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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Alexander Rabinowitch - The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd

Alexander Rabinowitch is an interesting historian. From a Russian émigré family, he grew up listening to stories about how the revolutionaries had expelled them. Visitors to his family home in the US included figures as important as Kerensky, the former leader of Russia's Povisional Government during the 1917 revolution. Rabinowitch became a historian, and while a young man, as part of his research he travelled to Russia in the 1960s to research Lenin. Expecting to find evidence that Lenin was a dictator in waiting who brokered no argument, Rabinowitch actually found the opposite. What he discovered was that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were riven by debate and discussion, even in the weeks and days before the revolution, and that far from a monolithic organisation, the Bolshevik Party "was both responsive and open to the masses" in that revolutionary year. In his introduction Rabinowitch writes:

For all the lively debate and spirited give-and-take that I find to have existed within the Bolshevik organisation in 1917, the Bolsheviks were doubtless more unifed than any of their major rivals for power. Certainly this was a key factor in their effectiveness. Nonetheless, my research suggests that the relative flexibility of the party, as well as its responsiveness to the prevailing mass mood, had at least as much to do with the ulimate Bolshevik victory as did revolutionary discipline, organisational unity, or obedience to Lenin.

It is a remarkable conclusion for historian who is not also a Leninist, or at least a revolutionary, and it is to Rabinowitch's credit that he did not allow his own prejudices to block his conclusions.

The book is not an account of 1917, though it does begin with a good overview of the background and the first few months of the revolution. The focus is the "coming to power of the Bolsheviks" and this means Rabinowitch begins with the crucial turning point of the revolution, the summer of 1917. July 1917 saw a mass revolutionary impulse, and how to respond to this caused enormous debate within the Bolsheviks. The author details the various disagreements - which essentially focused on whether or not to call for insurrection and support the Petrograd workers as they demanded a Soviet government. Lenin argued it was premature, though it is clear that not all the Bolsheviks agreed. The confusion over this, and the eventual repression saw the right-wing able to turn their guns on the Bolsheviks. Leading figures like Lenin went into hiding, hundreds of Bolshevik cadre were imprisoned and repression was high. In the aftermath things looked bleak. But the threat of a far-right coup against the revolution, and crucially, also against Kerensky, under the figurehead of the fascist general Kornilov, enabled the Bolsheviks to place themselves at the heart of a mass movement to defend the revolution.

The United Front approach of the Bolsheviks here, allowed them to recover crucial ground and place themselves back in the revolutionary leadership. But as Rabinowitch explains, the success of the revolution from this point onward was not automatic, contrary to the Stalinist myths of the infallibility of Lenin and his party:

The entire history of the party from the February revolution on suggested the potential for programmatic discord and disorganised activity existing within Bolshevik ranks. So that whether the party would somehow find the strength of will, organizational disciple, and sensitivity to the complexities of the fluid and possibly explosive prevailing situation requisite for it to take power, was, at this point, still very much an open question.

But in the aftermath of the attempted coup by Kornilov, what mattered was not simply Lenin winning the rest (or the majority) of the Bolsheviks to his correct position. Lenin himself, as well as the wider Bolsehvik cadre, had to find their way forward. In some of the most fascinating sections Rabinowitch details how Lenin moves towards a position of calling for "All Power to the Soviets". But this "new moderation was not accepted without opposition".

Lenin and the Bolsheviks were uniquely attuned to the way the masses were thinking and moving. It was flexibility around this that gave them their greatest power. Rabinowitch details, for instance, how the Bolsheviks didn't just adapt to the mood, they tried to shape it. As the hour of insurrection draws closely this interrelated process gets more and more intense. Even until the very last moment of the revolution, Lenin is waging war inside the Party to win the argument of revolution. Given that The Bolsheviks Come to Power is a work of non-fiction, readers may be surprised to find themselves a little carried away by the intensity. Here, for instance, is Rabinowitch's account of how the decision to go for insurrection and the overthrow of the Provisional Government immediately before the meeting of the All Russia Congress of Soviets:

There is very little hard evidence regarding the circumstances of this decision. Latsis later wrote that 'towards morning on the famous night when the question of a government was being decided and the Central Committee wavered, Illich [Lenin] ran to the office of the Petersburg Committee with the question: "Fellows, do you have shovels? Will the workers of Piter [Petrograd] go into the trenches at our call?" Latsis recorded that the response was positive, adding that the decisiveness of Lenin and the Petersburg Committee affected the waverers, allowing Lenin to have his way.

While Rabinowitch is supremely sensitive to the way that the Bolsheviks' were linked to the masses, he also understands that Lenin was the key revolutionary thinker. The decision to go for insurrection, Rabinowitch writes, is one of "few modern historical episodes [which] better illustrate the sometimes decisive role of an individual in historical events".

That said, in his close study of these events, it is noticeable how Lenin was not always able to shape events on a hour by hour basis. For instance, I was struck by how, during the Kornilov coup, Lenin was too far away in hiding to have a real impact. Straining at the leash to come to Petrograd from hiding, much of his instructions arrived too late to have a significant impact.

But whatever Lenin's abilities, it was the party he had striven to build that was crucial in October 1917, and revolutionaries today, ought to learn this lesson now. Rabinowitch puts it very well.

That in the space of eight months the Bolsheviks reached a position from which they were able to assume power was due... to the special effort which the party devoted to winning the support of military troops in the rear and at the front; only the Bolsheviks seemed to have perceived the necessary crucial significance of the armed forces in the struggle for power. Perhaps even more fundamentally, the phenomenal Bolshevik success can be attributed in no small meaure to the nature of the party in 1917. Here I have in mind neither Lenin's bold and determined leadership, the immense historical significance of which cannot be denied, not the Bolshevik's proverbial, though vastly exaggerated, organisational unity and discipline. Rather, I would emphasize the party's internally relatively democratic, tolerant and decentralised structure and method of operation, as well as its essentially open and mass character - in striking contrast to the traditional Leninist model.

It was this that enabled Lenin to shift the Party in the crucial moments of 1917, and it was this Party that enabled the revolutionary workers' and their organisations to take power. The alternative would have been fascism and further war.

Alexander Rabinowitch's remarkable book was first published in the early 1970s. It deserves a reading today. Leninists might find things to quibble about. But in its detail of the events of 1917, and its exploration of the arguments at all levels of the Bolshevik Party, even those who have read much about the Russian Revolution will find much of interest. It is a fascinating insight into how a mass revolutionary organisation operated during the only successful workers' revolution in history and its conclusions are even more powerful given they are written by someone who comes from outside the revolutionary tradition.

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

John le Carré - Call for the Dead

Call for the Dead is the first appearance of John le Carré's recurring character, the British intelligence officer George Smiley. Its a very short and puncy novel, dealing with the aftermath of a relatively regular interview that Smiley has with a civil servant Samuel Fennan. Fennan had been in the Communist Party in the 1930s, but that was long ago, and now he's a loyal worker with a decent income and a relatively nice house in the London suburbs. But the following day he is found dead, a suicide note nearby, and Smiley is being blamed for scaring Fennan so much that he felt compelled to kill himself.

But Smiley's recollections of the interview were much more positive. He found Fennan amicable and enjoyed their time together. As he begins to ask questions of Fennan's wife, the local police and probe a bit deeper he finds evidence of a much darker conspiracy.

