War quilts have lingered in the shadows of history in the recipient countries overseas.</p>
<p>An estimated 300 surviving quilts remain overseas, requiring research, analysis and ideally repatriation. This is a focus at the <a href="https://mlc.torontomu.ca/">Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University</a>. Research Fellow Joanna Dermenjian has participated in the repatriation of four quilts and a team is dedicated to creating an open access digital archive.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A quilt with a black, blue and beige square pattern." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511741/original/file-20230222-25-3p3n24.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511741/original/file-20230222-25-3p3n24.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511741/original/file-20230222-25-3p3n24.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511741/original/file-20230222-25-3p3n24.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511741/original/file-20230222-25-3p3n24.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=669&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511741/original/file-20230222-25-3p3n24.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=669&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511741/original/file-20230222-25-3p3n24.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=669&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woollen Canadian Red Cross quilt made during the Second World War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Private Collection)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Letters of gratitude</h2>
<p>This effort is part of a broader feminist scholarly effort to shine a light on Canadian women’s war labour and heritage. Feminist historian <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/hcy.2014.0024">Sarah Glassford</a> has shown that quilting was an activity that also involved Canadian children, like the first-grade branch in Ontario, where participants knitted quilt squares at school for the <a href="https://www.redcross.ca/history/artifacts/junior-red-cross-wwii-projects">Junior Red Cross</a> during the war. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511740/original/file-20230222-14-ytc2mc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A letter from the women's voluntary services for civil defence." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511740/original/file-20230222-14-ytc2mc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511740/original/file-20230222-14-ytc2mc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511740/original/file-20230222-14-ytc2mc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511740/original/file-20230222-14-ytc2mc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511740/original/file-20230222-14-ytc2mc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511740/original/file-20230222-14-ytc2mc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511740/original/file-20230222-14-ytc2mc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A letter from Elsa Dunbar thanking the women of Gananoque for the quilts they sent to the U.K. during the Second World War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These quilts were sent overseas to the British children suffering the effects of the blitz who in turn sent letters of gratitude, some of which have survived in family archives.</p>
<p>By interviewing volunteer quilters during more recent conflicts, family studies scholars <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2015.1021652">Cheryl Cheek and Robin Yaure</a> have shown that this affective element is a powerful motivation for volunteer quilters. It leaves them with a sense that they are helping others during a difficult shared crisis. The recipients’ expressions of gratitude can even help the donor with the healing of their own trauma and grief.</p>
<p>In a letter from February 1943, Elsa Dunbar, the Head of the Overseas Department of the <a href="https://www.royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk/about-us/our-history">Women’s Voluntary Services</a>, thanked the women of Gananoque for “the wonderful gaily coloured quilts which are so delightful to look at as well as being so useful” against the backdrop of a recent “daylight raid on London.”</p>
<p>The quilts provide a testament to Canadian women’s heritage, validating their contributions during difficult times — however belatedly. They speak of the artistic labour preserving powerful women’s stories of hardship, community support and humanitarianism. Each of these quilts speak of a gendered story of the Second World War — long lost stories that remain to be told.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Irene Gammel receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Dermenjian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Canadian women made an estimated 400,000 quilts during the Second World War. The quilts represent the forgotten story of Canadian women’s efforts during the war.Irene Gammel, Professor & Director, Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre and Gallery, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityJoanna Dermenjian, Research Fellow, Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1951872022-12-19T19:00:43Z2022-12-19T19:00:43ZTime is arrested in Gail Jones’ beautiful new novel of war and art, Salonika Burning<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498104/original/file-20221129-14-uwg9g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C381%2C2530%2C3264&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gail Jones.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Heike Steinweg</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The first pages of Gail Jones’ beautiful new novel, Salonika Burning, offer a vision. The image is of a city on fire, watched by soldiers at a distance who despite, or perhaps because of, their familiarity with devastation, are transfixed “with indecent pleasure” by the sight. </p>
<p>There is a perverse beauty in obliteration that the soldiers intuit. The novel partly turns on this tension as it grapples with how to represent loss and the absurdity of “humans and beasts, crisscrossing the globe so that men could line up to slaughter each other”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Salonika Burning - Gail Jones (Text)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>As such, Salonika Burning continues Jones’ narrative searching for what rises up from engulfing loss and also the troubling, necessary role of art as imaginative witness. </p>
<p>Sixty Lights (2004), an earlier novel by Jones, similarly begins with a scene that distresses the book’s protagonist Lucy Strange both for its detail – a man is horribly killed – and her apprehension of it. As she recalls the man’s bloodied body, Lucy also involuntarily remembers her response to the death: “She simply could not help herself: she thought of a photograph”. The story that follows reflects on the potential of art to access what might be nominated a truth of loss, while also alert to the deceptions, distortions and possibilities of the visual.</p>
<p>Whereas Sixty Lights is set in the colonial mid-19th century, Salonika Burning occurs in <a href="https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/salonika-campaign">Macedonia, the first world war’s eastern front</a>. And like another of Jones’ novels, Five Bells (2011), it tells the stories of four main characters. Olive, Grace, Stella and Stanley are very loosely based on two Australians and two British who worked as volunteers near Salonika during the war. The historical record suggests they never met; in Jones’ novel their lives slowly come to intersect.</p>
<p>Olive, Grace and Stella work in various capacities for the suffragette Scottish Women’s field hospital. Grace, a surgeon, attends to dying men, amputating, bandaging, repressing. Stella is an unrecognised writer and most often finds herself holding a steaming tea kettle rather than dispatching patriotic war stories to newspapers, until she succumbs to the delirium of malaria. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497813/original/file-20221129-23-6d5d8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497813/original/file-20221129-23-6d5d8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497813/original/file-20221129-23-6d5d8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497813/original/file-20221129-23-6d5d8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497813/original/file-20221129-23-6d5d8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497813/original/file-20221129-23-6d5d8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497813/original/file-20221129-23-6d5d8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497813/original/file-20221129-23-6d5d8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nurses of the Scottish Women’s Hospital pictured in 1916.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-great-war-wwi-100462">World politics explainer: The Great War (WWI)</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>Olive, from wealthy Sydney, owns and drives an ambulance in which she carries supplies and the injured. Stanley is in medical service with the Royal Berkshire Infantry. A man of religious conviction who attends lovingly to his brigade’s mules, he is also an artist, and lends to the novel his aesthetic commitment.</p>
<p>On walking through the ruins of Salonika early in the narrative, he unexpectedly sees a pile of mirrors, soaked from attempts to extinguish the fire, and glimpses “shifting angles and surfaces”. </p>
<p>Echoing the opening scene, but with a change in scale, Stanley’s private epiphany amid destruction gives him pause: “Angle, not daub”, he thinks. This seemingly incidental rumination on artistic composition is the novel’s ethical and narrative guide. And its importance is underscored by a meaningful point of difference offered early in the novel. </p>
<p>Almost in passing in the book’s opening pages, the war artist, “William T. Wood, of Putney, renowned for his paintings of English flowers”, is mentioned as another witness to the aftermath of the Salonika fire. He observed the ruination from the vantage of an air balloon, and daubed his impressions in “signature pastels”. Jones’ novel insists on undoing Wood’s “pretty lies of art” and their premise, or promise, of disconnected observation. </p>
<p>It does this by taking seriously Stanley’s insights into “angles” and the unexpected, incomplete knowledge they might offer in the face of a world at war; accident (a stray ember is thought to have destroyed Salonika); the confusion of death; and carried grief. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496914/original/file-20221123-21-wmcp9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496914/original/file-20221123-21-wmcp9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496914/original/file-20221123-21-wmcp9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496914/original/file-20221123-21-wmcp9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496914/original/file-20221123-21-wmcp9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496914/original/file-20221123-21-wmcp9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496914/original/file-20221123-21-wmcp9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496914/original/file-20221123-21-wmcp9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Salonica – the Great Fire, the famous White Tower in the foreground, by William Thomas Wood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The book addresses in small sections each character in turn. And the overall effect of these shifting approaches and reflections is a layering and looping of experience that creates connection but does not impart Wood’s imputed omniscience. </p>
<p>Pastels, too, are to be found wanting in the face of malarial mosquitoes; decomposing rabbit carcasses sent from well-meaning Melburnians as part of the war effort; and bodies blown open, their soft, wet interiors exposed. </p>
<p>Instead, it is patterning, both structurally and in terms of recurring motifs – the mirror, a boy selling icons, snatches of song – that gives the narrative its shape.</p>
<p>Indeed, for a story ostensibly centred on war and the fiery razing of a cosmopolitan city, plot and action are remarkably absent. It’s not that nothing happens in the novel – terrible circumstances are diffused through every part – but the overriding sense is of suspension.</p>
<p>At a few points in the novel, Grace, whose quiet recitations of German grammar serve as a comforting incantation, ruminates on the etymology of the word “lull”, wondering if it might be connected to lullaby but also recognising the meanings it accrues in wartime. </p>
<p>She writes in a letter to her brother, stationed elsewhere, “how this was considered a time of lull in the fighting”. And the novel responds to this notion to honour what is missed by Wood’s detached daubs, which are said to render invisible “human or animal figures”.</p>
<p>The narrative is careful and patient, unfolding and lacing the stories that call forth individual memories, which a view from a balloon (or the Zeppelins that appear in the skies of Macedonia and London) cannot hope to capture. </p>
<p>Women wait for the near-dead to be brought to their hospital tents for futile medical treatment and pastoral care. And in its deliberateness – the sequencing of words is such that sentences are slowed to realise this lull formally as well as affectively – the narrative is resolutely attentive to an arrested present time.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-dysfunction-and-provincialism-to-an-elegant-literary-life-gail-jones-reviews-the-brilliant-first-biography-of-shirley-hazzard-194533">From dysfunction and provincialism to an elegant literary life: Gail Jones reviews the 'brilliant' first biography of Shirley Hazzard</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A perforation</h2>
<p>The characters do refer to other times, a time when “the war was over”. And yet, there is a pervading idea in the novel that war perforates historical time, much as Welshman David Jones writes of his war experience in the modernist prose-poem, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Parenthesis">In Parenthesis (1937)</a>, which Jones references in her acknowledgements. Jones writes part-cryptically in his volume’s preface:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This writing is called ‘In Parenthesis’ because I have written in a kind of space between – I don’t know between quite what – but as you turn aside to do something and because for us amateur soldiers … the war itself was a parenthesis – how glad we thought we were to step outside its brackets at the end of ’18 – and also because our curious type of existence here is altogether in parenthesis.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Salonika Burning has its characters in “a kind of space (and time) between”. Stella, in her illness, thinks that the “day had moved on without her”; Stanley wonders “[h]ow much time had passed?” and reflects on the questioning of eternity by the metaphysical poet-priest, John Donne: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What if this present were the world’s last night? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is only when a shocking event occurs that time shifts; Stella imagines “a kind of ruffle in time … all that occurred was compressed and incredibly fast”, so dissimilar to the rest of the novel.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496910/original/file-20221123-22-ybzblp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496910/original/file-20221123-22-ybzblp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496910/original/file-20221123-22-ybzblp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496910/original/file-20221123-22-ybzblp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496910/original/file-20221123-22-ybzblp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496910/original/file-20221123-22-ybzblp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1174&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496910/original/file-20221123-22-ybzblp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1174&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496910/original/file-20221123-22-ybzblp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1174&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And for all Grace’s close attention to the materiality of the body – men’s groins are a “bloody mush” – this lull is amplified and exemplified by the evanescent smoke that drifts throughout the book. </p>
<p>Salonika smoulders; the smoke from the cigarettes the women inhale to mark their fleeting rest-time wafts; the wounded soldiers’ deaths are attested to by fuming curlicues that cigarettes emit from stilled lips.</p>
<p>As with the extraordinary novel it permeates, smoke gestures towards our curiously parenthetical existence, of which the time of war is an especial, appalling reminder.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195187/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tanya Dalziell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Salonika Burning, set on the first world war’s eastern front, grapples with the question of how to represent the loss and absurdity of war.Tanya Dalziell, Professor, English and Literary Studies, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1938492022-11-10T21:28:09Z2022-11-10T21:28:09ZRemembrance Day: Trudeau’s apology to Black servicemen needs to be followed with action<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494751/original/file-20221110-3879-1m8750.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=60%2C78%2C5738%2C3782&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Soldiers salute during the national apology to the No. 2 Construction Battalion in Truro, N.S. on July 9, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Riley Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>While it’s true that actions do speak louder than words, words do matter — especially when they’re spoken with honesty and sincerity and are the precursor to meaningful action. </p>
<p>This was the prevailing sentiment within Black communities in Canada following <a href="https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2022/07/09/prime-minister-delivers-apology-descendants-no-2-construction">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s apology in July 2022</a> to the descendants of the Black men who served with the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/no-2-construction-battalion">No. 2 Construction Battalion</a> during the First World War. </p>
<p>The No. 2 Battalion sailed for Europe from Halifax in March 1917. The No. 2 totalled 614 men, far fewer than the roughly 1,000 that usually make up a battalion. </p>
<p>It was the only battalion-sized segregated unit in the <a href="https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/life-at-the-front/military-structure/the-canadian-expeditionary-force/">Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF)</a> and it existed because commanding officers routinely and callously rejected Black men who wanted to fight for the country. </p>
<p>As letters, memos and other military records archived from the war years indicate, commanding officers and white recruits felt that the conflict was a <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/6147380/black-canadians-soldiers-world-war-racism/">white man’s war</a>. Anti-Black racism also led many to believe that Black men were not fighting material. </p>
<p>In one instance, a major-general who served as Canada’s Chief of the General Staff confidently declared that in the trenches “the civilized negro” was “not likely to make a good fighter.” </p>
<p>Those attitudes prevailed even after surviving members of the battalion returned to Canada. Historical records reveal that the men did not even receive the public expressions of thanks extended to other returnees. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An elderly man in military uniform holds a black and white photo of a younger man also in uniform" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peter Richards holds a picture of battalion member Percy James Richards during the national apology to the No. 2 Construction Battalion in Truro, N.S. on July 9, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Riley Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A first step</h2>
<p>Although there are those who have criticized Trudeau for <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-national-apology-advisory-committee-canada-justin-trudeau-armed-forces-systemic-racism-discrimination-11657656307">“weaken[ing]the currency of national apologies by issuing so many,”</a> many Black Canadians were glad that he gave it. </p>
<p>His apology did not shy away from naming racism and anti-Black hate as the reason for the horrific treatment of the No. 2 men. It acknowledged that racism and anti-Black hate are still a problem <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8784238/canadian-forces-systemic-racism-repulsing-new-recruits/">in the Canadian military and elsewhere</a>. </p>
<p>The apology directly linked the anti-Black racism experienced by the men of the No. 2 Construction Battalion to the widespread systemic racism in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) today. <a href="https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/speeches/2022/07/09/prime-ministers-remarks-apologize-descendants-no-2-construction-battalion">Trudeau committed his government and the military to effecting</a> “meaningful change, where the dignity of all service members in the Canadian Armed Forces is upheld. Where everyone is welcome; where everyone can rise through the ranks; where everyone has opportunities to distinguish themselves.” </p>
