Category Archives: Italy

by | 12 October 2025 · 8:57 am

Battle of Caporetto, 1917

From The Other Trench: The WW1 Diary and Photos of a German Officer, by Philipp Cross and Alexander Pfeifer (True Perspective Press, 2024), Kindle pp. 266-267: (The following passage is by the junior author, who supplies many backgrounders to help readers better understand his great-great-grandfather’s war diary.)

The recent and upcoming series of events are today known as ‘The Battle of Caporetto’ (The 12th Battle of The Isonzo), one of the most significant chapters of the Great War. When Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in May 1915, they did so while influenced by the dreams of territorial conquest; and the desire to conquer the Italian-speaking areas around Trento and Trieste along their northeastern border. However, the Italian army had become fatigued towards the end of 1917. Insignificant progress had been made on its frontlines at the cost of severe casualties and a breaking economy. After 11 battles for the Isonzo in just over two years, the Italians anticipated a period of rest during the winter of 1917, but this did not happen. There were growing rumours of an attack by the Austro-Hungarians, and the Italians worked towards strengthening the mountainous combat areas around the town of Caporetto, today known as ‘Kobarid’ in Slovenia. Caporetto is positioned on the western side of the Isonzo River, with the frontlines lying six to seven miles east of the river as of October 1917. Due to the supposedly weakened Italian defence there, Caporetto had been chosen by the Central Powers as the main target for this significant offensive. The offensive, initiated on the 24th of October, would be seen as a complete disaster for the Italian army, also causing devastation nationwide.

In the early morning of the first day of the battle, the Italian trenches were smothered with poisonous gas, which left many occupants dead and caused others to flee. An intense artillery barrage would later follow, as well as mines being detonated beneath Italian strongpoints — Then, the infantry assault. The attacks were led by specialised stormtroopers who made full use of their light mortars, flamethrowers, machine guns and hand grenades. The Italians were in a state of complete disarray and fell into retreat due to this rapid and astonishing breakthrough. The attackers advanced up to 25 kilometres towards Italy on the first day without much resistance. By mid-afternoon, the command centre of the Italian army was still oblivious of the magnitude of this offensive, and Luigi Cadorna, Chief of General Staff, would not realise to what degree his troops were suffering until later in the evening — Munition shortages, wavering commanders, communication breakdown and lack of information — all working against the few trying their hardest to suppress the German and Austro-Hungarian assault. We know how these events unfolded from Alexander’s perspective, but just what exactly was it like through the eyes of someone on the other side?

Colonel Francesco Pisani was the acting general of the Foggia Brigade, who was present at Caporetto on the first day of the offensive. With orders for parts of the brigade to reinforce other units under pressure from the assault, the left-over troops headed towards Caporetto while passing the retreating men telling horror stories of the battles ahead. Pisani was to defend the Eiffel Bridge over the Isonzo with his troops, with a retreat soon after being ordered. The control of the town was then handed over to the Foggia Brigade. This is how he afterwards describes this series of events in his post-battle debriefing:

“There was total confusion. The road was almost entirely blocked by a mass of troops, carts, horses, trucks, artillery pieces, mules, and supplies. Officers’ cars were unable to make any headway, and it was very hard to execute or even transmit any orders. At this point, the various components of the Brigade became separated in the chaos, the freezing fog, and the rain. We also tried to organise transport for the wounded, many of whom had been abandoned in the road. We could hear them groaning through the fog, and it was imperative to move them since their presence was demoralising the defenders of the bridge.”

This battle will continue until late November 1917, and will eventually lead to enormous Italian losses and setbacks. They will lose over 5000 square miles of territory, over 40,000 dead and wounded, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers left scattered who will either be captured or will have deserted. The Italians will not just be subject to losses of soldiers and land. More than 10 million ration sets and over 6 million tins of fish or meat will be seized by the attacking forces, as well as hundreds of tonnes of dried pasta, cheese, and coffee; and 5 million litres of wine. Many thousand pieces of clothing, bedding, boots, artillery pieces, machine guns, horses and mules, and vehicles will be abandoned and lost — a huge loss for Italy considering the shortage of these vital supplies before this setback had even occurred.