Call for the Dead is interesting in a number of ways. Truthfully its more of a detective story, and as Carré's first novel, this and the second, A Murder of Quality, suggest that the author was working out his position in the various genres. The book is also of interest because it gives a lot of background to Smiley himself, that really illuminates some of the later stories.

But its a great read. The seediness of suburban life and the grimness of post-war Britain really come out well. Smiley himself, and his collaborators in this book, are part of the grey charm. But it's also a reminder that great thrillers do not always need to be 350 pages in length.

Lev Grossman - The Magicians

Reading The Magicians for a second time, I cannot help but agree with my earlier review from a few years ago. Grossman's book feels, initially like a darker, grittier version of Harry Potter, where violence, sex and death are much more on display than in Rowling's children's fantasy. But re-reading The Magicians in a search for a quick escapist fantasy recently I was struck by how the arc of Quentin Coldwater's story is at odds with more traditional tales. Coldwater goes from naive youth, inexperienced in the world of magic, to a powerful wizard, isolated and cut off from those around him and desirous to learn more even as this leads to him destroying those around him.

In fact, for almost all of the book Quentin's is a deeply unpleasant character, and his eventual exposing as such by his former partner is perhaps the most satisfying moment. The Magicians stands up well to a second read, its nuances (and its cheerful parody of the genre) becoming more apparent, even as the reader might find themselves repelled by the arrogant behaviour of the central protagonists. And of course, the thirst for wealth and power by a tiny class of unproductive, but extremely dangerous individuals has its parallels with the real world.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Jonathan Sumption - Cursed Kings: The Hundred Years War IV

Everything that I have written about the first three volumes of Jonathan Sumption's epic history of the Hundred Years War is also true of this, the fourth and penultimate volume. Sumption's account is enormous in scope, with a masterful grasp of the archival material and an eye for interesting detail that enlivens the sheer volume of information. Readers will like me sometimes lose track of the bigger picture, but that's a limitation of the format.

Volume IV however does feel different to the other books, and this is mostly to do with the period it covers. Much of the book is shaped by the descent of France into violent Civil War, as the mentally distressed King Charles VI, becomes increasingly unable to rule for prolonged periods of time. Charles' frequent "absences" mean that the ruling class is riven by internal differences and tensions. To cut a long story short, two men come to represent the different approaches to ruling France as Regent for Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans and John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy. Louis was close to Charles, though by no means a pleasant character. Sumption describes him as "extrovert, self-indulgent and extravagant" but a "politician of exception ability, charming and gracious, politically astute, highly intelligent and articulate in council". While unpleasant, and "addicted to gambling and womanising" he was thus an enormous barrier to the John the Fearless' own ambitions. Within feudal society such rivalries could easily become open warfare, and this is what happened. John has Louis murdered, and the quest for justice and resolution leads to a massive civil war, with both sides courting the English Kings Henry IV and V for assistance in the war.

As with Sumption's early books, there is much detail of various alliances as the hopes of both sides ebb and wane. What makes this period different to earlier work to a great extent, is the involvement of the masses of Paris in this contest. While it would seem like the mass of the population would care little for one wing of the ruling class over another, John the Fearless proved adept at promising reform and change to benefit the lower classes. In particular he promised, and indeed did move, to enact some reforms and sack many corrupt ministers and servants of the crown and civil service. Thus the civil war that followed Louis' murder saw the involvement of ordinary people in a very different capacity to just being soldiers dying on the battlefield. Their protests, insurrection and risings helped drive events forward.

Then, as now, Paris was both the capital of France and its principle city economically. Sumption ably describes the power the masses had in the capital:

The growing power and volatile temper of the Parisian guilds would come to be associated with the most powerful and dangerous of them all, the corporation of the Grande Boucherie. This guild controlled the largest of the Parisian butcheries, occupying a maze of covered alleys west of the Chatelet, beneath the shadow of the church tower of St-Jacques-la-Boucherie... The butchers were a self-contained hereditary clan, much intermarried... their members were not much esteemed. They were 'men of low estate, inhuman, detestable and devoted to their dishonourable trade'... In spite of their low social status the butchers were rich, enjoying the benefits of a tightly controlled monopoly and a growing market for their product. WIth wealth came ambition. Their leaders coveted status and power, they relished their position as kingmakers, once the rivalries of the princely houses spilled out onto the streets. Concentrated in the narrow lanes of their quarters, they could summon up mobs in minutes, calling on hundreds of muscular apprentices and journeymen...

No wonder then, that "fear of revolution in their capital had been an abiding anxiety of the kings of France for many years". This power shapes the ensuing civil war. John's opponents, the Armagnac family, who take power in the aftermath of Louis' death, experience the strength of the Parisian power when up to 5,000 of the Count of Armagnac's followers are killed by them. The war itself is equally brutal, with John's forces rampaging their way across the country repeatedly defeating the Armagnac forces.

One of the fascinating things that Sumption draws out in this, is the relative impoverishment of all those nobles who are fighting, both in the French civil war and their opponent in England. Feudal kings were desperate short of cash to fight battles. Keeping their armies in the fields cost a fortune, and the shortage of money (and consequently food and troops) is a key factor. It also helps explain why the masses of France were so volatile and angry at taxes, and open to the influence of someone who told them it would end.

Into this mess comes Henry V, whose invasion of France in 1415 seems to sweep all before him. The civil war has left France with limited ability to respond, and the massacre of the French nobility at Agincourt hamstrings the French nobility for years. By 1420, with the signing of the Treaty of Troyes (1420), Henry V has captured Normandy and expanded the English state into one of the most important parts of France. Paris itself is threatened and Charles has no option but to sign, making Henry regent and heir to the French throne.

It was a brief moment of success for the English throne, though it does not end the immediate conflict. But the death of both Henry and Charles in 1422, where this book finishes, pushes the war into a new era. While Henry gained fame as the victor of Agincourt and the winner at Troyes, it was built on tenuous grounds. As Sumption points out, the success was:

By its nature impermanent. [Henry's] ambitions depended too much on the slender resources of his English kingdom. His conquests had owed too much ot the extraordinary circumstances of France during his reign: fifteen years of civil war, the backlash provoked by the murder of John the Fearless, the political and military misjudgements of the Dauphin's advisers. And they had owed too much to Henry's personal qualities: his reputation, his military skills and his iron will and energy.

It could not survive Henry's death. The war, and bloodshed, would continue.

Sunday, February 09, 2025

Brett Christophers - The Price is Wrong: Why capitalism won't save the planet

This deep dive into the problems with and limitations of the capitalist energy system is a powerful argument against the free market's role in making renewable energy and sustainable energy systems a reality. My review of The Price is Wrong for the Climate and Capitalism journal is here.

You can also read my 2019 review of Brett Christophers The New Enclosure on the privatisation of land.

Friday, February 07, 2025

Adrian Tchaikovsky - Alien Clay

*** Spoilers ***

Adrian Tchaikovsky is known for his big scale science fiction that often has unusual takes on alien planets and lifeforms - intelligent octopuses and city building spiders are just two. But Alien Clay is a novel about first contact with a very different form of alien ecology, and to further interest this reader, it is centred on a group of revolutionaries and radicals, albeit ones who have been captured and exiled to another planet.