<p>Exactly how these outcomes will be achieved remains to be seen. In 2016, <a href="https://www.stewartmckelvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/StatementofClaim_as_issued_ForcesClassAction.pdf">a class-action claim</a> filed on behalf of Black and other racialized personnel detailed the trauma and career consequences many have experienced due to unchecked racism in the CAF, including being silenced when they step forward with complaints and having their careers cut short. </p>
<p>At the apology ceremony, <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2022/07/apology-by-minister-of-national-defence-anita-anand-to-the-descendants-of-no-2-construction-battalion.html">Defence Minister Anita Anand said</a> she’s “committed to eliminating systemic racism so that the discrimination faced by the Number 2 Construction Battalion and those who followed never happens again.” She added that the Department of Defense must “begin working on [the National Apology Advisory Committee’s] recommendations now.” </p>
<p>“Now” is the operative word, and meaningful change will depend on the government and Armed Forces following through with that promise.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white man in a dark suit shakes hands with an elderly black man wearing a shirt and tie and military cap." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks with a descendant during the national apology to the No. 2 Construction Battalion in Truro, N.S. on July 9, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Riley Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A path forward</h2>
<p>Of course, the fact that the apology was made in 2022 is an indication that federal apologies like this one are not all about altruism and moral conscience but are in large part the result of pressure (sometimes decades-long) from communities.</p>
<p>So the point is not lost on some observers that the intent to apologize, <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2021/03/government-of-canada-planning-apology-to-the-no-2-construction-battalion.html">announced on March 28, 2021</a>, came in the aftermath of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd-protests-timeline.html">police killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed</a>.</p>
<p>Despite sneers against critical race theory from certain political factions and the constant drumbeat against political correctness and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ron-desantis-florida-where-woke-goes-to-die-midterm-election-win/">being “woke,”</a> there has been a noticeable shift toward a better understanding of anti-Black racism and the various insidious and overt forms that it takes. </p>
<p>This is our zeitgeist. There’s a sense within Black communities that Black people’s moment, though it’s not here quite yet, is closer on the horizon and the prime minister’s apology has aligned with the times.</p>
<p>But things cannot start and end with the apology. If the prime minister and his government are truly committed to meaningful change, then Black communities need to see words followed up by action. </p>
<p>The government and military need to respond seriously to the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/army/services/events/2-construction-battalion/apology-advisory.html#recommendations">key recommendations</a> put forward by the National Apology Advisory Committee that require post-apology action. They must also work with Black communities and the CAF to implement initiatives that bring about the changes that Black people themselves would like to see. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A series of small green flags with an emblem, names and No.2 Construction Battalion written on them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Flags on display at the national apology to the No. 2 Construction Battalion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Riley Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the July apology ceremony, it was announced that the venue in Truro, N.S., where the event took place — and where the No. 2 performed training exercises — <a href="https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/we-are-sorry-trudeau-delivers-apology-in-truro-to-no-2-construction-battalion-and-descendants-100751798/">would be renamed in honour of the battalion</a>. </p>
<p>But post-apology actions need to go beyond simply honoring and commemorating. They need to be <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/reparations-no-2-battalion-federal-apology-1.6512240">truly reparative</a>.</p>
<p>Justice Minister David Lametti recently announced that the government will <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/11/minister-lametti-to-make-a-funding-announcement0.html">provide funding</a> for a <a href="https://www.blacklegalactioncentre.ca/">Black Legal Action Centre</a> project that “addresses the over-representation of individuals from Black communities in the criminal justice system in Toronto.” </p>
<p>A day earlier, the Toronto International Film Festival announced its decision to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/tiff-rename-cinema-viola-desmond-1.6644256">rename its largest cinema after civil rights activist Viola Desmond</a> and also pledged to <a href="https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/toronto-international-film-festival-renames-cinema-for-activist-viola-desmond-1.6145404">“raise $2 million over the next five years to provide support to Black women creators [and] develop programming for Black audiences.”</a> </p>
<p>Both provide good reparative models. They aim to simultaneously educate and redress. Whether post-apology actions are targeted exclusively at the descendants of the No. 2 Battalion and Black men who served in the First World War or all personnel who have experienced racism, their effectiveness should be measured by how well they correct misleading narratives about Black military service in Canada.</p>
<p>They should also examine how well the related funding and initiatives ameliorate the anti-Black racism experienced by target groups.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193849/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hyacinth Simpson has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s apology to Black soldiers who served in the First World War was a good first step, but real action is needed to address racism in the Canadian Armed Forces.Hyacinth Simpson, Associate Professor, Department of English and Dimensions Faculty Chair, Faculty of Arts, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1879002022-11-10T14:33:27Z2022-11-10T14:33:27ZRemembering the veterans who marched on DC to demand bonuses during the Depression, only to be violently driven out by active-duty soldiers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494229/original/file-20221108-26-o0msbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=935%2C352%2C4535%2C3453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Bonus Army protesting on the U.S. Capitol steps on Jan. 2,1932.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/newspaper-report-of-the-bonus-army-made-up-of-unemployed-news-photo/1404441226?phrase=bonus%20army&adppopup=true">Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/macarthur-bonus-march-may-july-1932/">Bonus Army March</a> is a forgotten footnote of American history.</p>
<p>It involved as many as 30,000 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/bonus-expeditionary-forces-march-on-washington.htm">mostly unemployed veterans</a> who converged on Washington, D.C. in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand an early cash payment of a bonus they were promised for their volunteer service in World War I. </p>
<p>The bonus was due in 1945, but the Great Depression created financial panic across the country, and <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/bonus-army-march-4147568">the WWI veterans wanted their money</a> sooner rather than later.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Bonus-Army">the U.S. Senate refused</a> to pass a bill to make the payments, many of the veterans returned home. But the great majority remained and set up camps and occupied buildings near the Capitol – much to the dismay of local police, who tried to evict the demonstrators from their makeshift campgrounds. </p>
<p>A riot ensued, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/marching-on-history-75797769/">leaving two demonstrators dead</a> and dozens injured. </p>
<p>At that point, on July 28, 1932, the police asked for federal help. In <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-about-the-bonus-marchers">a written statement</a>, President Herbert Hoover deployed his Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, to settle the matter.</p>
<p>“In order to put an end to this rioting and defiance of civil authority,” Hoover wrote, “I have asked the Army to assist the District authorities to restore order.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/07/28/the-veterans-were-desperate-gen-macarthur-ordered-u-s-troops-to-attack-them/">MacArthur’s orders</a> were to secure the buildings and contain the protesters by surrounding their campsite in Anacostia Flats located near the Capitol.</p>
<p>But as <a href="https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=history_honproj">MacArthur would do throughout his career</a> – most notably in Korea when his disobedience resulted in his firing – he exceeded his orders. </p>
<p>Late that afternoon, <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/bonus-army-attacked/">historians have written</a>, nearly 500 mounted cavalry men and 500 infantry soldiers, with bayonets drawn, were accompanied were accompanied by six tanks and another 800 local police officers to Anacostia Flats. It didn’t take long before the protesters were chased out of the city and their encampments burned to the ground.</p>
<p>Aides to MacArthur would later say he <a href="https://explorethearchive.com/bonus-army">never received the orders</a> to simply contain the Bonus Army. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two white men dressed military uniforms are standing next to each other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After his troops had ousted the Bonus Army, General Douglas MacArthur, left, stands with his second-in-command, Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/after-his-troops-had-ousted-the-bonus-army-from-its-news-photo/515553566?phrase=mcarthur%20bonus%20army&adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Bonus Army March was one of the few times in American history when the U.S. military was used to shut down a massive demonstration of peaceful protesters. The debacle also came to symbolize Hoover’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/herbert-hoover/">perceived callousness toward the unemployed</a> during the Great Depression and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1932">led to his defeat</a> by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. </p>
<p>What the military response did not do was deter the Bonus Army demonstrators for long. </p>
<h2>The fight for bonus checks</h2>
<p>At the <a href="https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1946110600">end of the First World War in 1918</a>, the U.S. government wanted to provide bonus pay to the soldiers who volunteered to fight in the American Expeditionary Force.</p>
<p>The volunteers were given certificates promising a bonus in 1945. <a href="https://www.americanheritage.com/bonus-march">Under the agreement</a>, each veteran would receive US$1 for every day served at home, and $1.25 for every day served overseas. According to the <a href="https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1399.html">World War Adjusted Compensation Act</a>, a maximum of $625 plus compound interest per veteran was set.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Groups of men are eating lunches as they sit and stand near dozens of tents." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the Bonus Army are shown eating their lunches beside their tents in this May 12, 1932, photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-bonus-expeditionary-force-also-called-bonus-news-photo/514685392?phrase=bonus%20army&adppopup=true">Bettmann/GettyImages</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But by the winter of 1931, many veterans, like most Americans, were desperately in need of cash. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/bonus_army/#.Y2u4JuzMLt0">Starting in Portland, Oregon</a>, about 300 of them <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2020/08/oregon-wwi-vet-led-20000-strong-bonus-army-in-1932-that-marched-on-nations-capital-met-brutal-resistance.html">decided to travel</a> to Washington to make their case to the government. Their journey gained national attention and prompted other veterans to travel to Washington as well. As time went on, families began to join the men.</p>
<h2>Congressional gridlock</h2>
<p>The Bonus Army became a problem for Hoover and congressional leaders as local authorities grew tired of an estimated 30,000 people camping out in their streets and squatting in city buildings. </p>
<p>But faced with a shrinking federal budget and precarious national economy, neither Hoover nor Congress <a href="https://www.americanheritage.com/bonus-march">wanted to authorize further depletion</a> of the national treasury. Estimates were as high as <a href="https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1932092700">$2.3 billion for the federal government</a> to pay the bonuses. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Thousands of black and white men are seen cheering with their arms waving in the air." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this June 16, 1932, photograph, thousands of Bonus Army demonstrators are cheering for U.S. Rep. Wright Patman, who demanded immediate payment of their promised bonuses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-bonus-army-a-demonstration-largely-made-up-of-world-war-news-photo/1243625943?phrase=bonus%20army&adppopup=true">FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bonus marchers tried to pressure congressional leaders by having veterans in the waiting rooms of the offices of each member of the Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the federal budget. But they were losing the public relations war turning against them. </p>
<p>By that time, rumors spread by opponents of the marchers were flying among congressional leaders and military officials about the unsanitary conditions at the camp, as well as possible communist infiltration. </p>
<p>When the bill to pay the bonus was defeated in July 1932, an estimated 8,000 Bonus Army marchers were at the Capitol. With that many angry men surrounding the building, local police feared potential violence. </p>
<p>But instead of launching a violent attack, the marchers began singing “My Country Tis of Thee” and “America the Beautiful” as they walked back to their camp. </p>
<h2>Use of military force</h2>
<p>On July 28, 1932, the local and federal governments decided that time had run out for Bonus Army demonstrators. </p>
<p>Around 11 p.m., MacArthur called a press conference to justify his actions.</p>
<p>“Had the President not acted today, had he permitted this thing to go on for 24 hours more, he would have been faced with a grave situation which would have caused a real battle,” <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/marching-on-history-75797769/">MacArthur told reporters</a>. “Had he let it go on another week, I believe the institutions of our government would have been severely threatened.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="With the dome of the U.S. capitol in the background, a group of men are seated near the ruins of their camps." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this 1932 photograph, a group of men huddle near the ruins of their Bonus Army camp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bonus-army-in-washington-d-c-united-states-washington-news-photo/535780959?phrase=bonus%20army&adppopup=true">Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With MacArthur in command, shacks were set on fire, and even the tents loaned by the National Guard were destroyed. Tanks and soldiers blocked several bridges in order to prevent people from re-entering the city.</p>
<p>Images of children and women driven out by tear gas and flames shocked and appalled the American public when they were published by newspapers across the country. </p>
<p>Despite their apparent defeat, Bonus Army veterans continued to push for early payments. </p>
<p>Four years later, in January 1936, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-1932-bonus-army.htm">Congress passed the long-stalled Bonus bill</a> that called for payments of nearly $2 billion to the mostly men who volunteered their services during World War I. </p>
<p>Congress overrode Roosevelt’s veto and paid the veterans an average of $580 per man, which was slightly less than the $600 they would have received had they waited until 1945.</p>
<p>Today, the <a href="https://auislandora.wrlc.org/islandora/object/auislandora%3A12752">Anacostia field</a> is a largely overgrown meadowland and only has one very small sign marking that the Bonus Army was ever there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon Bow O'Brien does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thousands of volunteers joined the military during World War I. But when the war ended and the Great Depression began, the volunteers wanted a bonus to be paid in 1932, not in 1945 as planned.Shannon Bow O'Brien, Associate Professor of Instruction, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal ArtsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1914832022-10-03T12:08:13Z2022-10-03T12:08:13ZRussia has mobilized for war many times before – sometimes it unified the nation, other times it ended in disaster<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487582/original/file-20221001-18-a9do3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C73%2C5455%2C3563&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Russian citizen being called up for duty.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-citizens-are-being-sent-to-their-units-after-news-photo/1243596949?adppopup=true">Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vladimir Putin’s <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-does-russias-partial-mobilization-mean">mobilization of 300,000</a> additional Russian soldiers to fight in Ukraine has gotten off to a rocky start.</p>
<p>Nominally aimed at calling up reserve forces with prior combat experience, early reports suggest a broader dragnet and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/world/europe/russia-draft-ukraine-putin.html">widespread resistance</a> against the call-up. Recruitment offices have <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/09/26/russian-enlistment-officer-shot-recruitment-centers-torched-as-kremlin-admits-mobilization-errors-a78886">been torched</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/world/europe/protests-putin-russia-war.html">protests against the action</a> have dotted Russian cities, and droves of men have reportedly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/russia-turkey-partial-mobilization-ukraine/">fled the country</a> to avoid being enlisted.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/elohr.cfm">scholar of Russian history</a>, I see this latest move by Putin in the context of past mass mobilizations undertaken by Russia throughout its history. Sometimes it has worked, bolstering a force while legitimizing conflict in the eyes of the public and instilling national unity. But it can also backfire, as the Russian president may find to his cost.</p>
<h2>Turning the fortunes of war</h2>
<p>Putin most often uses World War II <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/putin-speech-ukraine-invasion-soviet-union/629825/">as his historical reference point</a>. The Soviet Union suffered <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war">tremendous losses</a> during the Nazi invasion but countered by conducting the <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/operation-barbarossa">most extensive mobilization</a> that the world had ever seen and probably will ever see. </p>
<p>As well as mobilizing the entire economy for wartime production and putting women to work in factories in unprecedented numbers, the Soviet Union also mobilized 34 million soldiers, building one of the largest armies ever assembled. This total mobilization led Nazi Germany to suffer four-fifths of its total wartime casualties on the Soviet front and was the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/stalinism-at-war-9781350153516/">single most important reason Germany was defeated</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A poster shows a woman in a red dress gesticulating in front of pointed bayonets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A World War II Soviet military recruitment poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/world-war-ii-soviet-military-recruitment-poster-by-irakly-news-photo/52778857?adppopup=true">Laski Diffusion/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>It also served to turn the fortunes of a Soviet state that had entered the war weakened by Josef Stalin’s campaign to force farmers into <a href="https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/collectivization/">state-run collective farms</a>, a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/red-famine-anne-applebaum-ukraine-soviet-union/542610/">deadly famine that resulted</a> and waves of police repression that had <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/2010/09/23/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310/">killed millions of citizens</a>.</p>