The potential reasons for this disaster, and later defeat, already caused political quarrels within 48 hours of the first assault. Blame was placed on all sides of the political spectrum, as well as other factors. General Cadorna, who was already unpopular before the battle, blamed the Austro-German breakthrough on: “The inadequate resistance of units of the Second Army, cowardly retreating without fighting or ignominiously surrendering to the enemy”. However, this has been viewed as an unfair assumption by many, as the Foggia Brigade’s experience of poor defensive positioning, inconsistent orders, and scarce supplies represented the entire situation. Several descriptions indicate that the Italians fought courageously, for as long as they had ammunition and officers. However, as soon as these crucial needs were no more, and their enemy gained more momentum, it was hard to maintain an overall positive attitude.

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Filed under Austria, Germany, Hungary, Italy, military, nationalism, war, Yugoslavia

by | 9 October 2025 · 7:41 pm

Carpathian Front, August 1916

From The Other Trench: The WW1 Diary and Photos of a German Officer, by Alexander Pfeifer and Philipp Cross (True Perspective Press, 2024), Kindle pp. 173-174:

25.8.1916 There was thick fog during the night — the ground is littered with fireflies — an enemy patrol is being driven out.

The food is good and plentiful, but it usually only arrives late in the evening when it is dark because the road lies under artillery fire. There are three different types of field-kitchen food — Pearl barley with mutton, beans with mutton, and dried vegetables with beef. Besides this, we also get half a loaf of bread every day, and alternately some lard substitute, Dutch cheese, canned sausage, and marmalade. We also get cubes of coffee daily, and sometimes tea.

The night before last, we caught a Russian officer’s orderly who had gotten lost and came to us with the food and coat intended for his master. He was very surprised at how he was suddenly captured by us.

26.8.1916 Wonderful warm, sunny day. We are now living rather well because we have been brought up several boxes with all kinds of things from the canteen. For breakfast this morning, we had tea with marmalade bread, liver sausage, and Swiss cheese; and for lunch, asparagus spears, fried potatoes, one egg, roasted meat, and 1901-dated Tokay wine. We eat out of the field kitchen in the evening.

Two Russian patrols are being shot at in the night.

28.8.1916 The declaration of war by Italy and Romania was reported to us via telephone this morning. Maybe now we will reach the Romanian border. There was shooting from patrols on several occasions during the first half of the night.

Heavy rain. It is raining into my shelter, so I am having a wooden roof put on it today.

29.8.1916 The weather is nice. I now have a medium mortar in my sector, which launches mortar shells with a diameter of 18 centimetres and a weight of one quintal. We just zeroed in on the field-guard summit with four shots. Those things have a huge impact; the Russians will have run away nicely as a result. They have constantly been shouting “Hurrah!” since yesterday evening, and have also stuck out a signpost on which Romania’s declaration of war is most likely written. They probably think that this is being kept secret from us, or they want to annoy us with it. Our mortars are the correct response to this.

30.8.1916 There was artillery fire to our left for several hours from 4 o’clock in the morning onwards, the likes of which I have never heard in the East. The volleys follow one another without interruption. It must be within the vicinity of the Jablonika Pass where the Austrians have retreated to in the last few days. We are always happy when we don’t have Austrians next to us, as you can’t sleep peacefully otherwise. As kind as the Austrian is as an associate, he is just as unreliable as a soldier — Always according to the motto: “Make room. The Germans want to attack. The Germans are braver people!”

I was just guiding the Count through my position which the Russians must have smelled, because they sent over plenty of shells and shrapnel from 10 to 12 o’clock at noon, although without success. Since my hut doesn’t provide enough cover against artillery fire, I am now having a stronger shelter built in a more protected area where the sun also shines all day, as it is well needed up here.

The strong artillery fire to the left of us is continuing all day.

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Filed under Austria, food, Germany, Italy, military, nationalism, Romania, Russia, war

by | 17 August 2025 · 12:38 am

Ireland’s Oldest Lighthouse

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 151-152:

In 1849, shortly before Patrick Kennedy left for America, the first three ships to sail directly from his home port of New Ross to America, cast off with their quotas of Famine emigrants. The Lady Constable, the Boreas and the Dunbrody were all bound for New York, and crossed the Atlantic at the same time as the Washington Irving, carrying Patrick Kennedy to his new life in America.