The book opens with the arrival of Professor Arton Daghdev on the planet Kiln. He doesn't arrive as an explorerer of scientist ready to study the planet's unusual life, instead he is there as a political prisoner, exiled by the despotic Mandate to an interplanetary gulag. Forced labour on Kiln is brutal, and the environment unforgiving. But the workers are not digging for raw materials, they are aiding the project of unravelling Kiln's ecological and archaeological mysteries.

For Kiln is the site of ancient alien ruins. Among the chaotic and dangerous flora and fauna there remains no sign of the intelligence that surely must have built and inscribed the ruins with mysterious writing. The labourers, including Daghdev are set to clearing the jungle from the ruins and trying to understand the animal life. It is Daghdev's dream, one he is uniquely trained to do as a exo-biology scientist, but one fraught with danger. Some of this comes from the threat formed by the planet itself, but mostly it comes because he has to tackle a difficult contradiction. Mandate orthodoxy states that humans are the pinnacle of a neat evolutionary process. Alien intelligence that goes against this threatens to not just to turn science upsidedown, but to turn the Mandate's ideology inside out. This is why Daghdev had no idea of Kiln's reality before the arrival on the planet.

On the planet life is cheap. The brutal camp commandant whose need to enforce Mandate orthodoxy is only partly tempered by his desperation to understand Kiln as much as his prisoner scientists. He has plenty of scientists, for in a earlier life Daghdev was one of a growing revolutionary underground, and while Daghdev was one of that movement's leaders, he was also part of the intellectuals whose opposition to the Mandate found tiny ways to challenge the "ruling ideas" of society.

These twin strands of alien exploration and revolutionary action intertwine on Kiln and Tchaikovsky does a brilliant job of using his intellectually unorthodox main character to be the eyes and ears of the reader as we ourselves learn about the reality of Kiln. And what revelations await. Even with the spoiler tags at the start of this review I don't want to give too much away, but Tchaikovsky shows how thinking outside of the box is box helpful for both revolutionary leadership and for scientific enquiry. The dawning awareness of what Kiln really is makes for a great story: who is actually doing the "First Contact" between Kiln and humanity. Tchaikovsky unveils this brilliantly.

Unusually, I read this as an audiobook. Normally I prefer physical books, but Alien Clay worked as audio primarily because it is a first person narrative. In places this it is borderline horror, not just because of the alien life's impact on humans, but also because prison worlds and gulags are horror filled places. The commandant knows all too well that rule comes from the barrel of a gun. In his isolated, and numerically weak position, the Mandate's man on the ground, can only rule - ideologically and physically - by mimicking the rule of the state back home on Earth. As such, the novels ending is perhaps a metaphor for wider revolutionary change.

Alien Clay is one of the most unusual science fiction novels I have read in recent years. It could be written by someone prepared to push the boundaries of the science bit in science-fiction. But Adrian Tchaikovsky's obvious sympathy with radicals and rebels means that the revolutionary bits to the story feel remarkably real. As such, this will appeal to science fiction lovers. But it will also be enjoyed by those sitting on revolutionary committees everywhere who need a bit of a break from the actual struggle.

Jane Harper - Force of Nature

This entertaining, if unsatisfying, detective story is the second of Jane Harper's novels featuring the detective Aaron Falk. Unfortunately I haven't read the first, but this did not seem to effect my reading of the book at all. Force of Nature follows the aftermath of a corporate team building exercise gone wrong. Two groups of men and women are sent into the hills outside of Melbourne and expected to make their way to the end point. Despite it being a well managed event by organised guides, when the group of women finally make their way out, one person is missing and others have mysterious injuries.

The story is efficiently told, with Harper jumping back and forth between the investigation led by Falk and the account of the women's trip. She handles the points of view well, and the story of the disintegration of the lost party as personal rivalries undermine the team. There's a real tension with the missing woman Alice Russell, as its not clear whether she is alive or dead.

Unfortunately I struggled to care for any of the corporate types and their motivations felt unlikely. The detectives felt a little one-dimensional at times, and the back story felt squeezed in. All in all its a quick, tense read that lacked the dynamism and pull of Jane Harper's The Lost Man. A good light read but one I fear I will forget rather quickly.

Sunday, February 02, 2025

Michael Scott - Royal Betrayal: The Great Baccarat Scandal of 1890

The Baccarat Scandal of 1890 might seem like a surprising topic of interest to a Marxist like myself. After all it concerns itself with a complex legal case that followed events at a rather dull sounding weekend party at Tranby Croft house in Yorkshire, when Sir William Gordon-Cumming, a distinguished lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards was accused of cheating during two games of baccarat, where one of his opponents was the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII.

My interest in these events was first piqued when I read Flashman and the Tiger which places Flashman at the dinner party itself. Returning to the real world, or at least history, the 1890 scandal is of interest for the way it exposed, and continues to expose, Victorian ruling class snobbery. The substance of the scandal is relatively simple. Gordon-Cumming was observed by one member of the party to be adding to his stake while playing baccarat in a way that would increase his winnings. Rather than confront Gordon-Cumming, the witness told other party members who then watched the game and Gordon-Cumming more closely the following night. When they thought they had seen him repeat the cheat, he was confronted by the Prince of Wales, and encouraged to sign a paper that swore he would never play cards again. It was essentially a confession, and when the paper became public, Gordon-Cumming faced ruin.

There are, of course, lots of facts that don't add up. Once it became clear that he was now publically accused of cheating Gordon-Cumming had only one option - a very public court case against his accusers. The problem was that while the facts didn't add up, it was difficult to prove anything and, the establishment moved to protect the heir to the throne. The Prince of Wales was a wasteral. He loved gambling, adultery, and parties. He was a man of limited grasp of politics, lacking interest in rule and frequently skirted scandal. It seems that Gordon-Cumming was made to sign the paper to protect the Prince of Wales by those who realised that another public scandal with the heir to the throne playing a forbidden game (it was banned outside of public homes) could well destroy the monarchy. Indeed, so low was the view of the monarchy among the public that many people thought it would die with the death of Queen Victoria.

Michael Scott's book tells the story of the events leading up to the court case, and the case itself. The ending is not a spoiler. Despite enormous popular support in the world at large Gordon-Cumming was found to have cheated and his reputation was destroyed. He was, luckily for him, able to retire to his wealthy landed estate and live his life out in pseudo-Feudal splendour. So it wasn't all bad.

It is clear from Scott's account (and indeed every other discussion) that Gordon-Cumming got no justice - the judge was biased, the legal process flawed and court-room procedure was laughable. But that shouldn't be a surprise. The establishment moved to protect itself was an external threat. Gordon-Cummings was its victim and was a fool for allowing himself to fall into the trap set for him. He probably believed a little more in British "justice" than he should have. It's hard to care much about anyone involved here - though the Prince of Wales was clearly a pig, and Gordon-Cumming's was likely not guilty. No one seems to have asked why the immensely popular and rich soldier would need to cheat, and its clear he was a pro at the game, playing in a style that was unorthodox, but not illegal. This was a situation entirely caused by the idle rich failing to solve a problem, and enjoying the subsequent gossip and shock while plunging headlong into scandal.