<p>Victory gave the Soviet Union a new legitimacy at home and abroad that helped it survive and even thrive as a great power for 45 more years. The powerful Red Army that was assembled swept through half of Europe and brought the Russian Empire’s borders further west than any tsar had done.</p>
<h2>A legitimizing, unifying force</h2>
<p>The success of this mobilization and the great Soviet victory have been <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253057624/the-future-of-the-soviet-past/">central to Putin’s worldview</a>. He decreed <a href="https://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/vladimir-putins-historical-disinformation/">draconian penalties</a> for any attempt to question Soviet conduct in World War II, like the brutal annexation of the Baltic states, mistakes by Stalin and his generals, or occupation policies in Eastern Europe. Putin also obsessed about Ukrainian nationalist partisans who fought against Stalin during the war, conflating them with contemporary Ukrainians who simply desire sovereignty.</p>
<p>Putin seems to have hoped to recreate the unifying, legitimizing results of the great World War II effort.</p>
<p>Indeed, mass mobilizations have periodically unified the nation at other times. In 1612, a <a href="https://www.rbth.com/multimedia/romanovs/2017/08/18/the-1612-battle-for-moscow-how-the-russian-state-prevailed_824862">mass rising led to a successful war</a> to expel Catholic Polish invaders, ending a period of internal strife and leading to broad unity in favor of the new Romanov dynasty and its autocratic rule. </p>
<p>Two hundred years later, in 1812, Russia mobilized against a foreign invader, Napoleon, and <a href="https://evergreen.noblenet.org/eg/opac/record/3766810?locg=1">won a decisive victory</a> that brought Russian troops to Paris and made Russia a great power in Europe. It also ended Tsar Alexander I’s dalliance with liberal reforms. Russia <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/84/2/503/55936?redirectedFrom=fulltext">became known as the “gendarme of Europe</a>,” the active enforcer of an international alliance against constitutional liberalism.</p>
<h2>Resentment and military disaster</h2>
<p>But while these mobilizations for war unified the country and brought legitimacy to the regime, others did the opposite. </p>
<p>From 1768 to 1774, Catherine II, Russia’s greatest conqueror, launched a <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/702542/pdf">massive war against the Ottoman Empire</a> that led to the conquest of much of modern southern Ukraine and Crimea.</p>
<p>But to win, Cossacks – irregular military groups living in Russia’s borderlands – and peasants bore the brunt. Formerly relatively free to choose the conditions of their service to the tsar, Cossacks were locked into the regular Russian army and sent to the front in large numbers. Peasants felt the twin burdens of ever tightening bonds of serfdom and wartime conscription.</p>
<p>The two groups joined together in a revolt that so seriously threatened the state that Catherine had to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/autocratic-politics-in-a-national-crisis-the-imperial-russian-government-and-pugachevs-revolt-17731775-by-john-t-alexander-russian-and-east-european-series-vol-38-bloomington-and-london-indiana-university-press-for-the-international-affairs-center-1969-xii-346-pp-850-paper/7271B685CC256EF6117A35221F447147">rush a peace settlement with the Ottoman Empire</a> to bring the army home to crush the rebels.</p>
<p>In 1904, Russia underestimated the rising power of Japan and <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-russo-japanese-war">stumbled into a war with that country</a>. A subsequent call-up of university students and young men for a very unpopular war proved to be a major cause of the revolution that ensued in 1905. Only when the tsar withdrew from the war and conceded a parliament and constitution was order restored. </p>
<p>Despite an effective <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/422972?journalCode=jmh">mobilization of millions of soldiers</a> at the beginning of World War I, Russia incurred massive losses as Germany and Austria-Hungary drove deep into Russian territory. Street protests against food shortages in February 1917 spurred a broad coalition of elected members of parliament and military commanders to overthrow the tsar. They thought a legitimate, popular government would inspire more fighting spirit among the troops.</p>
<p>The leaders of the new government doubled down on the war effort, ordering a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/1917-revolution-as-demobilization-and-state-collapse/E9C85596FBF6C8E74ED87ABDAEC7563E">major new mobilization of troops</a>, calling up people who had been previously exempt, such as heads of households, older men and ethnic minorities. There were even orders to send to the front soldiers who had previously been kept in reserve garrisons because of suspect loyalties or subpar fighting qualities. </p>
<p>On paper, the Russian army swelled to 10 million men, the largest it had been through the entire war to date. With more troops and more weapons than the enemy and newfound legitimacy, the government overestimated popular support for the war and launched an offensive. But after a couple weeks of advances, the unreliable recent recruits were the first to desert, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/1917-revolution-as-demobilization-and-state-collapse/E9C85596FBF6C8E74ED87ABDAEC7563E">starting an avalanche of 2 million desertions</a> that both destroyed the army and, as armed soldiers went back to their villages, started the agrarian revolution when peasants drove noble landlords out of the countryside and seized the land for themselves. </p>
<p>Fearing counterrevolution, the new government disbanded much of the police force but was unable to create a new one to replace it. The army was pinned down at the front and losing numbers fast as soldiers went home to claim land. It could not protect the state from the small Bolshevik faction of the communist movement, which conducted a successful armed coup in October 1917. The summer offensive has gone down in history as one of the worst military gambles ever.</p>
<h2>Putin’s great gamble?</h2>
<p>Putin appears to look toward World War II, missing the lessons of the earlier Great War.</p>
<p>The mobilization to fight World War I drew support from national representatives and from a relatively free press. While the population was weary of war by 1917, few questioned the legitimate need to defend the country against the German invaders.</p>
<p>Putin’s war in Ukraine is very different. It is widely seen as unnecessary, <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russian-public-opinion-ukraine-war-putin-approval-rating-by-andrei-kolesnikov-and-denis-volkov-2022-09">public support is tepid</a>, and there is no free press or freely elected representatives to give it legitimate support.</p>
<p>The mobilization of 1917 provides a stark lesson that larger armies are not necessarily stronger ones, and adding large numbers of unreliable soldiers to an army can be an enormous gamble.</p>
<p>The usually cautious military observer <a href="https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1572782241624854528">Michael Kofman</a> responded to Putin’s mobilization by declaring that Putin now has staked his regime on the outcome of the war. It is already clear that this war will not be a unifying, legitimizing event like World War II. But it remains to be seen whether this mobilization will go down the 1917 road to military dysfunction and revolution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191483/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Lohr has received funding from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research Fellowship (2012) and the Kennan Institute for Russian studies fellowship (2005). He has served as director of American University's Carmel Institute for Russian History and Culture (2011-12; 2019-20), an organization that provided scholarships for students to study Russian language and previously included film screenings and cultural events at the Russian Embassy. This past activity in no way influences his scholarship or political views.</span></em></p>A historian looks back at the success – and failure – of mass mobilization efforts by Russia and the Soviet Union.Eric Lohr, Professor of Russian History, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1899202022-09-09T12:34:17Z2022-09-09T12:34:17ZHow Ukraine is adapting the ancient practice of trophy displays for modern propaganda<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483094/original/file-20220906-26-8ryy6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C26%2C2968%2C2218&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Ukrainian inspects a ruined Russian tank displayed on the streets of Kyiv.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/destroyed-russian-tanks-are-displayed-in-lviv-ukraine-in-news-photo/1242829000">Thomas O'Neill/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Ukraine prepared to celebrate its independence day even while its military forces battled a monthslong Russian invasion, government officials assembled a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/weary-uncowed-ukraine-mark-independence-day-amid-new-strike-fears-2022-08-23/">grandiose, yet gruesome, display</a> on Khreshchatyk, the main street of Ukraine’s capital city, Kyiv. </p>
<p>Wrecked and burned-out tanks, military trucks and other equipment lined the street <a href="https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1560933336557801472">as an intentional mockery</a> of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s failed plan of a victorious Russian army parade in Kyiv. </p>
<p>This display, in August 2022, wasn’t a first for Ukraine, and it echoes an ancient tradition of displaying the looted weapons of a military adversary.</p>
<p>On the sites of battles they won, the ancient Greeks typically erected what they called <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/trophy">tropaions</a> – triumphal monuments made from trees and decorated with captured <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0063:entry=tropaeum-cn">armor, weapons and helmets</a> – to commemorate the victory and pay homage to a god. The classic Greek epic the “Iliad” contains references to Odysseus stripping the dead enemy of his armor for a <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134%3Abook%3D10">subsequent ritual offering to Athena</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Athena-Greek-mythology">the goddess of war and his divine patroness</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0007.tlg033.perseus-eng1:19.5">Ancient Romans continued</a> the practice, and also developed a tradition of <a href="https://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/ancient-rome/roman-activities/roman-triumph">military triumphs</a>, parades through the imperial city of Rome to show off the spoils of war, including slaves, art, bullion and weapons. Rich benefactors then often bought the loot and donated it to the Roman public for stationary displays that symbolized Roman imperial power. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483095/original/file-20220906-16-p4u1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting showing people carrying weapons, armor and other captured treasures." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483095/original/file-20220906-16-p4u1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483095/original/file-20220906-16-p4u1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483095/original/file-20220906-16-p4u1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483095/original/file-20220906-16-p4u1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483095/original/file-20220906-16-p4u1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483095/original/file-20220906-16-p4u1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483095/original/file-20220906-16-p4u1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This 15th-century painting depicts Romans carrying weapons, armor and other treasures captured in battle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Triumph3-Mantegna-bearers-of-trophies-and-bullion.jpg">Andrea Mantegna via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Trophy displays in the Modern Era</h2>
<p>The practice continued into the modern Western world.</p>
<p>In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when Napoleon led French forces to <a href="https://content.lib.washington.edu/napoleonweb/timeline.html">conquer and pillage other countries</a>,including Italy, he brought back stolen art along with the enemy’s weapons. His triumphal processions in Paris deliberately evoked Roman tradition. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/arts/design/napoleon-looted-art.html">objects were then displayed in the Louvre</a>.</p>
<p>The pillaging of cultural property became a feature of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/06/the-brutish-museums-by-dan-hicks-review-colonial-violence-and-cultural-restitution">colonial violence</a>, filling Western museums with looted art and valuables belonging to the colonized nations. The practice is currently <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule40">prohibited by international humanitarian law</a>, though that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/magazine/ghazni-panels-afghanistan-art.html">does not actually stop the pillaging</a>. </p>
<p>Seizing the enemy’s weapons, however, is <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule49">customarily accepted</a> as war booty. Various nations have used displays of captured enemy arms to invoke patriotism and boost morale.</p>
<p>As the wars and the weapons became bigger, so did the trophy exhibitions. In 1918, London’s Trafalgar Square was turned into a “<a href="https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/exhibiting-the-first-world-war">wrecked village</a>” filled with German weapons. It was a part of the promotional campaign to sell bonds to continue to pay for the ongoing conflict, later known to history as World War I. Battle trophies were one of the biggest sources of exhibition material for the British <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Imperial-War-Museum">Imperial War Museum</a> in its early days. </p>
<p>As I have shown in my <a href="https://www.academia.edu/86336571/War_and_Terror_in_Leningrad_The_Museum_of_the_Defense_of_Leningrad_and_War_Commemoration_under_Stalin">doctoral dissertation</a>, during World War II, the Soviet Union extensively used exhibitions of trophy weapons as a propaganda tool. When the Red Army won the monthslong <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Moscow">Battle of Moscow</a> in January 1942 and began a counteroffensive, the retreating Nazi army left behind a large amount of weapons. The trophies then became an important feature of war-themed exhibitions across the USSR.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483308/original/file-20220907-9399-6xdmsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People in civilian clothes look at rows and rows of tanks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483308/original/file-20220907-9399-6xdmsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483308/original/file-20220907-9399-6xdmsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483308/original/file-20220907-9399-6xdmsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483308/original/file-20220907-9399-6xdmsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483308/original/file-20220907-9399-6xdmsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483308/original/file-20220907-9399-6xdmsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483308/original/file-20220907-9399-6xdmsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An exhibition in Moscow’s Gorky Park in the 1940s displayed Nazi weapons captured by the Soviet Union.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gorky Park Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The biggest Soviet exhibition of captured German weapons opened in <a href="https://nyti.ms/3R0pBaz">Moscow’s Gorky Park on June 22, 1943</a>, the second anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Russia. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcZpgn_zBQw">grandiose outdoor display</a> featured German tanks, planes, cannons and other large equipment.</p>
<p>The exhibition conveyed two messages. First, the enemy was powerful, as evidenced by its <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1943/06/14/85106933.html?zoom=14.5&pageNumber=2">innovative and strong equipment</a>, and victory would require everyone’s full effort. Second, though, the fact the weapons were captured demonstrated that the Red Army and the Soviet people were able to overcome and defeat the invaders.</p>
<p>Similar exhibitions opened in many other Soviet cities, including Leningrad, Minsk and <a href="https://kyivpastfuture.com.ua/ru/kak-leonyd-bykov-v-tanke-nocheval-ystoryia-kyevskoj-vystavky-trofejnoho-vooruzhenyia-vremen-vtoroj-myrovoj-vojny/">Kyiv</a>. The displays were dismantled by the end of the 1940s; the weapons were recycled as scrap.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fcZpgn_zBQw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A 1943 Soviet film shows vehicles and weapons captured from the Nazis.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mocking the enemy</h2>
<p>Since Russia first invaded the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-happening-to-civilians-trapped-in-eastern-ukraines-war-zone-45136">Donbas region of eastern Ukraine</a> in 2014, Ukrainians have embraced the practice of displaying captured weapons as trophies.</p>
<p>In July 2014, the <a href="https://warmuseum.kyiv.ua/index_eng.php">National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War</a> in Kyiv presented a temporary exhibition of heavy equipment captured from Russia-sponsored separatist groups. After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine continued to use the trophy exhibitions of newly captured Russian weaponry as propaganda, seeking both domestic and international support.</p>
<p>In May 2022, the National Military History Museum of Ukraine opened an exhibition of recently destroyed Russian military equipment on Mykhailivs’ka Square in the Kyiv city center. The exhibition of the wreckage was meant to boost the morale of the Ukrainian people by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwbyEgd69ek">celebrating the strength of the Ukrainian army</a>, and to <a href="https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1530816075021033473?s=20&t=NykpoLSlwX7AOobElPuimQ">humiliate the enemy</a> by demonstrating the incompetence and moral inferiority of the Russian army and its weaponry.</p>
<p>A month later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson <a href="https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/volodimir-zelenskij-i-boris-dzhonson-vidvidali-svyato-mihajl-75873">to visit the exhibition</a>, along with other sights of Kyiv. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483311/original/file-20220907-4832-3vbng9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483311/original/file-20220907-4832-3vbng9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483311/original/file-20220907-4832-3vbng9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483311/original/file-20220907-4832-3vbng9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483311/original/file-20220907-4832-3vbng9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483311/original/file-20220907-4832-3vbng9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483311/original/file-20220907-4832-3vbng9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483311/original/file-20220907-4832-3vbng9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A July 22, 2022, display in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, shows off Russian weaponry destroyed and captured by Ukrainian forces.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-look-at-a-russian-t-90a-tank-and-other-russian-news-photo/1408955273">Sean Gallup via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Gathering international support</h2>
<p>Ukraine has used captured weapons to seek support from <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/central-europe-leads-the-way-in-backing-ukraine-heres-its-game-plan-for-whats-next/">other former Soviet-bloc countries</a>, sending Russian trophy weapons for display <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/wrecked-russian-tanks-show-warsaw-poland-hails-ukraines-courage-2022-06-27/">in Poland</a> and the <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-tanks-ukraine-captured-prague-exhibition/31938101.html">Czech Republic</a>. </p>
<p>In Prague, Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Denys Monastyrsky opened the exhibition of the defeated Russian tanks and other weapons on July 11, 2022. In his speech, Monastyrsky referred to the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/prague-spring-czechoslovakia-soviet-union">August 1968 Soviet invasion</a> that crushed the anti-communist Prague Spring demonstrations, saying, “<a href="https://mvs.gov.ua/uk/news/denis-monastirskii-rosiiski-tanki-znovu-v-prazi-ale-rozbiti-spaleni-ukrayinskimi-voyinami">Russian tanks are back in Prague</a>, but this time broken, burned out by the hands of the Ukrainian warriors.”</p>
