World War I: Journal Entries

***Gavrilo Princip***

Textbook References: World History, The Human Odyssey: Ch. 25.

More often than not, politicians and diplomats, leaders and kings start wars, not unknown peasants. But on June 28, 1914, with just two bullets, Gavrilo Princip plunged the entire European continent into a bloody war that would change the balance of power in the world forever.

When Gavrilo Princip was born in Serbia on July 13, 1894, his mother was concerned that he would not live through the night. She had been working all day, carrying sixty-pound bundles of hay until the pains of labor forced her to stop. The newborn boy looked small and very frail, and a priest was sent for to name the child before it passed away. The priest called the boy Gavrilo for St. Gabriel. The baby did survive and grew into a quiet young boy.

Gavrilo developed quickly for all his early troubles. He started to walk at nine months, went to school before other boys did, and seemed to be a very thoughtful child. His father was against Gavrilo going to school at all; he needed a shepherd for the fields. At the age of thirteen, having finished his primary education, Gavrilo left his home and traveled to the Serbian capital of Saravejo to attend military school. He was initially very frightened by the large city. His older brother, who had promised to look after him, decided to enter Gavrilo in the merchants school, rather than the military school.

Gavrilo seemed to fit in his new surroundings at first, but then his friends began to tease him, first about his slight build, and then about his future profession as a merchant. Gavrilo retreated into adventure stories of Alexandre Dumas, Sir Walter Scott, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He tried to express himself in poetry, but his desires outweighed his talent and he again grew frus-trated.

In 1911, Gavrilo Princip, now seventeen, joined the secret group called the Young Bosnians. The next year, he participated in a public demonstration against the government authorities in Saravejo and was expelled from school. In defiance, he packed up his things and left for Belgrade. He lived on the streets with friends and continued to read, imagining himself having the adventures in his books. As money and food started to run low, he was forced to sell some of his books, but others he kept as a reminder of what life could be like.

The political atmosphere in Belgrade was becoming more and more aggressive. The Balkan states were preparing for war against the Turkish empire, and Gavrilo Princip, along with other members of the Young Bosnians, tried to join one of the Serbian units forming in the city. When they reached headquarters, Gavrilo was turned down on the spot because of his small build and frail appearance. He traveled closer to the battle lines, hoping a commander would ask him to help, but he was again turned away. Crushed, young Princip was determined to show everyone that it did not take size to fight a war.

On June 28, 1914, as part of a detailed, yet poorly planned, plot, Gavrilo Princip waited on Franz Joseph Street in Sarajevo for Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, to appear in his motorcar. His co-conspirators had failed in an earlier attempt to kill the archduke; Gavrilo swore he would not fail. As the car started down the street, a bit of confusion caused it to stop directly in front of Princip. He stepped forward and fired twice, once at the archduke and another at his wife, Sophie. Not knowing whether he had succeeded or failed, he then turned his gun on himself, but the crowd jostled him, and a police detective dragged him off to headquarters. As he was being led away, Princip swallowed a poison pellet, but it did not kill him.

While in prison, Gavrilo Princip explained his reasons for killing the archduke. He was now a member of the Black Hand, a secret Serbian terrorist society that wanted to unite all the southern Slavs under Serbian rule. They wished to kill the heir to the Hapsburg throne because it was rumored that he would have broken Slavic ties to Serbia.

While it was not just the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand that caused the First World War, at no other time has one person had such a large impact on the start of world conflict. Gavrilo Princip had tried to prove that he was worthy of respect. He proved it by starting one of the bloodiest wars in world history.

Questions:

1. Why did Gavrilo Princip continually try to prove himself to people?
2. Why did Princip kill Archduke Ferdinand?

***A "Blank Check" from the Kaiser***

After lunch, when I again called attention to the seriousness of the situation, the Kaiser authorized me to inform our gracious majesty that we might in this case, as in all other, rely upon Germany's full support. He must, as he said before, first hear what the Imperial Chancellor has to say, but he did not doubt in the least that Herr von Bethmann Hollweg would agree with him. Especially as far as our action against Serbia was concerned. But it was his [William II's] opinion that this action must not be delayed. Russia's attitude will no doubt be hostile, but to this he had been for years prepared, and should a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia be unavoidable, we might be convined that Germany, our old faithful ally, would stand at our side. Russia at the present time was in no way prepared for war, and would think twice before it appealed to arms. But it will certainly set other powers on to the Triple Alliance and add fuel to the fire in the Balkans. He understands perfectly well that His Apostolic Majesty in his well-known love of peace would be reluctant to march into Serbia, but if we had really recognised the necessity of warlike action against Serbia, he [William II] would regret if we did not make use of the present moment, which is all in our favour.