The Dunbrody was named after Dunbrody Abbey standing high on the east bank of the River Barrow, just beyond the point where the Barrow joins the Suir flowing down from Waterford. Further down the river where the calmer waters emerge into the swell of the Atlantic, stands another Catholic landmark, St Dubhan’s Monastery close to Hook Point. For centuries the monks took a vow to warn mariners of the dangers of the rocks below and maintained a lighthouse near the monastery. Caligula, the Roman Emperor who ruled at the beginning of the first century AD, built the world’s first lighthouses as his legions spread across Europe. Some 400 years later, St Dubhan established the oldest lighthouse in Ireland on Hook Point. The monks kept the beacon alight in those early days by burning coal, pitch, charcoal and tar each night. Later, the Canons of St Augustine took over and built an 80-foot-high tower for the light with a small fortress below. The monks continued to preserve the light until 1657 when the lighthouse passed into public ownership. The original tower, coated in white lime to stand out by day, is now 700 years old, and ‘in such good repair it will probably last another millennium’, comments the Irish coastguard service. The tower performed an essential service for all ships entering the delta on their way to Waterford, Wexford, New Ross, or any other harbour en route. For the emigrants on a ship sailing from Ireland on a southerly course, the ancient lighthouse served as the last memorable monument to their homeland. The kindlier captains allowed emigrants up on deck, to catch a last glimpse of their beloved homeland before she disappeared beyond the horizon. With dry mouths, damp eyes and hands clasping the rail, the tearful emigrants gazed in silence at the disappearing coastline. Eventually the silence would give way to the exciting hiss of the bow wave and the roaring seas and the sad men and women would be shepherded down below.

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by | 14 August 2025 · 2:32 am

1848 in Ireland

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 85-86:

The government in London still declined to recognise the state of Ireland’s rapidly diminishing population. There was little fight left in the people, little strength to fight the hunger and none at all to fight the British who mistook the mood of the people and remained insensitive to the reality of their situation: even peasant armies cannot fight on empty bellies. Tenants on some of the larger estates banded together to avoid paying rents, current or arrears, and formed combinations while in the towns and cities Confederate Clubs were set up; but that was as far as they went – there is no evidence of well-organised conspiracies to murder landlords or agents, however much they were hated. But the apprehension of an Irish uprising had been growing steadily for more than two years among Britain’s leaders. Elsewhere in Europe, uprisings were rife: in January 1848 the people in Sicily forced concessions from their King; in February a bloodless revolution overthrew the French Parliament; in early March the army in Vienna was routed by the city’s people; then the Austrian rulers were driven out of Milan by the Italians. These winter insurrections encouraged radical leaders of the Young Ireland Party to rebel. As a result, in March three men, William Smith O’Brien, Thomas Meagher and John Mitchel, were arrested and charged with sedition. After the first two were acquitted, the third, Mitchel, a journalist, was tried in May under another act and convicted. The Attorney General in London had just drafted a new Treason Felony Act, decreeing, ‘… any person who, by open and advised speaking, compassed the intimidation of the Crown or of Parliament,’ was made guilty of felony. And in the current climate any person found guilty under this Act would be sure to face a heavy sentence – transportation to an overseas colony possibly for life. Within an hour of the jury returning their verdict, and sentencing Mitchel to 14 years’ transportation, he was on his way out of the country, not on an emigrant ship but aboard a British warship, bound for Tasmania on the other side of the world.

Fear is often fuelled by rumour, which was rife at the time. Misleading stories spread of great protest gatherings, 10,000-strong, and marches of 20,000 militants were reported to London. It was rumoured than an Irish Brigade was being raised in America, and that the Confederate Clubs were arming their members. As a result, the British Government determined to quash the threat of a peasant uprising. More English troops and weapons poured into Dublin and spread around the country. Additional English warships were despatched to strengthen the fleet at Cove, near Cork.