<p>With this ancient practice, Ukraine is showing off its might and resolve, and demonstrating its opponents’ weaknesses – boosting morale within Ukraine and bolstering support from the international community.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anya Free does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Displays of captured Russian weaponry aim to show the strength of the foe Ukrainians face, but also that victory is possible.Anya Free, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1852942022-06-23T20:07:10Z2022-06-23T20:07:10ZFriday essay: if growing US-China rivalry leads to ‘the worst war ever’, what should Australia do?<p>Should Australia join the United States in a war against China to prevent China taking the US’s place as the dominant power in East Asia? Until a few years ago the question would have seemed merely hypothetical, but not anymore. </p>
<p>Senior figures in the Morrison government quite explicitly <a href="https://theconversation.com/peter-dutton-says-australia-should-prepare-for-war-so-how-likely-is-a-military-conflict-with-china-182042">acknowledged</a> that the escalating strategic rivalry between the US and China could lead to war, and their Labor successors do not seem to disagree. That is surely correct. Neither Washington nor Beijing want war but both seem willing to accept it rather than abandon their primary objectives. </p>
<p>There can be no doubt that if war comes, Washington would expect Australia to fight alongside it. Many in Canberra take it for granted that we would do so, and defence policy has shifted accordingly. Our armed forces are now being designed primarily to contribute to US-led operations in a major maritime war with China in the Western Pacific, with the aim of helping the United States to deter China from challenging the US, or helping to defeat it if deterrence fails. </p>
<p>In fact, the risk of war is probably higher than the government realises, because China is harder to deter than they understand.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/china-does-not-want-war-at-least-not-yet-its-playing-the-long-game-160093">China does not want war, at least not yet. It's playing the long game</a>
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<h2>The biggest war since WWII</h2>
<p>If war comes, Australians would face a truly momentous choice. Any choice to go to war carries special weight, because the costs and risks that must be weighed against the potential benefits are qualitatively different from those involved in other policy choices. A nation’s leaders must decide whether those exceptional costs and risks are justified by the objectives for which the war is fought. </p>
<p>That is a big responsibility even for the relatively small wars which Australia has joined in recent decades in <a href="https://theconversation.com/war-that-never-ended-ten-years-on-iraq-remains-bloodied-12840">Iraq</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-u-s-occupation-of-afghanistan-was-colonialism-that-prevented-afghan-self-determination-167615">Afghanistan</a>. But a war with China would be nothing like those. Once fighting began, there would be little chance of avoiding a major war, because the stakes for both sides are very high, and both have large forces ready for battle. </p>
<p>This would be the first serious war between two “great powers” since 1945, and the first ever between nuclear-armed states. It would probably become the biggest and worst war since the second world war. </p>
<p>If it goes nuclear, which is quite probable, it could be the worst war ever. A decision to fight in that war would be as serious as the decisions to fight in 1914 and 1939, which were arguably the most important decisions Australian governments have ever made.</p>
<p>It is important to be clear what the decision would be about. If war comes, it will be sparked by a dispute between the United States and China over something like <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-taiwan-rely-on-australia-when-it-comes-to-china-new-poll-shows-most-australians-dont-want-to-send-the-adf-164092">Taiwan</a> or the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-is-the-south-china-sea-such-a-hotly-contested-region-143435">South China Sea</a>. </p>
<p>But the specific dispute would not be the reason we would go to war with China, any more than we went to war in 1914 over the fate of Belgium or in 1939 over the fate of Poland. On both occasions the decision for war was driven by our concern to help prevent a defeat in Europe which would destroy British power in Asia, which we then relied on for our security. </p>
<p>We would go to war with China to preserve the US strategic position in Asia on which we depend for our security. That is not quite the same as saying that we would fight to preserve our alliance with the US. Many people assume that that would be our primary objective, because the US might abandon its commitments to us if we failed to support it. </p>
<p>But Washington’s disappointment with us does not threaten our US alliance nearly as gravely as Washington’s defeat by China. As long as they have strategic ambitions in Asia, Washington will have good reasons to help defend Australia. What would destroy the alliance would be American defeat and withdrawal from Asia.</p>
<p>Australia would be profoundly affected by a US–China war whether we joined the fighting or not. That might tempt some to think that our decision didn’t matter much one way or the other. </p>
<p>That obviously overlooks the consequences for those who actually serve, and the possibility that Australia itself could be targeted. But more importantly, it overlooks the possibility that Australia’s decisions would influence decisions elsewhere – including in Washington. </p>
<p>Recent scholarship has highlighted the remarkable weight given to Australia’s attitudes by British policymakers in the crises of 1914 and 1938–39. Douglas Newton has <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/hell-bent-9781925106060">shown how</a>, at a critical moment, Britain’s choice for war in 1914 was nudged by Australia’s eager support, while David Lee and David Bird have shown the influence of <a href="https://theconversation.com/issues-that-swung-elections-the-bitter-dispute-that-cost-pm-stanley-bruce-his-seat-in-1929-115129">Stanley Bruce</a> and Joseph Lyons on Britain’s innermost councils in 1938 and 1939.</p>
<p>The possibility that Australia’s choices might help to shape the ultimate decisions for war or peace in Asia over the years ahead make it all the more important that we weigh those decisions carefully.</p>
<p>Choices for war are profoundly shaped by historical analogy. Often this is the primary driver of a decision, in part because there is so little else to go on – nothing like the kind of data that can guide decisions on, say, tax policy or health policy. </p>
<p>We decide whether to go to war or not largely by looking at what our predecessors did in previous crises. Much depends, then, on which earlier crises we choose to consider, on how well we understand them, and on how closely yesterday’s crisis resembles today’s. </p>
<p>As Australia considers whether to join a US-China war, it is natural and prudent to look for guidance to the two previous occasions when we have faced comparably serious choices: 1914 and 1939. When we do this, we find an acute contrast between the way these two choices are now understood.</p>
<h2>Two world wars, two lessons</h2>
<p>Today, no one seriously doubts that we – Australia and its allies in the British Empire – were right to go to war in 1939 against Nazi Germany, nor that we were wrong not to go to war over the Czech crisis of 1938. </p>
<p>This was also the seemingly universal view of those who lived and fought through the war. In 1961 the historian A.J.P. Taylor <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-origins-of-the-second-world-war-9780140136722">noted</a> how little interest there was in contesting the accepted view of these momentous decisions. The same is true <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/551557/appeasement-by-tim-bouverie/">today</a>. The second world war is seen as a war that had to be fought.</p>
<p>The contrast with 1914 could hardly be starker. No one today seems seriously to doubt that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-great-war-wwi-100462">first world war</a> should not have been fought. Again, today’s judgment matches the verdict of those who lived and fought through the war itself. </p>
<p>Throughout the troubled decades from 1919 to 1939 there was an almost universal belief that the war had been a ghastly mistake and should never have been fought. Ever since, and despite lively debates about details of the debacle that led to war, especially how much of the blame lay with Berlin, the clear consensus has endured that war came that long-ago summer through the collective folly, weakness and ineptitude of the statesmen involved. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469447/original/file-20220617-14-p60pgp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469447/original/file-20220617-14-p60pgp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469447/original/file-20220617-14-p60pgp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469447/original/file-20220617-14-p60pgp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469447/original/file-20220617-14-p60pgp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469447/original/file-20220617-14-p60pgp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469447/original/file-20220617-14-p60pgp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469447/original/file-20220617-14-p60pgp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The British wartime Prime Minister, Lloyd George, writing soon after the war ended, said the nations of Europe “slithered over the brink” into a war that none of them intended. <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-sleepwalkers-9780141027821">Sleepwalkers</a>, the title of Christopher Clark’s notable recent account of how it all happened, suggests how little those essential judgements have changed.</p>
<p>The intriguing thing about these very different verdicts is that the underlying reason for Britain and the empire going to war was much the same on both occasions. It was to prevent the domination of Europe by a single power that would then be strong enough to threaten Britain itself, and hence Britain’s capacity to defend its empire, including Australia. </p>
<p>Both times Germany threatened to upset the balance of power between the European Great Powers, on which Britain had relied for centuries to safeguard its security across the Channel and thus allow it to project power around the globe to build and defend its <a href="https://theconversation.com/british-empire-is-still-being-whitewashed-by-the-school-curriculum-historian-on-why-this-must-change-105250">empire</a>. After 1918 this seemed a wholly insufficient reason to go to war. And yet when the same strategic logic drove Britain and its empire to war again in 1939, this seemed entirely justified.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-great-war-wwi-100462">World politics explainer: The Great War (WWI)</a>
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<p>Why the difference? One important reason concerns who did most of the fighting. In the first world war the hardest fighting was done by Britain and France on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-infinity-of-waste-the-brutal-reality-of-the-first-world-war-106593">Western Front</a>. In the second world war it was done by the Soviet Union against Germany in Europe, and (as we all too easily forget) by the Chinese against Japan in Asia. That is why, for all its horrors, the second world war was less horrific for Britain and Australia than the first. </p>
<p>But the main reason is of course the nature of the Nazi regime. During the first world war many lurid things were believed about the evils of Prussian militarism, and some of them no doubt were true. </p>
<p>But no one would compare them with the truly astonishing evil of Nazi Germany, which turned out after the war to be far worse even than most people had imagined. As the liberation of Europe in 1944 and 1945 revealed the reality of life under Nazi rule, it was hard to doubt that this was a challenge that must be defeated.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the lessons that have been drawn from 1914 and 1939 are very different – indeed they are diametrically opposed. After the first world war it was universally accepted by national governments that war on that scale must be avoided at almost any cost. It was therefore always better to compromise and accommodate the ambitions of a country that wanted to change the international system in its favour, rather than fight to defend the status quo. The word they used was “appeasement”. </p>
<p>The lesson drawn from 1939, and especially from the failure of the last gesture of appeasement at Munich in 1938, was never to make concessions to any power that seeks to expand its influence in the international system. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469454/original/file-20220617-12-mvb8ol.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469454/original/file-20220617-12-mvb8ol.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469454/original/file-20220617-12-mvb8ol.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469454/original/file-20220617-12-mvb8ol.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469454/original/file-20220617-12-mvb8ol.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469454/original/file-20220617-12-mvb8ol.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469454/original/file-20220617-12-mvb8ol.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469454/original/file-20220617-12-mvb8ol.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Neville Chamberlain on his return from Munich, 30 September 1938.</span>
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<p>Accommodation only encourages further demands. An unshakable refusal to compromise, backed by a clear determination to fight if necessary, will probably force the challenger to back off, thus avoiding war. And if they do not back off, then better to fight sooner before the challenger gets any stronger. They will have to be fought sooner or later, before they become too strong to be stopped.</p>
<p>It is not surprising that this stark and simple rejection of the lessons of 1914 should have appealed to people during the six hard years of the second world war. It is a bit more surprising that it has retained such a strong influence ever since. </p>
<p>Today these simple, powerful precepts remain perhaps the most potent element of that vague set of ideas, preconceptions and prejudices that provide the intellectual framework for foreign and strategic policy-making in the Western, and especially the Anglo-American, world. </p>
<p>The ideas that we should always be willing to fight rather than compromise, and that the more willing we are to fight, the less likely we are to have to fight, took on the aura of timeless precepts of universal application. As such, they had, and have, obvious appeal. They make difficult policy decisions look easy, and allow leaders and their advisers to look and sound tough.</p>
<p>But the results have not always been happy. The “lessons of Munich” <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691025353/analogies-at-war">inspired</a> Britain’s debacle in Suez, the US’s defeat in Vietnam, their invasion of Iraq in 2003 and many other mistakes. These failures are easy to explain. </p>
<p>Lessons of history are inevitably tied to the original circumstances of time and place from which they are drawn, and how well they apply to new situations depends on how far and in what ways the new circumstances resemble the original ones. The lessons drawn from the failure of appeasement in 1939 are specific to the circumstances of that failure, and some of those circumstances were very unusual.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469446/original/file-20220617-22-bw775f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469446/original/file-20220617-22-bw775f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469446/original/file-20220617-22-bw775f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469446/original/file-20220617-22-bw775f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469446/original/file-20220617-22-bw775f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469446/original/file-20220617-22-bw775f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469446/original/file-20220617-22-bw775f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469446/original/file-20220617-22-bw775f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The main gate at Auschwitz, known as the Gate of Death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stanislaw Mucha/AAP</span></span>
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<p>Above all, the shadow of Nazi Germany was unusual and perhaps unique in several critical ways. One was the sheer evil of the Nazi regime to which we have already referred. Another was its unusually stark and clearly stated strategic ambitions. </p>
<p>From <a href="https://theconversation.com/mein-kampf-publication-the-best-way-to-destroy-hitlers-hateful-legacy-51707">Mein Kampf</a> onwards, Hitler made clear that he planned to do more than build Germany’s position as the leading power in Europe by expanding its influence over other countries. He wanted to destroy other countries by seizing and occupying large tracts of territory to provide <em>Lebensraum</em> for the German people. </p>
<p>A third was its potential to realise its ambitions on the basis of its formidable national power – economic, demographic, technical and organisational – compared to its neighbours. Against this kind of challenge, the only possible response may well be, as the lessons of Munich suggest, unwavering and uncompromising opposition; if necessary, by fighting a major war.</p>
<p>But neither Nasser’s Egypt, nor Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnam, nor <a href="https://theconversation.com/gulf-war-30-years-on-the-consequences-of-desert-storm-are-still-with-us-156140">Saddam Hussein’s Iraq</a> were anything like Hitler’s Germany. The dangers they posed were nowhere near as serious as was assumed, and the costs and risks of resisting them by force turned out to be much higher than expected, and higher than could be justified to avert those dangers. Even more strikingly, however, the lessons of Munich had relatively little influence on a number of much bigger questions. </p>
<p>The postwar architecture hammered out between US president Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at Yalta, based on the United Nations, was premised on a spirit of accommodation and compromise. </p>
<p>Even more strikingly, so was the West’s approach to the one adversary it faced in the postwar decades that was in some ways comparable with Nazi Germany – the Soviet Union. Western leaders sometimes invoked the follies of Munich to advertise and justify hard-line Cold War postures, but their policies were most often guided by a prudent recognition of the need to negotiate understandings with Moscow in order to avert the danger of war.</p>
<p>This was of course all the more imperative as the Soviet capacity for nuclear warfare grew. In the 1950s even the archetypal opponent of appeasement, Winston Churchill, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2713969-negotiation-from-strength">became</a> a fervent advocate of negotiation with Moscow to settle differences in order to avoid nuclear war. </p>
<p>In the darkest moment of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy was influenced much more by the lessons of 1914 than by those of 1938–39, which <a href="http://blog.loa.org/2012/03/how-barbara-tuchmans-guns-of-august.html">prompted him</a> to offer the concessions which defused the crisis. In any case, the policy of Détente that evolved in the aftermath of that crisis owed a lot more to the lessons of 1914 than those of 1938–39.</p>
<p>It seems clear that, as a new Cold War looms between the United States and China, the lessons of 1939 loom much larger than the lessons of 1914, both in Washington and Canberra. Washington has made it clear that it has no interest in seeking an accommodation with China that would meet any of China’s aims to expand its influence in Asia and beyond. </p>
<p>Washington’s talk of preserving the “rules-based liberal order” plainly embodies its intention to perpetuate the old status quo of US primacy, and its emphasis on meeting China’s military challenge reflects its willingness to go to war with China rather than to compromise that objective. In Canberra, Scott Morrison made clear the influence of Munich on his policy when, launching his government’s <a href="https://defence.gov.au/ADC/Publications/AJDSS/volume2-number2/prime-minister-address-launch-2020-defence-strategic-update.asp">Defence Strategic Update</a> in 2020, he explicitly compared today’s strategic circumstances to those of the 1930s and early 1940s.</p>
<p>Is this the right way to think about the problem of China? To be clear, the question is not whether we should try to resist China’s ambitions, but how far we should resist them, and at what cost. Should Australia be willing to go to war, whatever the cost may be, to preserve the US-led regional and global order, and block any expansion of Chinese power and influence? Or should we be willing, reluctantly, to accommodate some of China’s ambitions by accepting an expansion of its influence, in order to reduce the risks of war? It is not a simple question.</p>