What of Michael Scott's book itself? It has all the information, but attempts to draw out new information and details add little to the story itself. Whether Gordon-Cummings was an agent of British Intelligence seems besides the point, and irrelevant. The back story that Scott provides to all the characters is overwhelming and adds little. It simply serves to show the author has read lots. There's a surprising reliance on US newspaper reports of the trial, rather than British acounts - which seems to place it a little third hand. There is also a typographical problem where the extended quotations are not distinguishable from the main text, leaving the reader a little confused between what are Scott's words and those of his sources. This, I suspect, is a problem with print-on demand books.

Ultimately the real meat of the story ought to be a critique of the establishment and its struggle to protect its own. I agree with Scott's conclusion that Gordon-Cummings was probably innocent, but in many ways that's actually irrelevant. I'd have preferred a deeper discussion of what the trial, and scandal, told us about wider Victorian society. That said, at least one journalist of the time quoted by Scott, understood some of what the trial exposed, though Scott just says this is "predictable" from the press on that side of the Atlantic:

No Magistrate thinkgs of arresting him [Prince of Wales] for doing what an ordinary gambler would be sent to prison for doing. When he enters court to give testimony concerning his law breaking, the entire audience rises to receive him, and he is placed on a bench beside the judge as an honoured guest. And when his gambling losses and his other squanderings bring him into trouble, he asks the bread-earners of Great Britain to pay his debts for him. How long are the 'plain people' of Great Britain going to stand the false system which makes of this gambler, debauchee, and idler, teir destined ruler, and exalts him to the headship of both the Church and the State?

How long indeed.

One footnote of interest to those of us more interested in social history of the period. One of the guests at Tranby House was the socialite Daisy Brook, known as "Babbling Brook" for her love of gossip, and mistress of the Prince of Wales. Brook was known as something of a lefty, and when she became Countess of Warwick, was the person who helped the agricultural trade unionist Joseph Arch to publish his memoirs and wrote an introduction to his autobiography.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Elie Wiesel - Night

It feels inadequate, or impossible, to review a book like Night. Reading this short work is an incredibly emotional experience. It is the first hand account of Elie Wiesel's time in Auschwitz and then Buchenwald concentration camps. As such it is intensely brutal. It begins with his life in Romania, before the Nazis arrived, the naive illusion among the Jewish community that the war would be over before anything happened. Then the panic and despair as the community is forced into ghettos and onto trains. There is nothing cheerful here. Wiesel sees his mother and sisters as they disappear in one direction at the gates of Auschwitz, while he and his father, warned by a inmate to lie about their ages to make them eligible, become forced labourers.

This then is an account of brutality, of despair, of hunger and of the loss of faith. It is the story of millions of tragedies told through the eyes of one teenage eyewitness. Wiesel struggles to keep his father alive and is successful, almost too the end, when he dies just before liberation.

As the Jews on Wiesel's train wait outside Auschwitz, some discuss rebellion. Even in their weakened state, some have knives and urged others to attack the guards. "But the older men begged their sons not to be foolish" says Wiesel. As the world sees the growth of the far-right and fascists, from the US to Eastern Europe, the most important lesson for me from Night is to stop the Nazis before the world goes that far again. Millions of people died in that death camp at the hands of the Nazis. Elie Wiesel's Night and indeed the remainder of his life, were dedicated to saying Never Again. That's why it must be read by every generation.

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Alan Wood & Mary Seaton Wood - Islands in Danger

Islands in Danger was first published in 1955 and claims to be the first full treatment of the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands in World War II. These events have an interest beyond their uniqueness. They give an indication of what might have happened had the British Isles themselves been occupied by Germany. Unfortunately this is not a tale of systematic resistance, but rather one of official connivence, a general "keep on keeping on" attitude and rare (but incredibly brave) resistance by individuals. In addition there was brutal violence by the Nazis against forced labourers, the deportation of Jews and violent retribution against those British subjects who dared to oppose them.

The Channel Islands, Jersey, Guerseny, Sark and Alderney were unusual in their location, a few miles from France, their semi-independent government and the vestiges of feudal relations. But they were, nonetheless, part of Britain. Photographs (not reproduced in this book) of British policeman with their characteristic uniforms, and Nazi soldiers are available. The collaboration between the two one of the great stains on this era of history.

The British authorities on the islands essentially carried on doing what they needed to do. Their cooperation with the Nazis was pretty much complete. The Bailiff of Guernsey, Major Sherwill, made this clear at the start of the occupation when he made a long address, that included the phrase:

May this occupation be a model to the world - on the one hand tolerance on the part of the military authority and courtesy and corectness on the part of the occupying forces, and on the other, dignity and courtesy and exemplary behaviour on the part of the civilian population; conformity - the strictest conformity - with orders and regulations issued by the German Commandant and the civil authorities.

Now Sherwill, it is true, did eventually get imprisoned by the Nazis for his role in protecting British commandos who had landed, but failed to escape. This was, it should be said, brave. But Sherwill and others set a tone for the relations with the Nazis, which saw British policemen enforcing and assisting in a Nazi occupation. For some the consequences were appalling. Was there an alternative? The authors of this volume suggest not. But the problem is not whether Sherwill et al might have led a revolutionary movement against fascism, but the extent to which they greased the wheels for the Nazis. They made it easy.

The problem with this volume is that it fails to properly interrogate this. There is far too much about "Dad's Army" still shenanigans, humourous annecdoates about how the Nazis were made to remove their shoes when entering various peoples homes, and funny stories about hiding wirelesses. There is far too little about what else happened.

Hundreds of forced labourers worked and died on the Channel Islands. Their treatment is discussed at length, and there are some heartbreaking anecdotes of how individual islanders tried to help them. But the question of the Islands' part in the Holocaust is examined less well. We know, for instance, that Alderney had a transit camp for French Jews to be transported to Auschwitz. Three Jewish residents of the Channel Islands died in the Holocaust. Hundreds of other residents were imprisoned and deported. As many as 1,134 people may have died there. What do the authors say about the Jews. Rightly they are critical of the authorities:

Some actions by the authorities were harder to defend. Anti-Semitic edicts, emanating from the German command in France, were registered by the Royal Courts both in Jersey and Guernsey. It was felt that the number ofJews was so small—less than ten in each island—that it was not worth asking for trouble by making an issue of the matter. In Guernsey there was one dissentient vote.

Then they describe some of the Nazi attacks on Jews on the Channel Islands:

Coutanche successfully resisted a proposal for making Jews wear yellow stars on their backs. In the end some Jews were deported to the Continent.*

Here the asterixed footnote reads: "We were surprised to be unable to obtain any reliable information as to their ultimate fate, even from present members of the Jewish communities."

This is an extraordinary inadequate comment. I wonder what the authors imagined happened to the Jews deported to the Continent? Tragically this is the only reference to what took place.

In recent years there have been serious attempts to understand what took place on the Channel Islands, both in terms of the collaboration, the resistance and the role of the Islands in the death of hundreds of people as part of the Nazi Holocaust. Sadly this book, even allowing for limited historical data available at the time, fails to do justice to these questions. Instead the authors opt for a more entertaining tale of plucky Brits trying to outwit the nasty Germans.