The British decided that further examples should be made among the would-be leaders and early in July, Thomas Meagher, son of the Mayor of Waterford, was re-arrested. His speeches in previous years, urging armed rebellion, had earned him the title Meagher of the Sword. He was detained by the police right outside the offices of the Waterford Chronicle whose editorial that day, on July 12th, cautioned against immediate rebellion, urging instead, ‘Wait until England is engaged in a major European war. The Chronicle will equip 200,000 men to fight against England.’

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by | 2 August 2025 · 8:57 am

Rebuilding a Polish Nation in Galicia

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 504-507:

Unlike the Hohenzollerns of Prussia/Germany or the Romanovs of Russia, the Habsburgs were Roman Catholic monarchs—and this is an important distinction. Furthermore, Habsburg piety was proverbial. All this meant that there should have been more common ground between the Poles and Austrians. At the same time, the Habsburgs had historically been the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (defunct as of 1806) and thus had a special relationship to the Germans of the rest of Europe.

As in all the partitions, the treatment of the new subjects was uneven. In the beginning, the Austrian authorities sought to civilize what they considered to be a backward land. Later, under the oppressive influence of Metternich, they sought to constrain what they thought was a revolutionary people—as witnessed in the debacle of the peasant jacquerie of 1846. (The incorporation of the Free City of Kraków into Galicia set the relatively thriving medieval capital of Poland back decades.) Metternich had seen fit to equate Polonism with revolution. Doubtless the new ruler of the Austrian Empire, Franz Joseph, felt similarly.

Only after a period of absolutism and Germanization did the tone change. This was brought about by several Austrian military defeats. The loss to the French in 1859 led to reforms at home that ultimately resulted in constitutional rule in Austria as of the early 1860s. Notably for the Poles, they were allotted their own provincial Seym as early as 1861.

The defeat of Austria by Prussia in 1866 was even more significant. The defeat forced the Habsburgs to reach a new modus vivendi with the Hungarians, who had been chafing under Habsburg rule particularly since the end of their failed revolution of 1848–1849. In 1867, the two parties reached the famous compromise that led to the establishment of the Dual Monarchy. Henceforth, the country would be known as Austria-Hungary.

That the Habsburgs had been compelled to make concessions to one of their subject peoples was a fact not lost on the Poles. Already the failure of the January Insurrection under Russian rule led some important Galicians to reconsider their approach to the Habsburg monarchy. A new and influential group known as the Kraków Conservatives resolved to be loyal to the Habsburgs. Although initially skeptical, after several years the Polish elites of Galicia were won over to this idea. Even the defeat of Austria at the hands of Prussia did not shake their belief in the monarchy.

…

These developments led to a third, and most fruitful, phase for the Galician Poles. Unlike the disgruntled Czechs of Bohemia, Poles decided to participate in the Reichsrat or imperial council, a two-chambered parliament in Vienna. Polish elites sought to recast Galicia as a conciliatory, conservative, loyal province. All this boded well for the position of Poles within the Habsburg Empire. Indeed, during the Dual Monarchy, a number of Poles actually came to hold important posts in the imperial government, including that of prime minister.

Given a degree of autonomy, Galicia became a haven for the Poles—a place where Poles could be Poles while still being loyal to the Habsburg dynasty. This dual identity was facilitated by Article 19 of the Fundamental Laws, which specified that each people within the monarchy had the right to cultivate its own nationality and language. Poles, and especially the democrats who vied with the conservatives for influence within the province, availed themselves of this opportunity in various ways, including the celebrating of a series of national figures and historic anniversaries. Among the most noteworthy were the solemn reburial of the poet Adam Mickiewicz in the Wawel crypts in 1890 and the five-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald in 1910, also celebrated in Kraków. The Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski had commissioned a massive monument commemorating that great medieval battle. These large public celebrations helped to bring Poles from all three partitioned lands closer together.

Thus, in the last third of the nineteenth century, the best place to be a Pole—certainly if one wanted to be politically active—and unlike in the Prussian or German lands, politically active in Polish—was Galicia. One could breathe Polish air there—or, as was also remarked, the very stones spoke Polish. To be sure, in Vienna (in the Reichsrat) Poles used German for their interpellations. However, back in the province, in the Galician Seym, the Polish language ruled (although it should be noted that Ruthenian interpellations during the proceedings were written down, phonetically, in Latin—not Cyrillic—script). Polish nonetheless became the language of government, the language of schooling.