<p>The lessons of Munich do not seem to offer a very helpful guide to answering it. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-communist-party-claims-to-have-brought-prosperity-and-equality-to-china-heres-the-real-impact-of-its-rule-163350">Chinese Communist Party</a> has many faults and is responsible for much brutality and oppression, but it is not by any stretch comparable to the evil of the Nazi Party. </p>
<p>China today is certainly strategically ambitious, but there is no serious reason to fear that – the special case of Taiwan apart, its claim to which the rest of the world acknowledges – it seeks to conquer and absorb others’ territory. And although China is set to become the most powerful country on earth, it cannot dominate and subjugate such strong neighbours as India and Russia. </p>
<p>Overall, then, the risks that China poses to the regional and global order, though significant, are not like those posed by Nazi Germany, or indeed the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>On the other hand, a war with China may well be as costly as the world wars of the 20th century, or even more costly, especially if it becomes a nuclear war. That would be an almost unimaginable disaster even if our side won – a victory, as Churchill <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90230.The_World_Crisis_1911_1918">wrote</a> of the First World War “bought so dear as to be almost indistinguishable from defeat”.</p>
<p>Moreover, there is no reason to assume that we and our allies would win. Indeed, it is hard to see how a major war with China could be “won” without the kind of full-scale invasion or subjugation of the enemy’s country that brought victory in the two world wars. It is somewhat easier to imagine how China could defeat the United States – by imposing such heavy costs that Washington decides to abandon the war, and withdraw from Asia to the Western Hemisphere. </p>
<p>That raises the very real possibility that a war with China launched to preserve the US’s position in Asia might well end up destroying it, just as the First World War destroyed the empires that went to war to preserve themselves in 1914.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-untold-reaction-to-the-cuban-missile-crisis-10104">Australia's untold reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis</a>
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<h2>The limits to accommodation</h2>
<p>What, then, do the lessons of 1914 offer as a guide to our policy choices today? In the 1920s and 1930s the majority of those who survived the first world war would have been quite clear about that. </p>
<p>They would say that we should avoid war at almost any price, by being willing to go a long way to accommodate China’s ambitions by according it a much larger share of influence and authority in the international system. They would have been confident, however, that China’s ambitions could be constrained by limits imposed, not by armed force, but by a powerful international institution – the League of Nations – and by what they called “international public opinion”. </p>
<p>They repudiated war as an instrument of policy, but they placed great faith in these alternatives to achieve what war, or the threat of war, had long been relied upon to do. Of course, this did not work. </p>
<p>As the historian E.H. Carr <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/978-1-349-95076-8">wrote</a> just before war broke out in 1939, their misplaced confidence in these constraints, and what he later called “the almost total neglect of the factor of power” did much to create the crisis which then confronted Britain with no alternative but to go to war again.</p>
<p>We would be wise, then, not to follow their example. Where then to turn? We might begin by noting that the lessons of 1914 and of Munich are both aberrations. They depart from much older traditions of statecraft which had developed over many centuries as the modern European state system had emerged and evolved. </p>
<p>Those traditions do not by any means forswear war. Indeed, as the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, one of its foremost contemporary exponents, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50562.A_World_Restored">wrote</a> in the first page of his first book: “those who forswear war will never have peace”.</p>
<p>But the aim is always to achieve the maximum advantages without war, and that entails a willingness to negotiate and accommodate; to appease, in other words. War is not an alternative to accommodation; it is used to set the limits to accommodation and to enforce those limits. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469449/original/file-20220617-23-1u31yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469449/original/file-20220617-23-1u31yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469449/original/file-20220617-23-1u31yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469449/original/file-20220617-23-1u31yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469449/original/file-20220617-23-1u31yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469449/original/file-20220617-23-1u31yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469449/original/file-20220617-23-1u31yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469449/original/file-20220617-23-1u31yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Henry Kissinger, US Presidential National Security Adviser, and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, Peking, China, July 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">White House/AP</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>This approach prevented any single power dominating Europe for centuries, and after the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Congress-of-Vienna/Decisions-of-the-congress">1815 Congress of Vienna</a>, it prevented any Europe-wide wars for almost a century until 1914. Seen in the light of this tradition, the appeasers’ mistake at Munich was not that they accommodated Hitler over Sudetenland, but that they failed to make it absolutely clear that they would go to war to deny him the rest of Czechoslovakia, or any of Poland.</p>
<p>As that example makes clear, the key to this kind of statecraft lies in deciding where to set the limits to accommodation. These are hard decisions to make. As we have seen, one of the attractions of the lessons of Munich as a template for strategic decision-making is its simplicity. But it achieves simplicity by lazily assuming that all ambitious powers are essentially the same and must be treated the same by refusing any accommodation. </p>
<p>Taking a more responsible approach requires careful judgements about the current and probable future extent of an adversary’s ambitions and power, and nuanced assessments of the implications for our future security. Then we can judge how far we can afford to accommodate them before the costs and risks of doing so exceed the costs and risks of the war we would need to fight to stop them.</p>
<p>Looking back, for example, it is interesting and instructive to think about the alternatives to war in August 1914. Had Britain stood aloof, France and Russia may well have been defeated, leaving Germany the unquestioned leading power in Europe. <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-pity-of-war-9780141975832">That</a> appeared an unacceptable outcome to the majority of the cabinet in Whitehall, but a minority argued that Britain could live with it more easily than it could bear the burdens of war, and in the light of events since then they were probably right.</p>
<p>After all, the Germany of 1914 was not Nazi Germany. And Australia might well have been better off had the arguments for peace prevailed in Whitehall. Not only would we have been spared the losses we suffered, but Britain would have remained a stronger global power that was better able to defend its Pacific dominions than it proved to be in 1941.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-would-be-wise-not-to-pound-war-drums-over-taiwan-with-so-much-at-stake-159993">Australia would be wise not to pound 'war drums' over Taiwan with so much at stake</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Rhyming history</h2>
<p>History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. As we face the challenge of a rising China we can hear the clear echoes of the choices faced by our predecessors in the last century and the centuries before that. Those echoes tell us that to meet that challenge we need to do a lot more than mouth slogans about Munich. </p>
<p>We have to think carefully and realistically about the nature of China’s challenge to the old order in Asia, the kind of new order that might be created to accommodate it, the safeguards that would be required to protect our most vital interests in that order, and how that might be achieved at minimum cost and risk. We must also think about how best we can influence our major ally as it addresses the same questions, because its answers will have immense significance for us. </p>
<p>All this is a formidable task. Indeed, it is probably the most demanding foreign policy task that Australia has ever faced. But we should not be surprised by that, when we remember that China’s rise is the biggest shift in Australia’s international setting since Europeans first settled here in 1788.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469455/original/file-20220617-23-hc6qtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469455/original/file-20220617-23-hc6qtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469455/original/file-20220617-23-hc6qtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469455/original/file-20220617-23-hc6qtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469455/original/file-20220617-23-hc6qtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469455/original/file-20220617-23-hc6qtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469455/original/file-20220617-23-hc6qtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469455/original/file-20220617-23-hc6qtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>In meeting that task, it falls to the present generation of political leaders, policymakers, commentators and, ultimately, citizens around the world to navigate one of the biggest, swiftest, most disruptive and most dangerous power transitions in modern history. </p>
<p>One might say, too, that it falls to the current generation of historians to contribute to that work by offering a deeper understanding of the choices that were made by earlier generations navigating similar transitions. </p>
<p>That is not easy, because the accepted versions of earlier episodes like 1914 and 1938–39 are encrusted with tradition, sentiment and ideology, and few historians have sought to challenge or overturn these accepted versions. Perhaps more will step forward as the nature and seriousness of today’s choices, and the need to illuminate them with lessons from the past, become clearer. </p>
<p>One key element of such work will be the methodologically vexed but undoubtedly stimulating exploration of counterfactual histories. To assess and learn from the decisions of 1914, we need more nuanced and sophisticated views of how Europe and the British Empire would have fared had Imperial Germany dominated the Continent. </p>
<p>To assess and learn from the decisions of 1938 and 1939 we need to better understand what might have happened had different decisions been made. We also need to recognise and meditate on what might have happened had “our side” not won the last two major power wars. Because we might not win the next one.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://unsw.press/books/lessons-from-history/">Lessons from History: Leading historians tackle Australia’s greatest challenge</a>s, edited by Carolyn Holbrook, Lyndon Megarrity and David Lowe (NewSouth).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185294/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh White does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hugh White warns of a potential war between the US and China, drawing lessons from the first and second world wars to explore how Australia might respond to such a conflict – and where to draw a line.Hugh White, Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1841852022-05-31T12:20:19Z2022-05-31T12:20:19ZStolpersteine: UK joins the world’s largest Holocaust memorial<p>The world’s largest memorial is about to get a little bigger, as it comes to Britain for the first time. It began life in 1992, when German artist Gunter Demnig laid the first “<a href="https://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/home/">Stolperstein</a>” – or stumbling stone – in Cologne, Germany. Since then, more than 75,000 memorials, each the size of a square cobble stone, have been installed in more than 20 countries. </p>
<p>Britain is now to be added to that growing list as a 10 x 10cm brass plate is unveiled in Golden Square, in central London. On it will be engraved the name of Ada van Dantzig, a Dutch Jewish woman who worked in London but was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943.</p>
<p>The presence of a memorial to Dantzig, hundreds of miles from the infamous death camp built in Nazi-occupied Poland, may seem strange. But it is key to Demnig’s vision of what this decentralised memorial might do. Rather than sending us to one of the former camps, replete with their large central stone and concrete memorials, Demnig decided to bring the memorials to us by embedding the stumbling stones in the ordinary streets of more than 1,000 towns and cities across Europe and beyond.</p>
<h2>Expanding the landscape of the Holocaust</h2>
<p>Speaking ahead of the laying of Dantzig’s stone, Demnig stressed: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten. With this Stolperstein, Ada van Dantzig’s name, inscribed into the urban landscape of Soho, will be remembered.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Locations, as with this spot in Soho, were chosen because these were the last known residences or workplaces of those murdered. </p>
<p>In many cases, Stolpersteine mark the homes where Jews were deported from. Others mark the last place from which Jews fled. This is the case for Dantzig, who came to London to learn the craft of painting conservation in the studio of the preeminent conservator <a href="https://www.hki.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/archives/helmutruhemann">Helmut Ruhemann</a>, which was located in Golden Square. She left London to help her family escape to neutral Switzerland. However, the escape plan failed and the whole family, apart from one brother, was deported to Auschwitz. Dantzig was killed on 14 February 1943. She was 24 years old. </p>
<p>By marking the places that Jews were taken from, rather than only the places where they were taken, Demnig extends the landscape of the Holocaust from a handful of death camps, or hundreds of ghettos, back to thousands of addresses across Europe where Jews were arrested or fled. It is as if he is saying that the genocide started here – when people were forced to leave their homes.</p>
<p>Stolpersteine reveal the continental reach and scale of the Holocaust stone by stone. But they also bring this event so much closer to home and make it one that intrudes into our everyday lives.</p>
<h2>How to remember</h2>
<p>How to remember war and genocide emerged as pressing concerns in the 20th century. One set of questions – where to remember – revolved around whether to remember centrally at one national memorial – often in a country’s capital – or locally at thousands of decentralised memorials. Travelling around France or Britain, it is clear that in the aftermath of the first world war, both national and local memorials were chosen to mark what was known as the Great War.</p>
<p>But another set of questions – how to remember – revolved around what memorials are meant to do – to console or to provoke. This became a matter of intense debate in Germany in the 1980s and 1990s, with the development of what Holocaust and memory studies scholar James Young calls “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1343784">counter-monuments</a>”, which are monuments that take a new form to ensure that they don’t glorify the past, but instead encourage visitors to face the history head on. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, a new generation of artists asked what new forms memorials to the victims of National Socialism might take. </p>
<p>Demnig’s work can be seen as a response to both the question of where and how to remember. Stolpersteine are a supremely decentralised series of counter monuments. Rather than limiting the memory of the Holocaust to one site that we choose, or don’t choose, to visit, perhaps on a portentous anniversary, Stolpersteine literally cause us to stumble over the memory of this event as we go about our day to day lives time and time again.</p>
<p>While never intended to trip up the passer by, these stumbling stones are intended to halt us in their tracks and call us to imaginatively connect the front door before us with other doors – the gates of ghettos and gas chambers – by drawing attention to the beginnings of thousands of Holocaust journeys that were, for Jews like Ada van Dantzig, to be their final journey.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Cole receives funding from UKRI and the Toni Schiff Foundation. He is the Chair of the 'We are Bristol History Commission' set up by the Mayor of Bristol in the aftermath of the toppling of the Colston Statue. </span></em></p>The legacy of the Holocaust stretches beyond a handful of death camps and ghettos. Stumbling Stones hope to help people remember thatTim Cole, Professor of Social History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1818802022-05-19T14:47:05Z2022-05-19T14:47:05ZPhotos of wartime Europe still shape views of conflict – here’s how we’re trying to right the record<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464258/original/file-20220519-14-awtkc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C798%2C514&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Tanganyika expeditionary force in Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of Congo) during East African campaign of the first world war.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205346652">Imperial War Museum.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A war in Europe instantly creates <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/26/russia-ukraine-war-soviet-legacy/">parallels with the world wars</a> for people in the UK and other European countries. This connection represents what most people know and are taught about conflict on the continent. The media coverage and response to the war in Ukraine have also invoked familiar images of the second world war, in particular those of bombed buildings, armed soldiers and civilians, and children clinging to their parents. </p>
<p>Our automatic response to images of conflict is often biased. We search for familiarity, for ways to process the horrors that are happening in front of our eyes, to answer our knee-jerk question: does it affect us?</p>
<p>Invoking images of the world wars arguably heightens our response because national ideas about the world wars are so deeply rooted in our historical knowledge. Yet wars in Syria and elsewhere are more easily seen by most Europeans as distant or foreign. </p>
<p>However, many of the world war battles involving European powers were fought outside of Europe, in places like east Africa and the Middle East. And of course other wars before these were fought all over the world. This made us wonder: is the war in Ukraine different because it is in eastern Europe and undoubtedly invokes our knowledge and recognisable images of the world wars? </p>
<p>These questions are the focus of our new project, Early Conflict Photography (1890-1918) and Visual Artificial Intelligence (<a href="https://eycon.hypotheses.org/">EyCon</a>). In this project, we are exploring our westernised view of the world wars and how that is directly tied to the current inaccessibility of historical photographs and their contexts. To understand and correct this imbalance, EyCon is using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve our knowledge of often-overlooked war images from the early conflict era, from 1890 to 1918. </p>
<p>By capturing these graphic images and making them a part of our accessible history, we can start to recover overshadowed but globally shared experiences of war. But we can also question what effect our limited and Eurocentric knowledge of global history has on our response to images of modern conflicts.</p>
<p>As part of Eycon, thousands of photographs from colonial warfare and pre-1914 conflicts, such as the Russo-Japanese war and the Balkans war, as well as first world war African and Asian battlefields, will be featured in the project’s database. However, it’s not as simple as uploading them.</p>
<h2>Recording history</h2>
<p>While a photograph might say a thousand words, those words are not necessarily the right ones. Conflict and war zone images create further issues for preservation and digitisation, as they may depict sensitive material and there are often more than two sides to the story. </p>
<p>This means the interpretation of an image can become a matter of perspective. Without accurate information about the photos such as when and where they were taken (known as metadata) or the means to search images across archives, the full records of even our recent global conflicts could be lost. </p>