In his book Empire of Destruction, the historian Alex J. Kay asks why the experience of the occupation was different in the West of Europe, to that of the East. The answer, is in part, due to the Nazis' project of colonisation, and their belief that the Eastern population were "sub human". The tragedy of this book is that ten years after the Holocaust the authors of this account did not even consider to ask such questions.

Related Reviews

Vinen - The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation
Gildea - Marianne in Chains
Gluckstein - A People's History of the Second World War
Cobb - The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Larry McMurtry - Dead Man's Walk

Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is one of the best regarded Western novels of the 20th century. It certainly sustained me on a trip through the American West. The two main characters of that epic story, Woodrow F. Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae, are two Texas Rangers. Legendary men of the frontier whose job was to enforce frontier justice and stop the Native Americans halting the White settlers. Dead Man's Walk, published a decade later, is the Woodrow and Gus' origin story. The tale of their first travels with the Texas Rangers, and the story of how they develop their friendship and the knowledge that enables them to survive on the frontier.

The book begins with their first expedition in which their party is hunted and nearly destroyed by the Comanche chief Buffalo Hump. Buffalo Hump is a experienced and skillful hunter and killer. He doesn't simply kill off party members one by one, he traps and hunts them like animals. His plan is to terrorise the White people off. It's a frightening experience that scars the two Rangers permanently. But not enough to prevent them joining a gung ho expedition into New Mexico to capture Santa Fe. This expedition is a disaster too, failures of leadership, experience and equipment lead the 200 strong force to be decimated and reduced to a motley crew of forty who are captured and tortured by the Mexican Army. The Dead Man's Walk of the title is the desert journey the remaining Rangers and the Mexican troops are forced to make. One that claims many lives.

Like Lonesome Dove this is a novel that doesn't pause for breath. There are a sequence of events that blend into each other. Most of them violent and characters are often only introduced to be knocked off a few chapters later. At the heart is the growing story of love and respect between Woodrow and Gus, their growth into adulthood and the sharing of experiences that bonds them. The growing love between Gus and Clara, a young woman he meets near the beginning of his adventures and will feature throughout the series, is actually a backdrop between the love of the two men.

It works well as a novel, but I was uncomfortable with the depiction of the Native Americans. They are always violent and bloodthirsty. While they are clearly fighting for the lives and society, they feel two dimensional, depicted as violent killers to give the White characters something to revolve around. I've seen online comment that suggests this is to do with how they are seen by the main characters. But it feels lazy and inadequate. McMurtry could have rounded out Buffalo Hump and his contemporaries, but instead they're too simple - untrustworthy, violent and superstitous. It felt like the worst stereotypes of the previous century and detracted from an otherwise excellent novel.

Related Reviews

McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

Friday, January 17, 2025

Joseph M. Marshall III - The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History

Crazy Horse is best known, to non-indigenous people, as the military leader whose charge destroyed General Custer's final defence at the Little Big Horn battle. But that's about it. There are no authenticated pictures of Crazy Horse, and much of the rest of his life as a Lakota leader is forgotten. Though his tragic murder is often mentioned in passing, a consequence of the genocidal policies of the US government who could not afford to have such a figure head live.

But there is a lot more history and autobiography about Crazy Horse, though learning it means listening to the people who knew him best - the Lakota themselves. Joseph M. Marshall III, himself a member of the Lakota, has written this epic autobiography basing it on the oral history of the Lakota. It is a remarkable read which interweaves the story of Crazy Horse with the story of the Lakota and the author's own experiences.

In fact, the most interesting parts of the book are not those dealing with the specific battles - though these are fascinating. They are the ones that depict Lakota life and how it was transformed by contact with Europeans. Crazy Horse himself represents this in microcosm. His birth mother died early in his life, and his father took two more wives who became Crazy Horses next mothers. It is an intriguing difference to the "family" that dominates Western culture and is told to us as the norm. Marshall points out that many Lakota, including people today and himself, have multiple parents in this way. Their upbringing not being restricted simply to a mother and father. Crazy Horse was mentored and trained by several different male parental figures, including his father. His father himself was called Crazy Horse, as was his grandfather. The Crazy Horse that is the centre of this book being given the name by his father at an appropriate moment while his father took a new name to replace it.

These aspects of Crazy Horse's early life are intriguing for the insights into different styles of organising life. And it is defending that way of life that Crazy Horse commited himself to. He and his contemporaries watched the settlers arrive and travel across their terrority on the Bozeman Trail, until the Battle of the Hundred-in-the-Hands saw Crazy Horse play a leading role in defeating Captain Fetterman's force and the eventual withdrawal of US forces from the area.

The treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 was supposed to bring hostilities to an end. But Crazy Horse was skeptical. As Marshall explains:

Sitting Bull knew what would happen, Crazy Horse was certain. The whites would use that treat as a way to control the Lakota. They drew lines on a paper to outline the picture of the land, something not unknown to the Lakota. But the idea that an imaginary line could define where the land begins andends was laughable - as if the line would somehow show up on the land. Even more laughable was the rule that the Lakota had to live in one part of the land and obtain permission from the whites to hunt in the other. Their thinking was laughable, but it was their thinking and they had the power of numbers, many soldiers with many rifles, many wagon guns and plenty of powder. Part of the answer was to fight. There could be no other way... The whites understood force.

Crazy Horse has always been judged by others. In his summary Marshall notes that there are multiple Crazy Horses to the whites. The "noble warrior" doomed to loose, the chief. He points out that Crazy Horse as the "conqueror of Custer" means that "Crazy Horse has no validity without Custer". Always depicted, weapon in hand, Crazy Horse epitomises a certain, racist, view of Native Americans. But, as this book shows, Crazy Horse was a thinker, a leader, and a fighter. He was a human being - with foibles and loves - and part of a community with a rich and powerful tradition. He led the resistance to the destruction of that community, but in remembering him the West does so in a way that seeks to defeat him and his people. Joseph Marshall III's wonderful book does much to tell the true story.

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Cyprian Ekwensi - Jagua Nana

Jagua Nana is a remarkable, but forgotten, novel. Set in Nigeria in the immediate aftermath of independence, it centres of Jagua Nana, a forty-five year old sex worker who retains her skills, beauty and fantastic dress sense. She is an icon of Lagos, a woman whose clothing and makeup sets the fashions for everyone else. And a woman who is desired by many men.

Jagua wants to settle down and have children. She hopes to do this with Freddie, her twenty something lover, a school teacher, but one who has ambitions. Freddie wants to go to London, to study at the inns of court and return to Nigeria a lawyer who can help transform the country into a modern democracy. Jagua's plan is to pay his way, and ensure he qualifies, then returns and can help her lead the life she dreams of.

But the tension between her life as a sex-worker, relying on her clients from the exotic Tropicana club to keep her in the life she has, pressures her relationship with Freddie until it snaps. Unable to see past Jagua's sex with other men, Freddie moves to England without Jagua's help. In his absence Jagua is cut adrift, finding solace and excitement in various dalliances and relationships in the country around Lagos. Here her urban street skills are a hindrance in navigating the countryside and its more traditional life, but also offer new ways of thinking to those stuck outside the capital. Her good looks do no harm either:

Here in Ogabu, men dressed well but sanely. Women were beautiful, but not brazen. They had become complementary to the palm trees and the Iroko, the rivulets and the fertile earth. TGhey were part of their surroundings as natural as the wind. Whereas in Lagos man was always grappling to master an environment he had created. It was money, money, yet more money.