Galician Poles had a high degree of autonomy—all of which allowed them to school themselves in the art of governance, to work in the bureaucracy, to develop scholarly institutes and universities where Polish would be the language of instruction, and the like. They lived in a country in which they had parliamentary representation and the rule of law. This, combined with the rights of nationalities, suggests that, as of the last third of the nineteenth century, one might think of Galicia as the closest thing to a Piedmont that the Poles had (Piedmont, meaning the Italian province that initiated Italian unification in the 1860s). Could these advantages within Galicia, thus, help propel the Poles to their own unification?

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by | 6 July 2025 · 5:33 am

How Italy Became Włochy in Polish

Mikołaj Gliński explains in CULTURE.PL #language & literature:

As it turns out, the word Włochy is descended from the Proto-Germanic word *walhaz (itself derived from the name of the Italian tribe Volsci) which was a term for speakers of various Romance languages living in post-Roman Empire areas with whom Germanic peoples came into contact. By extension, it could also refer to foreigners in general (compare the contemporary Dutch word Waals ‘Walloon’, and the English word Welsh).

In Polish, the word, or actually one of its variants, namely Wołochy, was at first used to refer to the Romanised tribes of the Balkans (compare Vallachia [and Vlachs]). It was only later that the name, now as Włochy, was transferred to another, more Southern people, namely the Italians.

The same word root włochy also appears in another Polish word, namely włoszczyzna (‘mirepoix’). The word denotes a mix of vegetables used for cooking a flavour base for soups. This handy bundle, which usually includes carrots, parsley, celery and leek, is even today sold in most grocery shops throughout Poland.

Curious for more Polish idiosyncratic geography? Countries like Włochy, Niemcy and Węgry feature in this guide.

I was sure the Polish name for Italy had something to do with their name for other Romance-speaking remnants of the Roman Empire. Glad to see supporting evidence.

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by | 5 July 2025 · 4:58 am

Poland’s Italian Queen

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 145-146:

Much of this spread of Western ideas, art, and architectural styles took place during the reign of the last two Jagiellonian monarchs. The first of these was Zygmunt I (1506–1548). Although not the youngest of Kazimierz Jagiellończyk’s sons (Fryderyk, the cardinal, was younger than he was), Zygmunt was the youngest sibling to ascend to the throne. It is somewhat paradoxical, thus, that he is referred to as Zygmunt the Old—a sobriquet that reflected the longevity of his rule as well as his life, not to mention the fact that his son and heir was his namesake. Whereas his predecessor (and elder brother Alexander) took as his bride the daughter of a Muscovite grand duke, Zygmunt first turned his sights southward and married a Transylvanian Zapolya. (This, after all, was the brother who had hoped to rule nearby Moldavia.) This did not mean, however, that the king was embroiled in the battle with the Ottomans. Rather, he made peace with these fearsome neighbors, thus putting an end to any sort of Jagiellonian imperial overstretch in the south. After his first wife died, the nearly fifty-year-old Zygmunt was persuaded to look westward for a bride. Bona Sforza of Milan became queen of Poland in 1518.

The Milanese princess facilitated the Poles’ embrace of major culinary as well as cultural contributions, provided by her Italian contacts and retinue—from Renaissance architectural ideas through to the introduction of Italian vegetables. Even today, the bouquet garni that goes into soup—comprised of carrots, parsnips, onions, celery root, leeks, parsley—is referred to in Polish as włoszczyzna (meaning “something Italian,” Włochy being the term for Italy). Yet she did much more than that. Brought up in the heady world of Italian politics, Bona not only bore her husband the requisite children (including a son and heir); she also proved tenacious in her efforts to strengthen both her husband’s position within his kingdom and that of the dynasty. Her perceived interference in the politics of Poland-Lithuania, naturally, was not appreciated by the rank-and-file Polish nobility, who thought her husband allied too closely with the state’s powerful magnates. An increasingly vociferous movement for the “Execution of the Laws” (by which they meant the implementation of previously enacted legislation that would benefit the lesser nobility) shows that rank-and-file nobles feared the rise of absolutism in the country.