<p>The accuracy of metadata is one of the biggest problems with image preservation. While this data allows images to be discovered with keywords, the information that accompanies an image record can become problematic if the description and information are limited, outdated, biased, or simply wrong. </p>
<p>When historical images are digitised, much of the metadata is simply copied from notes on the original source held at the archive from which they come, if there are any notes at all. Another archive with a copy of the same image might have different notes, so the metadata attached to the digital record does not always match. </p>
<p>This is a major issue for archivists, researchers and public users alike, as the accuracy of the record is integral to the way the photograph is used, catalogued and interpreted. So when differences occur, how can we know which notes, if any, are correct? </p>
<p>This issue is the focus of the EyCon project. By applying AI that can analyse images to archival collections of early-era conflict images, the project aims to collate image metadata and identify inconsistencies or examples where more accurate metadata needs to be applied. This is especially important when the same images are held in different archival collections.</p>
<h2>Two different stories</h2>
<p>Take this image of three soldiers from October 1917 during the first world war. In simple terms, this is a photograph of male soldiers on a battlefield and one man is injured. The photograph is held by two French archives, <a href="http://www.calames.abes.fr/pub/lacontemporaine.aspx#details?id=Calames-2018101514105521896">La Contemporaine</a> and <a href="https://imagesdefense.gouv.fr/fr/le-balcon-un-senegalais-blesse-legende-d-origine.html">République Française Images Défense</a>.</p>
<p>The Images Défense record describes the photo as “<em>Un tirailleur sénégalais est blessé au ‘Balcon’, position allemande conquise par les alliés près de Soupir</em>” (“A Senegalese rifleman was wounded at the ‘Balcon’, a German position conquered by the Allies near Soupir”). However, La Contemporaine presents the following description, which is handwritten under the image: “<em>Blessé français évacué sur l'arrière</em>” “(French wounded evacuated to the rear”). </p>
<p>These different descriptions, listing the wounded soldier as “Senegalese” and “French”, highlight not only the discrepancies between historical image metadata, but also the very real potential for colonial troops to be written out of European history. Without the right context, and without further investigation, the real stories of these people can easily disappear.</p>
<p>While EyCon is specifically investigating early conflict imagery, the aims of the project – to develop visual AI techniques to source, collect and improve metadata for photo archives – can help to inform future projects with similar goals. For now, by bringing together global collections of early conflict images, identifying new photographs, and collating contexts and histories, EyCon’s open-access database hopes to correct and realign our heavily westernised and Eurocentric view of the world at war.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181880/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katherine Aske is Postdoctoral Fellow (UK) for the EyCon project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lise Jaillant is UK Principal Investigator for the EyCon project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).</span></em></p>There has been a marked difference in the coverage of Ukraine with media outlets invoking images of the world wars.Katherine Aske, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Communication and Media, Loughborough UniversityLise Jaillant, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor), Digital Humanities, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1820282022-05-10T12:05:05Z2022-05-10T12:05:05ZRussia is being made a pariah state – just like it and the Soviet Union were for most of the last 105 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462088/original/file-20220509-15-nixqyr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C19%2C6437%2C4224&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Smoke rises on April 15, 2022, above 400 new graves in the town of Severodonetsk, Ukraine. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bulldozer-excaves-new-graves-in-yalovshchina-cemetery-for-news-photo/1240267875?adppopup=true">Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. and its European allies recently said they planned to take a new approach in their relations with Russia: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/04/16/us-nato-isolate-russia/">They would isolate and contain the country</a> in the aftermath of its invasion of Ukraine. Doing so would keep Russia out of international organizations, restrict imports and exports, and prevent further military moves, ultimately <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/briefing/russia-ukraine-war-us.html">weakening it</a>. </p>
<p>This treatment of Russia is nothing new for Western countries. While Russia is more <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/09/ukraine-russia-iron-curtain/">economically and politically isolated</a> now than it has ever been, it is no stranger to isolation and containment.</p>
<p>Looking back over the last 100 years, it’s clear that the period <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/06/20/thirty-years-of-u.s.-policy-toward-russia-can-vicious-circle-be-broken-pub-79323">between 1992 and 2001, when Russia embraced the West and was largely embraced by it</a>, is the exception. For most of the <a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-russia/#:%7E:text=U.S.%2DRUSSIA%20RELATIONS,following%20the%201917%20Bolshevik%20Revolution.">20th century and the early 21st century</a>, Russia has been a fearsome power that the West has wanted to hobble. </p>
<p>The West is now returning to a strategy that was effective before in containing Russia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462094/original/file-20220509-17-2wk01a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Five men in dark suits standing and talking in front of a flag display." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462094/original/file-20220509-17-2wk01a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462094/original/file-20220509-17-2wk01a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462094/original/file-20220509-17-2wk01a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462094/original/file-20220509-17-2wk01a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462094/original/file-20220509-17-2wk01a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462094/original/file-20220509-17-2wk01a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462094/original/file-20220509-17-2wk01a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">NATO leaders during a break at a NATO summit on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at the alliance’s headquarters, on March 24, 2022, in Brussels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/italys-prime-minister-mario-draghi-nato-secretary-general-news-photo/1239466016?adppopup=true">Photo by Henry Nicholls - Pool/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Russia stands alone – mostly</h2>
<p>Following the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Russian-Revolution">Russian Revolution in 1917</a>, Russia, as part of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Soviet-Union/The-Russian-Revolution">newly formed Soviet Union</a>, found itself isolated from other nations. A revolutionary state that <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Russian-Revolution">espoused an ideology of worldwide revolution</a> threatened other powers.</p>
<p>That isolation took many forms. The country was not a signatory to the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/paris-peace">Treaty of Versailles</a>, the most important of several treaties that ended World War I. It was not a member of the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/league">League of Nations</a>, the organization founded after World War I to resolve disputes between nations, until 1934. Russia had no <a href="https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1921-2/trade-pacts-with-the-west/">foreign trade agreements before 1921</a> and was <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/1924-12-15/britains-recognition-soviet-government">not fully recognized in diplomacy by non-Russian powers before 1924</a>.</p>
<p>As a revolutionary pariah state that saw itself <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390701343490">encircled by enemies</a>, the Soviet Union hardened its view of the world. While the so-called <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/big-three">Grand Alliance of the U.S., Great Britain and Soviet Union</a> found common cause against Nazi Germany during World War II, the relationship was never comfortable. <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/yalta-conference-foreshadows-the-cold-war">It crumbled swiftly after the war</a> as the three powers focused on their respective spheres of vital interest and expressed differing views for the postwar world.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462083/original/file-20220509-5956-isojmw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People in long, dark coats during the winter in front of the ruins of a multi-story building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462083/original/file-20220509-5956-isojmw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462083/original/file-20220509-5956-isojmw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462083/original/file-20220509-5956-isojmw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462083/original/file-20220509-5956-isojmw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462083/original/file-20220509-5956-isojmw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462083/original/file-20220509-5956-isojmw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462083/original/file-20220509-5956-isojmw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People crowd the street in front of the ruins of the Nikitsky Gate to the Imperial Palace in Petrograd (St. Petersburg and Leningrad) shortly after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in February 1917.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SovietRevolution1917/fa6a4781bb9141738999e75c8711608d/photo?Query=Russian%20Revolution&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=794&currentItemNo=4">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Containment’s beginnings</h2>
<p>After World War II, the U.S. wanted to ensure that democratic governments were established in Europe. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/how-communism-took-over-eastern-europe-after-world-war-ii/263938/">The Soviets were intent on establishing communist regimes</a> in Eastern Europe. </p>
<p>To frustrate Russia’s ambitions, what was called “the doctrine of containment” became postwar policy. It was most famously articulated by U.S. diplomat George Kennan in <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/1947-07-01/sources-soviet-conduct">a cable in 1946, later published in Foreign Affairs in 1947</a>. </p>
<p>“It is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies,” wrote Kennan. </p>
<p>“The United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate … to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power,” he wrote.</p>
<p>Kennan wrote that the West would not find a way to live with the Soviet Union and that Soviet power could not be controlled by logic or reason, but could be influenced by the logic of force. He argued that political and economic means could be used to contain Soviet power and potentially force it to retreat in its ambitions.</p>
<h2>Iron Curtain entrenches</h2>
<p>Kennan’s calls for containment of the Soviet Union were followed by concrete actions by the U.S. government. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/truman-doctrine">Truman Doctrine</a> in 1947 advocated for the U.S. to help rebuild shattered postwar economies in Europe so communism would not become an attractive proposition. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/marshall-plan">Marshall Plan</a> implemented this approach and extended economic assistance to postwar Europe. It helped reinvigorate European industry and laid a pathway for European integration. Marshall Plan assistance, which ultimately totaled US$155 billion in current dollars, was offered to all European countries, including the Soviet Union. But the Soviets rejected the offer and forced Eastern European countries under their influence to do the same. </p>
<p>The Soviets answered these Western moves with the <a href="https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1947-2/cominform-and-the-soviet-bloc/">creation in 1947 of the Cominform</a>, a Soviet-led bloc of Communist parties aimed at defeating what it saw as U.S.-led Western imperialism and cementing party rule in member countries. Further moves came in 1949 with the creation of the economic organization of Communist countries <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095626480">known as COMECON</a>. </p>
<p>The result was the clear division of Europe into two economic and political spheres, isolating the Soviet bloc from the West. The “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Iron-Curtain">Iron Curtain</a>” – the ideological, military and economic divide between democratic Western countries and the Soviet Union, along with the communist countries in its orbit – had solidified.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462090/original/file-20220509-11-gy45no.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in academic robe and cap introduces a chubby man wearing a bow tie as he approaches a lectern." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462090/original/file-20220509-11-gy45no.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462090/original/file-20220509-11-gy45no.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462090/original/file-20220509-11-gy45no.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462090/original/file-20220509-11-gy45no.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462090/original/file-20220509-11-gy45no.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462090/original/file-20220509-11-gy45no.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462090/original/file-20220509-11-gy45no.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Harry Truman, right, introduces Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, before Churchill’s speech on March 5, 1946, in Fulton, Missouri, in which he coined the phrase ‘Iron Curtain.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-harry-truman-introduces-winston-churchill-who-a-news-photo/515578388?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Containment’s militarization</h2>
<p>Concern grew among the Western countries about potential military confrontation with the Soviet Union. That led in 1949 to the formation of the <a href="https://www.nato.int/nato-welcome/index.html">North Atlantic Treaty Organization</a>, or NATO, as part of the move to contain the Soviet Union militarily.</p>
<p>Following NATO’s creation, in 1950 the U.S. State Department <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116191.pdf">proposed a new policy</a> – <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/NSC68#:%7E:text=National%20Security%20Council%20Paper%20NSC,Staff%20on%20April%207%2C%201950.">a top-secret report referred to as “NSC-68”</a> – that emphasized the use of military force over diplomacy in dealing with Soviet power. As the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/NSC68#:%7E:text=National%20Security%20Council%20Paper%20NSC,Staff%20on%20April%207%2C%201950.">State Department Historian writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Its authors argued that one of the most pressing threats confronting the United States was the ‘hostile design’ of the Soviet Union. The authors concluded that the Soviet threat would soon be greatly augmented by the addition of more weapons, including nuclear weapons, to the Soviet arsenal. They argued that the best course of action was to respond in kind with a massive build-up of the U.S. military and its weaponry.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>More aggressive than Kennan’s ideas of containment, <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/NSC68">this policy called for a massive buildup of U.S. conventional and nuclear arsenals</a>. Soviet ambition would thus be restricted because its leaders would not likely seek a hot war with the West. </p>
<p>President Harry Truman signed off on NSC-68 in September 1950. It remained U.S. policy until the end of the Cold War in 1991. </p>
<h2>Containment’s effects</h2>
<p>By the early 1950s, The Soviet Union was isolated and contained by economic, political and military means in Europe. Yet Soviet leaders <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/how-communism-took-over-eastern-europe-after-world-war-ii/263938/">sought to consolidate and maintain power over Eastern Europe</a>, using force at times. The Soviets also exercised cautious ambitions in other regions, provoking Western fears of a spread of Soviet power to the Far East, the developing world and Latin America. </p>
<p>The U.S. and its partners worked to isolate Soviet power beyond Europe with the creation of the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/seato">Southeast Asia Treaty Organization</a> in 1954 and through attempts to support noncommunist regimes in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and the developing world during the ensuing decades.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand key political developments, each week.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=politics&source=inline-politics-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s politics newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The effects of the isolation of the Soviet Union during the Cold War era became clear as Soviet and Eastern Bloc economies <a href="https://www.fraserinstitute.org/blogs/russia-and-its-former-satellites-lag-behind-rest-of-europe-on-per-capita-gdp">lagged behind those of the West</a>, particularly in the production of consumer goods, as early as the 1950s. The <a href="https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-19-1-a-life-under-communism-in-eastern-europe">democratic freedoms of the West were largely absent</a>. </p>
<p>Isolation also led to the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html">Soviet closed state</a>, with propaganda, the stifling of dissent, censorship, a state-controlled media, suspicion of foreigners and a society that was intended to be impervious to foreign influence. </p>
<p>Additionally, the West’s militarized containment of the Soviet Union drove <a href="https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-russia-nuclear-arms-control">a costly arms race</a>, both nuclear and conventional, which had damaging effects on the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3131928">Soviet economy by the late 1970s</a>. That contributed to other societal challenges to Soviet power, such as rising nationalism and disillusionment with the Soviet project, which became clear <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB298/Document%204.pdf">in the 1980s as Soviet society faced food and consumer good shortages</a><a href="https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress/Soviet%20Economy%20in%20the%201980s%20-%20Problems%20and%20Prospects%20Part%20I%20%281185%29.pdf">and dissent rose</a>. All served as contributing factors to the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/collapse-soviet-union#:%7E:text=Gorbachev's%20decision%20to%20loosen%20the,Communist%20rule%20throughout%20Eastern%20Europe.">fall of the Soviet Union</a> in 1991.</p>
<p>In 2022, the West is responding to Russian aggression as it has done so before – through implementing policies of isolation and containment to curb and weaken Russian power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182028/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alastair Kocho-Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The West’s new approach to Russia – bar it from international organizations, restrict international trade, prevent further military moves – looks just like how it treated Russia in the 20th century.Alastair Kocho-Williams, Professor of History, Clarkson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1824382022-05-05T09:39:02Z2022-05-05T09:39:02ZNeutrality: why countries choose not to join a war and what responsibilities come with it – podcast<p>When war breaks out, what does it mean for a country to remain neutral? In this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-conversation-weekly-98901">The Conversation Weekly</a> podcast, we explore the advantages and disadvantages of neutrality – and what responsibilities come with the choice not to take sides. We talk to an historian about how an age of neutrality emerged in the 19th century and what lessons it has for the war in Ukraine. And we dig down into the reasons why one country – India – has decided to remain neutral on the conflict. </p>
<iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/60087127b9687759d637bade/627384cb9828fb0014bfa496" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="190px"></iframe>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-561" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/561/4fbbd099d631750693d02bac632430b71b37cd5f/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>In early March, when the UN general assembly <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/3/unga-resolution-against-ukraine-invasion-full-text">passed a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine</a>, 35 countries abstained. These countries, across <a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-war-with-ukraine-five-reasons-why-many-african-countries-choose-to-be-neutral-180135">Africa</a>, Asia and Latin America, chose to remain neutral for their own reasons, some historic, some economic and some political. Like neutral countries throughout history, they will have carefully weighed up the pros and cons of doing so.</p>
<p>Throughout history, while some countries have chosen to remain neutral for their own security, others have seen advantages in doing so. This was particularly the case in the 19th century, when the first international laws of neutrality began to emerge in Europe. Maartje Abbenhuis, a professor of history at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, explains <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/an-age-of-neutrals/6BB03B3AC6A90D23E56F7D6ACA5945D5">how an “age of neutrality”</a> dawned as the world’s great powers avoided being drawn into a series of costly wars. But by staying neutral, countries such as the UK and the Netherlands were also able to concentrate on colonising other parts of the world. “The wealth of the British empire grew on this policy of as little war in Europe as possible and expansion overseas,” says Abbenhuis. </p>
<p>Today, India is one of the countries trying to maintain a delicate balancing act over Ukraine. Swaran Singh, a professor of diplomacy and disarmament at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, calls India’s position one of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-india-chose-a-path-of-proactive-neutrality-on-ukraine-182403">proactive neutrality</a>. “India is not saying we have nothing to do with the conflict, but it’s very proactive,” he says, for example, engaging in diplomacy with Russia, Ukraine and the US and rescuing Indian and other foreign nationals at the start of the conflict. </p>
<p>Singh explains India’s neutrality is rooted in its history of non-alignment during the cold war, which subsequently shifted into a policy of multi-alignment through which India has tried to build as many partnerships as possible. Now that India has close ties to both the US and Russia, Singh explains that it has done a “cost-benefit analysis and it feels that that proactive neutrality ensures maximum benefits with minimum costs.” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-india-chose-a-path-of-proactive-neutrality-on-ukraine-182403">Why India chose a path of 'proactive neutrality' on Ukraine</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But neutrality also brings responsibilities with it, from humanitarian support to diplomatic efforts to bring about peace – and countries can also change their mind during the course of a war too. Learn more by listening to Abbenhuis and Singh in the full episode of The Conversation Weekly.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>We’d love to hear what you think about The Conversation Weekly podcast and are running <a href="https://forms.gle/JBmCTXRLwz9uep287">a listener survey</a> about the show, which should take about five minutes to complete. Thank you!</em></p>
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<p>This episode was produced by Gemma Ware and Mend Mariwany, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. You can find us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/?hl=en">theconversationdotcom</a> or <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">via email</a>. You can also sign up to The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter?utm_campaign=PodcastTCWeekly&utm_content=newsletter&utm_source=podcast">free daily email here</a>. A transcript of this episode <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-countries-choose-to-remain-neutral-and-what-responsibilities-come-with-it-the-conversation-weekly-podcast-transcript-183703">is available here</a>. </p>
<p>Newsclips in this episode are from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiHKS87S9sM">W</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNeNkCKYxv8">I</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06UTcoYqLss">O</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWuc6TD0b7c">N</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0mEon5BtIE">CNA</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Ek1-k1c0w">NDTV</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk_7L2doefQ">eNCA</a>.</p>
<p>You can listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60087127b9687759d637bade">RSS feed</a>, or find out <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-the-conversations-podcasts-154131">how else to listen here</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182438/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Swaran Singh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maartje Abbenhuis receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund. </span></em></p>In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we also explore the reasons for India’s neutrality over the Ukraine war.Gemma Ware, Editor and Co-Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The ConversationDaniel Merino, Assistant Science Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1814542022-04-26T12:35:06Z2022-04-26T12:35:06ZGoing underground: Ukraine’s subterranean fighters highlight the benefit – and long history – of tunnels in warfare<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459531/original/file-20220425-26-z10wv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C51%2C3431%2C2229&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ukrainian fighters entering a tunnel.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ukrainian-soldiers-walk-through-a-tunnel-of-a-trench-on-the-news-photo/1239919477?adppopup=true">Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Faced with the prospect of sending Russian troops into subterranean combat, Vladimir Putin demurred. “There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground,” he <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-cancels-russian-plans-storm-mariupol-steel-plant-opts-blockade-instead-2022-04-21/">told his defense minister on April 21, 2022</a>, ordering him to cancel a planned storming of a steel plant in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.</p>
<p>While Putin’s back-up plan – to form a seal around trapped Ukrainian forces and wait it out – is no less brutal and there are reports that Russians <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-presidential-adviser-says-russian-forces-trying-storm-azovstal-plant-2022-04-24/">may still have mounted an offensive on the site</a>, Putin’s hesitancy to send his forces into a sprawling network of tunnels under the complex hints at a truth in warfare: Tunnels can be an effective tool in resisting an oppressor.</p>
<p>Indeed since the war began in February, reports have emerged of Ukrainian defenders <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10714221/Ukrainian-tunnel-fighters-Mariupol-hellish-stand-Stalingrad-esque-steel-plant.html">using underground tunnel networks</a> in efforts to deny Russian invaders control of major cities, as well as <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/preparing-odesas-catacombs-for-a-russian-assault">to provide sanctuary</a> <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-invasion-kyiv-underground-shelter-russia/31721685.html">for civilians</a>.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/ACSC/Display/Article/2480528/department-of-research/">expert in military history and theory</a>, I know there is sound thinking behind <a href="https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/190444/springer_-_tunneling_in_warfare.pdf">using tunnels as both a defensive and offensive tactic</a>. Such networks allow small units to move undetected by aerial sensors and emerge in unexpected locations to launch surprise attacks and then essentially disappear. For an invader who does not possess a thorough map of the subterranean passages, this can present a nightmare scenario, leading to massive personnel losses, plummeting morale and an inability to finish the conquest of their urban objective – all factors that may have factored in Putin’s <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mariupol-ukraine-putin-russia-plans-cancel/">decision not to send troops underground</a> in Mariupol.</p>
<h2>A history of military tunneling from ancient roots</h2>
<p>The use of tunnels and underground chambers in times of conflict is nothing new.</p>
<p>The use of tunnels has been a <a href="https://www.fpri.org/article/2015/04/fighting-under-the-earth-the-history-of-tunneling-in-warfare/">common aspect of warfare for millennia</a>. Ancient besieging forces used tunneling operations as a means to weaken otherwise well-fortified positions. This typically required engineers to construct long passages under walls or other obstacles. Collapsing the tunnel weakened the fortification. If well-timed, an assault conducted in the immediate aftermath of the breach might lead to a successful storming of the defended position. </p>
<p>One of the earliest examples of this technique is <a href="https://blog.britishmuseum.org/introducing-the-assyrians/">depicted on Assyrian carvings</a> that are thousands of years old. While some attackers climb ladders to storm the walls of an Egyptian city, others can be seen digging at the foundations of the walls. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An engraving shoes Assyrian fighters climbing ladders, engaged in combat and digging tunnels under a fortification." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459477/original/file-20220425-12-1manao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459477/original/file-20220425-12-1manao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459477/original/file-20220425-12-1manao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459477/original/file-20220425-12-1manao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459477/original/file-20220425-12-1manao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459477/original/file-20220425-12-1manao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459477/original/file-20220425-12-1manao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Assyrian engraving of the siege of an Egyptian fort.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://blog.britishmuseum.org/introducing-the-assyrians/">The Trustees of the British Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.warhistoryonline.com/ancient-history/roman-sieges-used-mining-operations.html">Roman armies</a> relied heavily upon sophisticated engineering techniques such as putting arches into the tunnels they built during sieges. Roman defenders also perfected the <a href="https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2014/07/21/history-tunnel-warfare">art of digging counter-tunnels</a> to intercept those used by attackers before they presented a threat. Upon penetrating an enemy tunnel, they flooded it with caustic smoke to drive out the enemy or launched a surprise attack upon unsuspecting miners.</p>
<p>The success of tunneling under fortifications led European engineers in the Middle Ages to design ways to thwart the tactic. They built castles on bedrock foundations, making any attempt to dig beneath them much slower, and <a href="https://www.exploring-castles.com/castle_designs/medieval_castle_defence/">surrounded walls with moats</a> so that tunnels would need to be far deeper. </p>
<p>Although tunneling remained an important aspect of sieges through the 13th century, it was eventually replaced by the introduction of gunpowder artillery – which proved a more effective way to breach fortifications. </p>
<p>However, by the mid-19th century, advances in mining and tunnel construction led to a resurgence in subterranean approaches to warfare.</p>
<p>During the Crimean War in the 1850s, British and French attackers attempted to tunnel under Russian fortifications at the <a href="https://historyofyesterday.com/hell-on-earth-the-siege-of-sevastopol-d9c5b1a5f757">Battle of Sevastopol</a>. Ten years later, Ulysses S. Grant authorized an attempt to tunnel <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/calamity-crater">under Confederate defenses</a> at the siege of Petersburg, Virginia. In both cases, large caches of gunpowder were placed in chambers created by tunneling under key positions and detonated in coordination with an infantry assault. </p>
<h2>Tunneling in the age of airpower</h2>
<p>With warfare increasingly relying on aircraft in the 20th century, military strategists again turned to tunnels – undetectable from the skies and protected from falling bombs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photo shows two soldiers in the First World War listening to a device while sat in a tunnel." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459556/original/file-20220425-13-obg0jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459556/original/file-20220425-13-obg0jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459556/original/file-20220425-13-obg0jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459556/original/file-20220425-13-obg0jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459556/original/file-20220425-13-obg0jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459556/original/file-20220425-13-obg0jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459556/original/file-20220425-13-obg0jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Listening in under enemy lines during the First World War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/world-war-i-listening-in-a-tunnel-under-the-enemy-lines-in-news-photo/526496610?adppopup=true">adoc-photos/Corbis via Getty Images)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In World War I, tunneling was attempted as a means to launch surprise attacks on the Western Front, potentially bypassing the other side’s system of trenches and remaining undetected by aerial observers. In particular, the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1296207416304216">Ypres salient</a> in war-ravaged Belgium was the site of hundreds of tunnels dug by British and German miners, and the horrifying stories of combat under the earth provide one of the most terrifying vignettes of that awful war.</p>
<p>During World War II, Japanese troops in occupied areas in the Pacific <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/japanese-tunnels-of-baguio">constructed extensive tunnel networks</a> to make their forces virtually immune to aerial attack and naval bombardment from Allied forces. During amphibious assaults in places such as the Philippines and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/iwo-jima-world-war-ii-battle-photo-marines-japan-backstory-2018-2">Iwo Jima</a>, American and Allied forces had to contend with a warren of Japanese tunnel networks. Eventually they resorted to using high explosives to collapse tunnel entrances, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/15/world/iwo-jima-journal-a-pacific-isle-that-can-t-quite-rest-in-peace.html">trapping thousands</a> of Japanese troops inside. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/cu-chi-tunnels">Viet Cong tunnel networks</a>, particularly in the vicinity of Saigon, were an essential part of their guerrilla strategy and remain a popular tourist stop today. Some of the tunnels were large enough to house hospital and barracks facilities and strong enough to withstand anything short of nuclear bombardment.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A drawing depicts men and women crawling along a tunnel structure in Vietnam" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459553/original/file-20220425-2721-wwyj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459553/original/file-20220425-2721-wwyj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459553/original/file-20220425-2721-wwyj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459553/original/file-20220425-2721-wwyj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459553/original/file-20220425-2721-wwyj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459553/original/file-20220425-2721-wwyj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459553/original/file-20220425-2721-wwyj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Diagram of typical tunnel structure in Cu-Chi, Vietnam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cu-chi-tunnels-vietman-asie-news-photo/947633266?adppopup=true">Didier Noirot/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The tunnels not only protected Vietnamese fighters from overwhelming American airpower, they also facilitated hit-and-run style attacks. Specialized “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/opinion/vietnam-war-tunnel-rat.html">tunnel rats</a>,” American soldiers who ventured into the tunnels armed only with a knife and pistol, became adept at navigating the tunnel networks. But they could not be trained in sufficient numbers to negate the value of the tunnel systems.</p>
<h2>Tunnels for terrorism</h2>
<p>In the 21st century, tunnels have been used to facilitate the activities of terror organizations. During the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, military operatives soon discovered that al-Qaida had fortified a series of tunnel networks connecting naturally occurring caves in the <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CPRT-111SPRT53709/html/CPRT-111SPRT53709.htm">Tora Bora</a> region.</p>
<p>Not only did they hide the movement of troops and supplies, they <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CPRT-111SPRT53709/html/CPRT-111SPRT53709.htm">proved impervious to virtually every weapon</a> in the U.S.-led coalition’s arsenal. The complexes included air filtration systems to prevent chemical contamination, as well as massive storerooms and sophisticated communications gear allowing al-Qaida leadership to maintain control over their followers.</p>
<p>And tunneling activity <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/04/1003387937/civilians-paid-a-steep-price-for-destroyed-tunnels-in-israeli-hamas-conflict">in and around Gaza</a> continues to provide a tool for Hamas to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/21/how-hamas-uses-its-tunnels-to-kill-and-capture-israeli-soldiers/">get fighters into Israeli territory</a>, while at the same time allowing Palestinians to circumvent Israel’s blockade of Gaza’s borders.</p>
<h2>Soviet tunnels and Ukraine</h2>
<p>Many of the tunnels being utilized today in Ukrainian efforts to defend the country were built in the Cold War-era, when the United States <a href="https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0601overfly/">routinely engaged in overflights</a> of Soviet territory.</p>
<p>To counteract the significant air and satellite advantage <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293174/nato-russia-military-comparison/">held by the United States and NATO</a>, the Soviet military dug underground passages under major population centers. </p>
<p>These subterranean systems offered a certain amount of shelter for the civilian population in the event of a nuclear attack and allowed for the movement of military forces unobserved by the ever-present eyes in the sky. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>These same tunnels serve to connect much of the <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220413-mariupol-s-tunnel-warriors-seek-to-slow-russian-onslaught">industrial infrastructure</a> in Mariupol today – and have become a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mariupol-ukraine-putin-russia-plans-cancel/">major asset</a> for the outnumbered Ukrainian forces.</p>
<p>Other Ukrainian cities have similar systems, some dating back centuries. For example, Odesa, another key Black Sea port, has a <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44745/odesas-massive-maze-like-catacombs-could-be-bad-news-for-russian-invaders">catacomb network</a> stretching over 2,500 kilometers. It began as part of a limestone mining effort – and to date, there is <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44745/odesas-massive-maze-like-catacombs-could-be-bad-news-for-russian-invaders">no documented map</a> of the full extent of the tunnels. </p>
<p>In the event of a Russian assault on Odesa, the local knowledge of the underground passages might prove to be an extremely valuable asset for the defenders. The fact that more than 1,000 entrances to the catacombs have been identified should surely give Russian attackers pause before commencing any attack upon the city – just as the tunnels under a steelworks in Mariupol forced Putin to rethinks plans to storm the facility.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181454/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul J. Springer is a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. His comments represent his own opinion and do not reflect the official policy of the United States Government, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Air Force.</span></em></p>Ukrainian fighters are utilizing a maze of tunnels in Mariupol and other key cities. The use of the underground in conflict has a rich history.Paul J. Springer, Professor of Comparative Military Studies, Air UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1792292022-04-25T11:18:05Z2022-04-25T11:18:05ZNational service in Britain: why men who served don’t think we should bring it back<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458001/original/file-20220413-28-jfotpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C69%2C799%2C550&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">National Service recruits in the RAF.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205125567">Imperial War Museum / Non Commercial License</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ukraine compelling all men aged 18-60 to stay in the country and fight the Russian invasion is a reminder of the reality of military conscription in many countries in Europe and around the world. </p>