Freddie's sudden return as a promising young politician standing in the local election as a radical, democratic and anti-corruption candidate upsets the apple cart. Initially, unable to see past his recent marriage to a young woman, Jagua initially decides to destroy him by supporting the other candidate. But the personal tensions become intensely political.

Jagua Nana is a remarkable novel because its story is a deeply personal one set against the backdrop of Nigeria's emergence into post-colonialism. It's intensely political, but with a small p, because it doesn't take up big questions of struggle. Rather it is focused on the consequences of individual and very personal decisions and sacrifices, made within bigger contexts. But front and centre are the stories of women's lives - stories that show how women fight to change things, to achieve their dreams and to break free of the limitations forced upon them by their social circumstances.

I loved this book. It was first published as part of the African Writers Series, curated by Chinua Achebe. I was very lucky to find a copy randomly in a second hand book shop, which proves it is always worth taking a punt on an unknown writer. See if you can hunt it down.

Monday, December 30, 2024

Michael Patrick F. Smith - The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood and Transformation in an American Boomtown

One of the mistakes that environmentalists have been guilty of in the past is forgetting that behind every oil, coal, gas and fracking site are dozens of workers. The fossil fuel industry is both a uniquely devastating part of capitalism, and also a massive employer. This is why the British Campaign Against Climate Change produced a number of pamphlets aimed at the trade union movement to argue that a "Just Transition" to a sustainable economy could both create jobs, and transition workers from the fossil fuel industry to alternative employment while protecting terms and conditions. That remains, I would argue, a central task of both the environmental and trade union movement.

The Good Hand is an insight into the lives of the men and women who are behind the fossil fuel industry. Michael Patrick F. Smith lived and worked in New York as a playwright, singer and jobbing actor. In 2013, as the fracking (shale gas) boom exploded in North Dakota he headed up to the oil fields to try and make his fortune. Arriving in Willston, North Dakota, the centre of the boom he finds himself, alongside hundreds of others, trying to get work in a boomtown where rents are rocketing and McDonalds cannot (or won't) pay enough to hire enough staff. Living in a flophouse, where three or four men share a living room sleeping on bunks or airbeds, Smith trudges the streets trying to get a job.

This is oil boom capitalism. But its also capitalism that has shed any dignity. There's plenty of money sloshing around to ensure that the bars, sex clubs, and drug dealers are able to make a killing from the young, lost, alienated and immigrant labour. The work, when Smith eventually makes it into an oil job, is uniquely dangerous. There are safety briefings, but the chances of injury and death are ever present. The long hours, long distances, drink, drugs and pressure to work faster contribute to a workplace safety record near the bottom of the graph.

Smith is an incredible story teller. His experiences however are shaped in this remarkable book by his upbringing in a abusive and dangerous family. His father was violent and sexually abused his sister. Smith notes that there are two topics of conversation for oil workers meeting for the first time - the job, and paternal violence. It is, Smith thinks, because of this background that he is determined to make it in the industry - to be come a "good hand", a reliable worker in the eyes of his compatriots.

Because the other aspect to this alienated world of work is that workers make themselves a community. The shared danger, drinking and drugs, and the hell of life without proper public services and housing, means that men learn to love and defend each other. Even if they are often at each others throats. There are stories here that allude to the love that they develop for each other. Sometimes this is actual sexual relationships, and it's interesting that Smith notes that homosexuality isn't that frowned on, except for a few jokes. In this intensely macho world that seems surprising. That said, this is barely a bastion of liberalism. In his time on the North Dakota prairie Smith meets just one trade unionist.

Nor are there many progressives. The chapter where Smith confesses to the men that he voted Obama had me holding my breath. Here it seemed the jokes about "someone having an accident" might be very real. Smith, in fact, is shocked to find Willston almost entirely white. There are a few black workers, who are to the men from the region mostly figures of curiosity and fun. In turn the immigrant workers are shocked, upset and angered by the racism. It is when Smith realises that he has just accepted the "innocent explanation" for the name of a bar called the K K Korner that he begins to realise how much he has been changed.

Smith's time on the oilfields is a life changing experience - not because of the work. But because of the people. As an explanation of working class life, in the rarefied, high-stakes and sometimes high-paid world of booming fossil fuels, it is often difficult to read. This is a place of drugs, drink, casual violence and deep misogyny. But there are also moments of real beauty and solidarity. People standing up for each other, defending each other or simply putting a hand on someone else's shoulder at a time of need. It's a tough read, but it tells you more about the reality of the "American Dream" than any rhetoric from Trump or Biden will. Smith writes movingly, but never patronisingly about his life, work and the people of America. It's highly recommended.

Saturday, December 28, 2024

Richard Grunberger - Red Rising in Bavaria

The Munich, or Bavarian, Revolution is an often neglected part of the amazing German revolutionary wave that took place at the end of 1918 and into 1919. The German Revolution was important for two reasons. Firstly it effectively ended the slaughter of World War One as sailors, soldiers and working people struck, marched and created workers councils. Secondly, it extended a hand of solidarity and hope to the people of Revolutionary Russia, briefly opening up the hope that the Soviet Republic would not remain isolated. The revolutionaries of Munich certainly understood this second aspect of their struggle. But what was the nature of the Munich rising itself?

Richard Grunberger's account of these events "Red Rising" is a readable, if problematic account. It was, as he abley describes, in 1919 that the counter-revolutionary Freikorps began their fascist reigns of terror. Practising for events under Hitler. The "Reds" in Munich executed 10 hostages. It was probably a tactical error, and certainly not one supported by the majority of rebels. But the counter-revolutionaries outnumbered this slaughter ten to one. Over one thousand revolutionaries, participants, by-standers and completely innocent people were killed in the orgy of violence that suppressed the revolution.

Unfortunately there is very little here about the revolution from the bottom up. Grunberger is more interested in the individuals who led, or put themselves at the head of the movement itself. He is fascinated more with their individual eccentric behaviours than with trying to understand the real dynamics of the movement. Kurt Eisner, the Prime Minister of the Bavarian Republic in the initial phases of the revolution, who was assassinated in February by the right-wing, seems to have been a volatile and unusual character. Franz Mehring, the leading German Marxist and biographer of Marx, described Eisner as an "aesthetic dilettante". It's probably an accurate depiction.

Eisner's weakness was to try and find a way between bolshevism and Social Democracy. His quest for a revolution without Bolshevism meant he failed to see the threat from the right, or their handmaidens in the SPD. But he was not alone in this. Those that followed frequently made the same mistake. The most able leader seems to have been Eugen Leviné. Leviné did not allow the fledgling Communist Party to inistially support the rising, saying, according to Grunberger, "We can only take part in a republic of councils if it is proclaimed by the councils - and if the majority of them are communists". It seems a sensible policy - focusing on revolutionary movements from below, not the arbitary declaration of a Council Republic from above. Leviné's eventual participation was a recognition that once the battle was engaged Communists could not abstain. Though for Grunberger it's more of a reversal of position rather than an act of principle from a position of enormous weakness.

There are some real political weaknesses with the book. But there are stylistic problems too. Grunberger's descriptions of people are sometimes very off. The SPD leftist Erhard Auer is described as a "huge man with large hands" for no apparent reason.