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Filed under art, democracy, education, food, Hungary, Italy, language, migration, nationalism, Poland

by | 10 January 2025 · 6:01 am

Honolulu Roundup Begins, 1941

From Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll, Jr. (Harper Select, 2023), Kindle pp. 121-123:

Gero Iwai tries not to feel the other men’s eyes on him as they gather in a conference room on the second floor. Most know him, but some do not. They’re taking second looks at the only Japanese American in the room of Army intelligence agents and G-men.

SAC Shivers is in charge. Army officials order their four commanding generals (and nine corps commanders) to work with the FBI to round up all persons on their detention lists. Shivers, Bicknell and Honolulu police acting captain John Burns sit down with a card file and make the final determinations on who’s to be arrested. Personal friends and acquaintances are spared at the last moment, but the number still hovers at more than four hundred people.

The wheels to sanction these arrests have been spinning for hours. Just after the second wave, Lieutenant General Short stood in Iolani Palace to ask Hawaii territorial governor Joseph Poindexter to declare martial law. The governor called President Roosevelt, who advised him to follow the recommendation, which he did. By the rules drafted beforehand by Lt. Col. Thomas Green, this enables local military authorities to apprehend US citizens without cause.

Hoover telegrams his field offices: “Urgent. Immediately take into custody all Japanese who have been classified in the A, B, and C categories.”

At just before 2:00 P.M., Shivers is handed a letter from Short authorizing execution of the arrests. By then, President Roosevelt has signed Proclamation 2525, classifying all Japanese aliens living in the United States or any of its territories as “alien enemies” subject to apprehension. Some arrests had already begun, but under martial law, the final official authorization had to be given by the Army.

Across Honolulu, FBI men, military intelligence agents and local cops gather the detainees and deliver them to the Honolulu Immigration Station. There are almost five hundred residents in Hawaii, citizen and alien alike, placed under armed guard that day: 345 Japanese aliens, twenty-two Japanese American citizens, seventy-four German nationals, nineteen citizens of German ancestry, eleven Italian nationals and two citizens of Italian descent.

Nearly every consulate support worker is seized, including Richard Kotoshirodo and John Mikami. (Of more than two hundred seized, only these two are actually guilty of abetting espionage.) Also detained are the Japanese language school teachers and religious leaders from Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Members of mainstream Japanese civic societies are hustled into cars and ferried away from their families.

Those detained are brought under armed escort to an immigration building next to the territorial government officers near Honolulu Harbor. The prevailing feelings inside the cramped quarters are disbelief and shame. These are the leading merchants, priests, teachers and social organizers in Honolulu, now rounded up with fewer rights than those afforded criminals.

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by | 22 November 2024 · 3:36 pm

East Central Europe Under the Nazis

From From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe, by John Connelly (Princeton University Press, 2020), Kindle pp. 463-464:

By 1941, three zones of influence had emerged in Nazi-dominated East Central Europe. The first included areas where Germany destroyed states and left no native administration, itself taking rudimentary control. The second comprised areas where it destroyed states and replaced them with its own political entities, misleadingly called “independent states.” In the third zone, states remained under control of native political elites, but they came under irresistible pressure to become German allies. Only Poland belonged to the first category.

The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia fit between the first and second zones: it was occupied and destined for absorption into Germany but valued as a place that produced high-quality industrial goods. Its population was thought to be racially valuable (50 percent of the Czechs were considered assimilable; only 10 percent of the Poles) and was permitted its own heavily supervised government, with a Czech cabinet and ministries, and even a tiny armed force. Serbia was similar, a rump, embodying nothing a Serb nationalist could be proud of, with a Serb head of state who had been a Royal Yugoslav general but was under direct Nazi oversight. As we have seen, in contrast to Bohemia, a desperate underground struggle raged, extending from Serbia across Yugoslav territory, pitting German, Italian, and Croat forces against Serb nationalists and Communist internationalists.