From Outbreak of the World War: The German Documents Collected by Karl Kautsky, Max Montgelas, and Walther Schuecking (eds.) (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1924), p. 76.

Questions:

1. Why did the Austrians need to consult the Germans?
2. Was the check "written" by the Kaiser really blank? Explain.
3. How important for the coming of the war was this meeting? Explain.

***Soldier-Poets View World War I***

Rupert Brooke, "The Soldier"

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped,
made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the Eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given,
Her sights and sounds, dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est"

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines [shells] that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire of lime....
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

Source: Modern British Poetry, ed.
Louis Untermeyer (Harcourt Brace & World, 1964).

Questions:

1. What does Brooke remember about his life in England?
2. In Owen's poem, what weapon of war do the soldiers encounter in the second verse? What do they do? What happens to one of them?

***The Disillusionment of Survivors***

Vera Brittain was a young, upper-class Englishwoman whose fiancé, Roland, was killed in 1915 during World War I just before he was to go on leave to be married. Her brother, Edward, died during the last summer of the war. Brittain, who had served as a volunteer nurse at Millbank Hospital during the war, reflected the disillusionment of survivors in her book, Testament of Youth, a portion of which is excerpted below.

Text reference: Chapter 25, World History, The Human Odyssey.

When the sound of victorious guns burst over London at 11 a.m. on November 11th, 1918, the men and women who looked incredulously into each other’s faces did not cry jubilantly: “We’ve won the War!” They only said: “The War is over.”

At Millbank, I went on automatically washing the dressing bowls in the annex outside my hut. And as I dried the bowls I thought: “It’s come too late for me. Somehow I knew, even at Oxford, that it would. Why couldn’t it have ended rationally, as it might have ended, in 1916, instead of all that trumpet-blowing against a negotiated peace, and the ferocious talk of secure civilians about marching to Berlin? It’s come five months too late—or is it three years? It might have ended last June, and let Edward, at least, be saved! Only five months—it’s such a little time, when Roland died nearly three years ago.” With aching persistence my thoughts went back to the dead and the strange irony of their fates—to Roland, gifted, ardent, ambitious, who had died without glory in the conscientious performance of a routine job; to Victor and Geoffrey, gentle and diffident, who, conquering nature by resolution, had each gone down bravely in a big “show”; and finally to Edward, musical, serene, a lover of peace, who had fought courageously through so many battles and at last had been killed while leading a vital counter-attack in one of the few decisive actions of the War.

All those with whom I had really been intimate were gone; not one remained to share with me the heights and the depths of my memories. As the years went by and youth departed and remembrance grew dim, a deeper and ever deeper darkness would cover the young men who were once my contemporaries.

For the first time I realised, with all that full realisation meant, how completely everything that had hitherto made up my life had vanished with Edward and Roland, with Victor and Geoffrey. The War was over; a new age was beginning; but the dead were dead and would never return.

Meanwhile in Paris, the nucleus of a wild, international, pleasure-crazy crowd, the Big Four were making a desert and calling it peace. When I thought about these negotiations at all—they did not seem to me to represent at all the kind of “victory” that the young men whom I had loved would have regarded as sufficient justification for their lost lives. Although they would no doubt have welcomed the idea of a League of Nations, Roland and Edward certainly had not died in order that Clemenceau should outwit Lloyd George, and both of them bamboozle President Wilson, and all three combine to make the beaten, blockaded enemy pay the cost of the War. For me the “Huns” were then, and always, the patient, stoical Germans whom I had nursed in France, and I did not like to read of them being deprived of their Navy and their Colonies, and their coal-fields in Alsace-Lorraine and the Saar Valley, while their children starved and froze for lack of food and fuel. So, when the text of the Treaty of Versailles was published in May, after I had returned to Oxford, I deliberately refrained from reading it; I was beginning already to suspect that my generation had been deceived, its young courage cynically exploited, its idealism betrayed, and I did not want to know the details of that betrayal. At an inter-collegiate debate a Hindu student remarked that here, at any rate, was “the Peace that passeth all understanding”—and I left it at that.

Knox Mellon, Jr., and Miriam U. Chrisman, eds., Like It Was, Like It Is: People and Issues in the Western World (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1972), pp. 427-428.