Despite it's limitations there are some real glimpses into moments of working class power and bravery during the Munich Revolution. For those who only know the name Dachau because of the later concentration camp there, remember the workers of the town who fought the fascists there long before the Nazis came to power:

In the fighting that follow Red troops advanced into Dachau... At a cricial moment in thebattle workmen and women from the Dachau ordnance factory disconcerted the defenders by wading into the melee and shouting amidst the hail of bullets, "Don't shoot at your brothers!" When the White hesitated before firing on civilisans, the Red attacks pressed home their advantage, diarmed some of the enemy and drove the rest northwards from the town.

Similarly, Grunberger quotes from an eyewitness to an early meeting in the revolution, when a worker cuts through the rarefied debates of professors including Max Weber:

The crowd was so tightly packed that the waitresses 'ate' their way through it like woodworms. One was barely aware of the alcohol and tobacco fumes or human perspiration, because it was so important that the things that mattered could be said. Suddenly a pale young workman mounted the rostrum and said simply "Have you, or you, made an armstice offer? Yet we ought to do it - not the gentlemen in office. Let us seize a radio station and let us ordinary folk address the ordinary folk on the other side - right away there'll be peace." As he said this a problem occurred to him, and with a touching gesture in the direction of Max Weber's fellow academics o nthe platform, the young man continued: "Here these Herren Professoren, they know French! They'll know how to say it the way we mean it."

Sadly there is too little such flavour of "ordinary folk" in the book. It is these people and their hopes that made the German Revolution, and sadly this book doesn't deliver enough of this. That said, for a subject that is badly neglected in the literature of the Revolution, it is a decent overview. Socialists should read it to be reminded of the need to build revolutionary organisation ahead of the crucial battles. Otherwise we are, as Leviné famously said at his trial, "Communists are all dead men on leave".

Friday, December 27, 2024

Joan Nabseth Stevenson - Deliverance from the Little Big Horn: Doctor Henry Porter & Custer's Seventh Cavalry

An almost uncountable number of publications have been written about the Battle of the Little Big Horn. In a genre of history that has no shortage of books, the defeat of Custer and his men by the combined might of the Lakota, Dakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho has been analysed, debated and obsessed about, almost from the moment Custer's command was extinguished.

There are a good number of microhistories that focus on particular individuals or experiences at the Bighorn. Deliverance from the Little Big Horn is one of these, though because its focus was on the only medical Doctor to survive the battle, and his experience with Reno and Benteen as they were besieged overnight, it is an unusal and rewarding read for those who are interested in the Battle.

Doctor Henry Porter was a contract surgeon with the US Army. This meant he was one of a handful of civilians to accompany the Seventh Cavalry on their expedition to slaughter the Native Americans. Porter was not armed and was not expected to fight. His job was to help injured troops on the trip and during any confrontation. The other doctors with the troops were killed with Custer, or early in the battle with Porter. In fact Porter's friend and fellow medic James M. DeWolf was killed a few metres from Porter, because he took a slightly different route up the hill during Reno's disastorous and panicked retreat from the first encounter with the Native American forces. It was to Porter that Reno famous denied he had fled. "That was a charge" he said.

Only a small section of the book is devoted to the battlefield experiences of Porter. It must have been a horrific situation as Porter used limited resources to patch up and keep alive a growing number of severally wounded soldiers. Most of these were bullet wounds. Porter did not have to deal with many arrow heads. But he did have to amputate and provide urgent care. Saving up to 68 men. One important detail that Joan Stevenson's book does explore is the complete rejection of germ theory by the US medical establishment and hence the doctors down to Porter on the battle field. Interestingly this would probably have made little difference on the battlefield as there was hardly any water for cleaning equipment or hands. But in the aftermath of the encounter Porter, as was common at the time, was more concerned by the bad smell from dead animals and men, and its impact on the wounded men's injuries.

When relief finally arrived Porter ministered to the men on an arduous trek to the vessel that was to take them down the Yellowstone river to Fort Lincoln near Bismarck in North Dakota. All the way Porter cared for the men.

Porter's dedication wasn't reflected in his treatment by the Army. As a contract surgeon he was expected to be at the beck and call of the military, but could be terminated almost without notice. In the immediate aftermath of the Custer defeat Porter set out again with General Terry on a classically pointless military adventure that failed to confront the Native Americans. Along the way though Porter was witness again to a military failure as the soldiers, following weeks of poor diet of hardtack and bacon, feel sick to scurvy.

In the miltary austerity of the next few years, Porter gained and lost contracts. He eventually became a successful doctor in Bismarck, and travelled the world. Dying in India trying to see the Taj Mahal. He also campaigned for better treatment, and pay, for medical professionals in the US army. Whether he eventually accepted germ theory is not said.

Joan Nabseth Stevenson's little book is an excellent account of medicine in the US army at the time. It is clearly a work of love, but written with a serious scholarship and knowledge of the Battle itself. For those interested in military medicine who know little of events in July 1876 this will be a good introduction. Stevenson has little to say about the wider context of the war, and makes no real comment on the overall strategy of the US government. To be fair to her that's not what the book is about. She does conclude with Porter's testimony into the conduct of Major Reno on the battlefield. He, along with the other surviving civilians, had little good to say. The officers, as is the military want, kept their deepest thoughts to themselves for the "good of the regiment". Porter's honesty did him credit. History has been less kind to Reno. The victorous Native Americans however were still being slaughtered.

Thursday, December 26, 2024

Kent Nerburn - Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce

If you happen to be travelling in Yellowstone National Park you might drive on Chief Joseph Highway. Its a somewhat unusual name. Roads in the US tend to be named after US military heroes, not their adversaries. But Chief Joseph, or Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, to give him his Nez Perce name was one of the most famous Native American leaders during the period after the Little Bighorn. In 1877 the Nez Perce Native Americans made a journey of almost 1200 miles from their ancestral homelands, across huge areas of what are now Wyoming and Montana trying to reach safety. Chief Joseph was one of Nez Perce chiefs, though for reasons that Kent Nerburn explains, he was not actually the supreme military leader that the US military, media and white population thought he was.

This account of Joseph, by one of the most talented non-Native American chronicllors of their history, begins with the first encounter the Nez Perce had with European settlers. This was the meeting between them and the Lewis and Clarke expedition, sent out from the East to learn more about the lands that would become the USA. The Nez Perce and the explorers got on well. So much so that later encounters were often marked by misunderstanding, confusion and tragedy. By the 1860s the US government was trying to force the Nez Perce to sign a treaty that would give up their lands so that settlers and gold hunters could use it. Some bands of the tribe did sign, but many, including Chief Joseph's, did not. A difference that became enshrined as the Treaty and non-Treaty Nez Perce.

Nerburn recounts the history of this period, as indignities and falsehoods grew, with the Nez Perce increasingly being forced into confrontations with the whites. By 1877 it was increasingly difficult for the Native Americans to avoid conflict, and more and more pressure was put on the non-Treaty Nez Perce to relocate. Refusing to do so, the Nez Perce were threatened with War. Thus began the long trek of the Nez Perce as they tried to escape and find sanctuary.