The second zone was made up of the “independent” states of Slovakia and Croatia, called into life by Berlin with the expectation they would be loyal, co-fascist regimes; and they matched expectations, to say the least. Their ultranationalist leaders were eager to demonstrate—above all to themselves—their personal achievements for “the nation” by becoming even more racist than the state that had created them. In 1941, a Slovak newspaper boasted that the strictest racial laws in Europe were Slovak; at the same time, the brutality of the Ustasha anti-Serb actions shocked even the SS.

The final zone consisted of states that technically remained sovereign members of the international community, yet whose leaders could see from the fate of Yugoslavia and Poland the consequences of defiance. Still, unlike the puppets Croatia or Slovakia, the Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Romanian states did not owe their existence to Nazi Germany, and everything Germany wanted from them had to be negotiated. The lever for Germany in gaining compliance was territory: though less rapacious than Nazi leaders, East European elites also hungered for Lebensraum. Bulgaria hoped to recover ground lost at Neuilly-sur-Seine and wrench away disputed lands from Greece and Yugoslavia. Hungary wanted back everything it had lost at Trianon. Romania desired the return of lands it had lost in 1940, when parts of northern Transylvania went to Hungary in the second Vienna award (at the insistence of Hitler and Mussolini), and Bessarabia and Bukovina fell to the Soviet Union. These three states knew that Germany as the regional hegemon could make their aspirations become a reality.

Yet from 1941, German diplomats increasingly insisted that the governments of East Central Europe must fulfill a prime wish of their state. They should identify and segregate their Jewish populations, place them under racial laws, and deport them to German-controlled territories in Poland for a fate loosely described as “work in the east.”

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Filed under Bulgaria, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, labor, migration, military, nationalism, philosophy, Poland, religion, Romania, Slovakia, USSR, war, Yugoslavia

by | 4 November 2024 · 4:26 pm

Early Marxists vs. Nationalists

From From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe, by John Connelly (Princeton University Press, 2020), Kindle pp. 270-271):

For Marxists then and later, nationality was a secondary form of identity: nations rose with capitalism and would disappear when capitalism gave way to socialism. And even while they existed, nations had no value as such; nationhood was ephemeral and unsubstantial, not a lasting site of human identity.

Still, Marx and Engels were not non-national; they were culturally German and despised the small peoples who hindered the consolidation of large, “historical” nations like France, Germany, and Italy. Marx ridiculed the idea that the insignificant Czechs, living at the heart of a dynamic Germany, could have a separate state, and Engels wrote that in every corner of Europe, one encountered the “ruins” of peoples, ready to side with reaction against “historical” peoples with their missions to humankind: Scots against English, Bretons against French, Basques against Spaniards, and most recently and tragically, the “barbarian” Czechs and South Slavs against Germans and Hungarians. But Engels had not lost faith. “The next world war,” he wrote in January 1849, “will cause not only reactionary classes and dynasties, but also entire reactionary peoples, to disappear from the face of the earth. And that is also progress.”

As Engels aged, his fury tempered, but he never abandoned the notion that small peoples were “relics.” It was misguided, he wrote in 1866, to think that the “Roumans of Wallachia, who never had a history, nor the energy required to have one, are of equal importance to the Italians who have a history of 2,000 years.” The national movement continued to grow among Czechs, but he still considered them a nuisance, destined to be “absorbed as integral portions into one or the other of those more powerful nations whose greater vitality enabled them to overcome greater obstacles.” Other “remnants of bygone Slavonian peoples” that he mentioned as destined to fade into greater peoples were the Serbs, Croats, Ukrainians, and Slovaks.

The disdain for small peoples extended beyond Marx and Engels to the German socialist elite, to Ferdinand Lassalle, Johann Baptist von Schweitzer, Johann Phillip Becker, Wilhelm Liebknecht, and the left liberal Leopold Sonnemann. Liebknecht, co-founder of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), considered the workers’ movement an “infallible tool to eliminate the nationalities question.” If humans saw their interests in material terms, in their ability to produce wealth and be properly rewarded, who cared what language they spoke? The imperial states were not racist and provided opportunities for Czechs or Poles who rose through education in the state bureaucracies as long as they used the imperial language. If one’s interest was universal culture, why not just use German or Russian? Socialists found no justification in history for the heart of the East European nationalist project: rescuing local vernaculars from the edge of extinction.

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