<p>In recent decades, military service in Britain has been voluntary, with conscription regarded as a characteristic of less liberal, more militaristic nations. But this hasn’t always been the case – during the second world war and for a decade and a half after, around 2.3 million men completed two years of national service under the National Service Act.</p>
<p>Politicians, <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/sky-views-bring-back-national-service-but-lets-do-it-differently-11846370">journalists</a> and other <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/17/europe/harry-national-service/index.html">public figures</a> have periodically called for a return to national service. Some have cited anxieties about the supposed lack of discipline among the degenerate “youth of today”. </p>
<p>My research team <a href="https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2018/08/07/national-service-it-was-no-laughing-matter">has interviewed</a> over 100 ex-national servicemen – mainly from working-class backgrounds across five different regions in Britain: the Glasgow area, north-east England, the West Midlands, south Wales and south-east England. We wanted to find out how conscription shaped their feelings about masculinity, class and British character. Our research shows that among those who experienced national service, there is not a strong sentiment to bring it back. Nonetheless, most viewed national service as a positive time in their life.</p>
<p>Interviewees frequently stated that national service “made a man” of them – usually meaning that it made them more independent and mature – and helped them in their later careers. They did not believe that national service made them more aggressive or eager to engage in military combat. They had seen and heard enough of war to know that it was not glamorous. Their fears only increased with the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the 1950s, a development that worried many interviewees and strengthened their belief in the futility of war. As one former recruit said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wonder what attitude I’d have if I had had to go to Korea. I’d be frightened to death, I think. I didn’t join the army to fight, you know what I mean! </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="National service recruits relaxing and laughing off duty" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C43%2C790%2C756&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ex-servicemen looked back fondly on their national service, but not all think it should be brought back.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205125568">Imperial War Museum / Non Commercial License</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Should it be brought back?</h2>
<p>Some agreed that national service should be reintroduced as a way of instilling social discipline, but the majority doubted that this was feasible for various reasons. They considered young people more ethnically and religiously diverse in contemporary Britain, suggesting this would make them less likely to agree to such an imposition by the state. Most important, young people had not been subject to the same disciplines of family, school and community life as the national service generation.</p>
<p>A minority did think that a kind of compulsory community service remained a good idea. But not to teach people how to fight in the “national interest” – instead, to instil in them the importance of the common good. As one man said about his time in the RAF (Royal Air Force):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It taught me that … you’ve gotta keep together. We live in a community, you know. If you let yourself divide and rule, you know, and you’re picked off -– this is what the governments are very fond of doing -– dividing and ruling –- there’s always some bugger they’re picking off … you realise that we’re all part of a world together.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>People imagine that reintroducing conscription would not only instil social discipline but also unquestioning loyalty to the nation above all else. This ex-serviceman’s words are a useful reminder that a sense of community responsibility and unthinking patriotism are different things.</p>
<h2>Conscription in Britain</h2>
<p>Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain waged successful wars of imperial expansion without resorting to formal methods of conscription, because informal methods worked well. There was often a ready stream of recruits wanting to escape poverty. </p>
<p>When extra soldiers and sailors were required, during the Napoleonic wars especially, men could be violently forced into military service and stolen from their communities by the “<a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/press-gang-9781852855680/">press gang</a>”, who used physical force to recruit men against their will – this was known as “impressment”.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A poster with an image of a framed portrait of Lord Roberts of Kandahar, and text reading He did his duty, will YOU do YOURS?" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A poster from the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1435">Imperial War Museum / Non-Commercial Licence</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the late Victorian period, the National Service League called for more formal schemes of conscription. Conscription <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137274137">was introduced</a> by the state during the first world war but not until 1916, when numbers of volunteers failed to meet the insatiable demand required by industrialised warfare. </p>
<p>There was no political will to extend conscription into peacetime and it was phased out after “the war to end war” was over. Reintroduced in 1939 to meet the Nazi threat, conscription continued after the second world war. The National Service Act was passed in 1947, introducing peacetime conscription that compelled all young men aged 18-30 to undertake two years of military service.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Historical military service act proclamation, white background with blue text reading THE MILITARY SERVICE ACT, 1916, APPLIES TO UNMARRIED MEN WHO, ON AUGUST 15th, 1915, WERE 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OVER AND WHO WILL NOT BE 41 YEARS OF AGE ON MARCH 2nd, 1916." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Military Service Act 1916 introduced conscription during the first world war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/28449">Imperial War Museum / Non-Commercial Licence</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Under the act, young men had to undertake six weeks of basic training – involving a quite brutal disciplinary shock – until being assigned generally mundane tasks. Stories about having to paint coal white and cutting grass with nail scissors <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/20/national-service-consctiption-britain-richard-vinen-review">were apocryphal</a>, but contained more than a grain of truth. </p>
<p>Some men avoided service on medical grounds or because their other occupations (coal miners, merchant sailors) were considered vital. Others postponed their service until they finished apprenticeships or university degrees. Most of those who did serve stayed in Britain, though some saw active service abroad – 280 died in the Korean war. </p>
<p>After a long campaign in the Daily Mirror and years of criticism by Labour politicians such as Barbara Castle, conscription was eventually phased out in 1960, though it had been running down for some years. Most military leaders did not want conscripted men – they were never that keen – and most important, the public was no longer willing to accept the sacrifices demanded by national service.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179229/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter James Gurney receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust</span></em></p>An expert who has spoken with ex-national servicemen explains what they think about bringing it back today.Peter Gurney, Chair Professor of British Social History, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1805342022-04-12T18:53:05Z2022-04-12T18:53:05ZRussia isn’t likely to use chemical weapons in Ukraine – unless Putin grows desperate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457741/original/file-20220412-36930-p0rmfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ukrainians walk in the besieged city of Mariupol, where there are reports of a possible chemical attack. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/residents-walk-near-a-damaged-building-in-mariupol-april-10-2022-picture-id1239925917?s=2048x2048">Victor/Xinhua via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Reports emerged from Ukraine on April 11, 2022, alleging that Russia had <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mariupol-mayor-says-10-000-civilians-have-been-killed-in-russian-siege-as-new-reports-circulate-of-chemical-weapons-use-01649713619">used a drone</a> to drop an unknown chemical agent in the besieged southern city of Mariupol. </p>
<p>There has been no official confirmation of these reports as of April 12. But the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/11/pentagon-monitoring-reports-of-possible-russian-chemical-weapons-attack-in-mariupol.html">Pentagon has said</a> the news reflects U.S. concern about Russia’s “potential to use a variety of riot control agents, including tear gas mixed with chemical agents, in Ukraine.”</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/publication/chemical-attack-fact-sheet">chemical weapon</a> can be any chemical that is used to harm people, including to injure or kill them. Many substances have been used as chemical weapons. Nerve agents are the deadliest, because they require a smaller dose to be fatal.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://nonproliferation.org/experts/jeffrey-knopf/">expert</a> who has studied the use of chemical weapons <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09636412.2020.1859130">in Syria’s civil war</a>, I have thought since Russia first attacked Ukraine that the likelihood of Russia using chemical weapons there is low. Russia has little political or military motivation to use them and would face strong international rebuke and possible military consequences for this kind of attack. </p>
<p>But as recent reports might indicate, Russian use remains a possibility under certain circumstances. This is particularly true if Russian President Vladimir Putin believes chemical weapons are the only way to break a stalemate in a key battle zone.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A row of dead children, covered in white cloth, is shown, as adults look over them" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More than 1,400 people, including children, were killed in a chemical weapons attack in Ghouta, Syria, in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/mother-and-father-weep-over-their-childs-body-who-was-killed-in-a-picture-id524299852?s=2048x2048">NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Chemical weapons in Syria</h2>
<p>The ongoing <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/civil-war-syria">Syrian civil war</a> offers the most recent example of widespread chemical weapons attacks on civilians.</p>
<p>There have been reports of <a href="https://www.gppi.net/media/GPPi_Schneider_Luetkefend_2019_Nowhere_to_Hide_Web.pdf">more than 300</a> chemical attacks in Syria since the war began in 2012. A joint team from the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigated some of the larger attacks, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/world/middleeast/syria-assad-chemical-weapons.html">conclusively attributed </a>several to the Assad regime. </p>
<p>Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/linda-thomas-greenfield-bashar-assad-russia-chemical-weapons-damascus-ecc424a46e17b0b39c5e5cf029851733">continued supporting</a> the Syrian government despite these attacks. </p>
<p>The Assad regime used chemical weapons on its own people because it <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09636412.2020.1859130">feared what would happen if it lost</a> the war. Assad would lose power if rebel parties defeated him. Assad and his associates also worried they could be killed.</p>
<p>In August 2012, President Obama warned Syria against chemical weapon use, stating it would be “<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2012/08/20/remarks-president-white-house-press-corps">a red line</a>” for the U.S. </p>
<p>By the end of 2012, <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-Syrian-Chemical-Weapons-Activity">reports</a> began to emerge of the Syrian military’s carrying out chemical attacks.</p>
<p>In August 2013, Syrian forces carried out the largest chemical attack of the war. They fired rockets containing the nerve agent sarin <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/30/government-asseSsment-syrian-government-s-use-chemical-weapons-august-21">into Ghouta</a>, a Damascus suburb, killing an estimated <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nearly-1500-killed-in-syrian-chemical-weapons-attack-us-says/2013/08/30/b2864662-1196-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html">1,400 people</a>, including children.</p>
<p>Russia increased its support for Assad after these strikes. </p>
<p>Russia did, however, work with the U.S. to persuade a reluctant Assad in 2013 to sign the <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/cwcglance">Chemical Weapons Convention</a>, an international treaty that outlaws both possession and use of such weapons. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10736700.2020.1766226">Putin feared</a> that without this deal, a possible U.S. military response could grow into an effort to prompt regime change in Damascus and make Russia lose its closest ally in the Middle East. </p>
<p>The deal led to <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/598586/red-line-by-joby-warrick/">destruction of more</a> than 1,300 tons of Syrian chemical agents by early 2016. It also persuaded the Obama administration to refrain from military action in Syria.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, in 2014, <a href="https://www.gppi.net/media/GPPi_Schneider_Luetkefend_2019_Nowhere_to_Hide_Web.pdf">Syria resumed attacks</a> using chlorine, which can be deadly. Syria later also returned to occasional use of sarin.</p>
<p>Russian forces never used chemical weapons themselves, but they did conduct massive airstrikes – similar to the ones used on multiple cities in Ukraine – that <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/12/01/russia/syria-war-crimes-month-bombing-aleppo">destroyed significant portions</a> of the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2016.</p>
<h2>Political rationale</h2>
<p>Chemical weapons were first <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/chemical/">used in World War I</a> by nearly all major combatants. Opposing armies <a href="https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/a-brief-history-of-chemical-war">used mustard gas,</a> chlorine and phosgene as part of battlefield operations. </p>
<p>In the Syrian war, chemical weapons were part of a counterinsurgency campaign by Assad to hurt rebel forces and their civilian supporters. </p>
<p>Syria had two clear objectives for using chemical weapons. </p>
<p>First, most attacks served a <a href="https://www.gppi.net/media/GPPi_Schneider_Luetkefend_2019_Nowhere_to_Hide_Web.pdf">psychological purpose</a>. They were intended to terrify civilian populations so they would stop hiding rebel forces in their communities. Second, some of the larger attacks aimed to drive rebel forces out of areas they controlled. </p>
<p>These chemical attacks were <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2018.1483640">not necessarily effective</a> at reaching this military goal.</p>
<p>Instead, they were largely a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09636412.2020.1859130">function of desperation</a>. Assad escalated chemical attacks when his army began to run short on manpower and conventional munitions – especially in areas where his regime was losing control.</p>
<h2>Russia and chemical weapons</h2>
<p>Russia is believed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/19/russia-chemical-weapons-ukraine/">to possess chemical weapons</a> despite having signed the <a href="https://www.opcw.org/about-us/member-states/russian-federation">Chemical Weapons Convention</a>. </p>
<p>Russia has twice been accused of using chemical weapons in attempted political assassinations. </p>
<p>In 2018, Russia poisoned a former Russian double agent living in the U.K., <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/world/europe/skripal-arrest.html">Sergei Skripal</a>, and his daughter with Novichok, a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union in the final years of the Cold War. </p>
<p>The Skripals survived, but two other people who accidentally came in contact with the Novichok died as a result. </p>
<p>In 2020, Russia also attempted to poison opposition leader <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1086012">Alexei Navalny</a> with Novichok. Navalny was hospitalized and almost died, but he ultimately recovered. </p>
<p>Russia has <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/russian-denial-secret-nerve-agent-program-seemingly-contradicted/story?id=53882997">never admitted possessing</a> Novichok. But the two assassination attempts show that Russia likely retains elements of a chemical weapons program.</p>
<p>There are other examples of Russia’s using chemicals in law enforcement operations that turned deadly. In October 2002, after Chechen militants held more than 900 people in a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20067384">Moscow theater</a> hostage, Russian security services pumped a gas into the theater. </p>
<p>The potency of the gas killed more than 100 of the hostages. Russia never revealed the gas it used, but experts believe it was a form of the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/opioid-chemical-weapons-moscow-theater-hostage-crisis">opioid fentanyl</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is pictured sitting in a hospital bed, surrounded by women in scrubs and face masks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was hospitalized in 2020 after he was allegedly poisoned by the Russian government, but has since recovered.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/photo-shared-on-russian-opposition-leader-alexey-navalnys-instagram-picture-id1228522858?s=2048x2048">Alexei Navalny Instagram Account / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Implications for Ukraine</h2>
<p>It is clear that Putin would have no moral issue with using chemical weapons. But at the moment, Russia likely feels no pressing need to use them.</p>
<p>The conditions that motivated the Assad regime – a shortage of conventional forces and fear of being overthrown – do not apply to Russia’s situation in Ukraine. </p>
<p>Although Russian forces face <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russians-confront-costs-casualties-war/31795043.html">rising casualty numbers</a> in Ukraine, Russia still has the military capacity to continue fighting at a conventional level. And because the war is not taking place inside Russia, Putin is not at risk of being toppled by Ukrainian forces if they win the conflict.</p>
<p>Russia’s ability to terrorize civilians – a major goal of chemical weapons use – might also be limited. </p>
<p>A chemical attack may not have the intended psychological effect of demoralizing civilians. Putin appears to have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/04/11/putin-misjudged-ukraine-hubris-isolation/">misjudged Ukrainian civilians’</a> fortitude. Ukrainians would likely want to keep fighting even if Russia used chemical weapons against them. </p>
<p>This situation could change if the Russian military is on the brink of a decisive defeat. Then, desperation might lead Putin to consider a chemical option. </p>
<p>Although the risk of chemical weapon use, and especially large-scale use, remains low, it does remain possible.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=politics&source=inline-politics-need-to-know">Sign up for Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180534/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey W. Knopf received past funding for research on Syria from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency.</span></em></p>There are unconfirmed reports that Russia has used chemical weapons in Ukraine. Syria’s recent chemical weapons use offers context for understanding this tactic. Chemical weapons terrify civilians.Jeffrey William Knopf, Professor and Program Chair Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies, MiddleburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.