It is a gripping tale. The Nez Perce fled, intially with hope of finding a place to live, then simply to escape the persuing military. A series of confrontations took place as the Native Americans skillfully defeated the ill-equipped and under experienced troops. It might be described as a sort of fighting retreat, except the Nez Perce didn't think they were retreating. The telegraph and local journalists created a news story that was followed from coast to coast. Joseph became the supposed leader, though he was at the start only one of several other chiefs. Joseph infact was the least beligerent, the more warlike leaders unknown to the press. As the Nez Perce fled, lurid and racist stories followed behind and in front. Terror gripped the plains out of all proportion to the acts of the Native Americans, though as they travelled they did, under force of arms and increasing desperation commit acts. It is notable that by this point Yellowstone Park was open to tourists. Some of the first where indeed captured and killed by Native Americans. The history of the US war on its indigenous population is surprisingly close in time to our own.

Eventually the Nez Perce were defeated at the battle of Bear's Paw. They were a few tens of miles from the Canadian border and safety. Their defeat is remembered for Joseph's alleged speech that said he was no longer fighting. Promised much, but in reality offered little, the Nez Perce were relocated to Kansas where they became victims of racist and unscrupilous Indian Agents. Their they would have languised if Chief Joseph and others become skilled at public opinion. Joseph used every opportunity to speak to the press, to audiences and to visitors. He was skillful at highlighting the great injustice his people had suffered and how they only wanted to go home. Arthur Chapman, a translator, also wrote vast numbers of letters pleading the Nez Perce case.

There was some success. Many of the Native Americans did eventually return, though Chief Joseph was never allowed to. In fact he never again saw his own daughter, barred from visiting the lands she had been relocated to.

The tragedy of the Nez Perce is told brilliantly by Kent Nerburn's book. He highlights how the Nez Perce "war" as it is sometimes known arose out of the racist and genocidal policies of the US government that saw the Native Americas as people to be pushed and pulled from their homelands to wherever they were least in the way. It also demonstrates how, far from being the uncivilised people that racist politicians, military leaders and journalists thought they were, the Native Americans were skilled and careful politicians in their own right. And frequently far better soldiers than the US troops. Perhaps Kent Nerburn's greated achievement in this book is rescuing all the Native American leaders other than Joseph. But he also shows how many of the whites were also willing to show kindness and assistance to the Nez Perce after their capture. Even in the 1870s there were those who recognised the injustices of US settler colonialism. But Nerburn never lets you forget that the real heroes, and the ones that forced the US state to back down several times, though political campaigning and a fighting resistance, were the Nez Perce. Let's hope one day they receive adequate recompense for the injustices made against them. A superb read.

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Alex J. Kay - Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing

One of the photos in Empire of Destruction is of Richard Jenne, a four year old child who was murdered in the "special children's ward" at Irsee Monastery by the head nurse, one Sister Mina Wörle. The killing of young Jenne was part of the systematic murder of patients with mental health issues by the Nazi regime. Jenne was probably one of the last children killed under this barbaric plan. Notably he was murered by Wörle three weeks after the end of the war. For her role in killing up to 100 children Wörle got just 18 months imprisonment.

The death of Richard Jenne is one moment in the mass killing undertaken by the Nazi government. It serves as a stark reminder of the human story behind the figures for Nazi mass murder. It is well known that over six million Jewish people in the Holocaust. In addition millions of others were systematically killed. These include people with mental and physical disabilities, Russian prisoners of war, Gypsy and Roma, Russian civilians and others. These mass killing each "possessed a racial (and racist) component". But Kay argues that central to them all was that how the Nazi regime considered these groups a barrier to Germany's ability to win the war. It is difficult or impossible, he argues, to separate "German wartime stratgy from Nazi genocidal racal policies". This approach is not universally accepted among historians of the Nazis.

Kay explains:

In view alone of this intertwinement of war and extermination, it makes a great deal of sense to consider the different strands of Nazi mass killing togheter rather than in isolation... This of course means going against the grain of most scholarship on the subject by examining the genocide of the European Jews alongside other Nazi mass-murder campaigns.

In contrast to those who argue that the Holocaust must be considered separate to other mass killings, Kay argues that "taking an integrative approach to Nazi mass killing in no way contradicts the view - advocated here, too - that the Holocause was an unprecedented phenomenon."

I will not quote from any of the horrific eyewitness accounts to the murder, the description of events or the testimony of survivors. The book is perhaps one of the most difficult books I've ever read. There are relentless accounts of murder. Despite having read several books on the Holocaust and visited concentration camps and other places of Nazi killing, I don't think I've been quite so shocked and upset before. Indeed Kay explicitly warns the reader that the book is "harrowing". But reminds the reader that his "extensive use of testimony from survivors and other victims hopefully goes some small way towards giving them a voice". Bearing witness like this is of course important.

But also important is Kay's central argument that the racist policies of the Nazi regime, combined with their war aims allowed this to happen. It also built upon racist, antisemitic, eugenic and Malthusian ideas that predated Hitler. But once the regime was in power, and when the war had started, they took on an importance to the Nazis that was not anticipated. The logic of war, led to mass murder. For instance, Kay writes how the German military's systematic attempt to stop partisans in Eastern Europe was tied up with their belief in living space for Germans:

The measures taken by German forces in the context of their 'pacification' campaign constituted an attack on a substantial section of the Soviet population and, simultaneously, on the national and ethnc fabric of the state. These so called anti-partisan operations were in effect an attempt to depopulate the Soviet countryside. German forces massacred hundreds of thousands of Soviet civilians, destroying thousands of homes and, indeed, entre villages in the process... The vast majority of the victims... had little or no connection to guerilla resistance, and virtually all of these deaths had a racist component.

It is worth noting that there were murders on this scale on the western front, which highlights the racial dimension to the war. Understanding all this however means comprehending Nazism as something more than antisemitism. There were "specifically Nazi motivations for mass killing", but no "monocausal explanation" for the "actions of the perpetrators" says Kay, and concludes:

The answer we seek can be found only in the interaction of tseveral factors converging in a specific historical circumstances. The conduct of the Holocaust perpetrators... cannot be unexplains in terms of their ideology alone, and yet cannot be understood without it.... The prevalence of radical ideological convictions during the years in querstion point to a shared and defining historical context.

Hundreds of thousands of Germans under Hitler, "by virtue of a certain set of circumstances and the events of the preceding decades, were particularly radicalised and mre inclined to pursue extreme solutions to perceived problems." Those solutions murdered over ten million people.

Kay's book is an important study, that opens up a way of approaching mass murder and the nature of the Nazi regime. I am not quite sure he is able to the bottom of what the specific set of circumstances that led to the Nazi regime was. While he is right to point to the historical roots of mass murder in Germany, including the prevelant racism and eugenics, I also think we need to look deeper at the way the context of the end of World War One shocked and frightened a generation of the German middle classes, and allowed Hitler to mobilise by promising to stop the Marxists. In this context Richard J Evans recent Hitler's People: The faces of the Third Reich is good to read alongside Kay's book because it shows how those at all levels of the Nazis' machine were drawn to fascism and Hitler and motivated to do what they did. That said, Kay's history is important both to remind us of the horrors that took place and help us understand how they were organised. Never Again.

Kershaw - Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris

Kershaw - Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis

Roseman - The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution

Mazower - Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe

Browning - The Origins of the Final Solution