Questions:

1. Why did Vera Brittain feel that World War I had ended “too late for me”? What is the difference between crying, “We’ve won the War!” and saying, “the War is over”?
2. What was Brittain’s attitude toward the Germans, the “beaten, blockaded enemy,” who had killed all those to whom she had been close? How would you explain her attitude?
3. What was there about the war and the peace that followed it that might have led Brittain to feel that her generation “had been deceived, its young courage cynically exploited, its idealism betrayed”?

***All Quiet on the Western Front***

In one part of the trench I suddenly run into Himmelstoss. We dive into the same dug-out. Breathless, we are all lying one beside the other waiting for the charge.

When we run out again, although I am very excited, I suddenly think: "Where's Himmelstoss?" Quickly I jump back into the dug-out and find him with a small scratch lying in a corner pretending to be wounded. His face looks sullen. He is in a panic; he is new to it, too. But it makes me mad that the young recruits should be out there and he here.
"Get out!" I spit.

He does not stir, his lips quiver, his moustache twitches.

"Out!" I repeat.

He draws up his legs, crouches back against the wall, and shows his teeth like a cur.

I seize him by the arm and try to pull him up. He barks.

That is too much for me. I grab him by the neck and shake him like a sack, his head jerks from side to side.

"You lump, will you get out--you hound, you skunk, sneak out of it, would you?"

His eye becomes glassy, I knock his head against the wall--"You cow"--I kick him in the ribs--"You swine"--I push him toward the door and shove him out head first.

Another wave of our attack has just come up. A lieutenant is with them. He sees us and yells: "Forward, forward, join in, follow." And the word of command does what all my banging could not. Himmelstoss hears the order, looks round him as if awakened, and follows on.

I come after and watch him go over. Once more he is the smart Himmelstoss of the parade-ground, he has even outstripped the lieutenant and is far ahead.

Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades--words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.

Our faces are encrusted, our thoughts are devastated, we are weary to death; when the attack comes we shall have to strike many of the men with our fists to waken them and make them come with us--our eyes burnt, our hands torn, our knees bleed, our elbows raw.

How long has it been? Weeks--months--years? Only days. We see time pass in the colourless faces of the dying. We cram food into us, we run, we throw, we shoot, we kill, we lie about, we are feeble and spent, and nothing supports us but the knowledge that there are still feebler, still more spent, still more helpless ones there who, with staring eyes, look upon us as gods that escape death many times.

In the few hours of rest we teach them. "There, see that waggle-top? That's a mortar coming. Keep down, it will go clean over. But if it comes this way, then run for it. You can run from a mortar."

We sharpen their ears to the...hardly audible buzz of the smaller shells that are not easily disinguishable. They must pick them out from the general din by their insect-like hum--we explain to them that these are far more dangerous than the big ones that can be heard long beforehand.

We show them how to take cover from aircraft, how to simulate a dead man when one is overrun in an attack, how to time hand-grenades so that they explode before hitting the ground; we teach them to fling themselves into holes as quick as lightning before the shells with instantaneous fuses; we show them how to clean up a trench with a handful of bombs; we explain the difference between the fuse-length of the enemy bombs and our own; we put them wise to the sound of gas shells;--show them all the tricks that can save them from death.

They listen, they are docile--but when it begins again, in their excitement they do everything wrong.

Haie Westhus drags off with a great wound in his back through which the lung pulses at every breath. I can only press his hand; "It's all up, Paul," he groans and he bites his arm because of the pain.

We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run with their two feet cut off...a lance-corporal crawls a mile and a half on his hands dragging his smashed knee after him...we see men without mouths, without jaws, without faces....The sun goes down, night comes, the shells whine, life is at an end.

Still the little piece of convulsed earth in which we lie is held. We have yielded no more than a few hundred yards of it as a prize to the enemy. But on every yard there lies a dead man.

Questions:

1. How does Himmelstoss behave in the trench? What makes him move out?
2. How does the arrival of new recruits make experienced soldiers like Baumer (the narrator) feel?
3. What reason does the narrator offer for the soldiers' willingness to endure? Does he really believe in it? Explain.
4. What details in this passage show the horrors of trench warfare?

***The Beginning of Tank Warfare***

The tank was an armored vehicle that could move across rough ground. A British army officer, Ernest Swinton, first conceived of the idea. The first tank--a British model--appeared in 1916. Its caterpillar tracks enabled it to cross rough terrain. Guns were mounted on its sides. "Male" tanks used two 57-millimeter guns to attack enemy machine gun positions. "Female" tanks carried four machine guns aimed chiefly at enemy infantry.

These first tanks, used in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, were not very effective. A new model, the Mark IV, had more success in November 1917 at the Battle of Cambrai. Four hundred tanks spearheaded an advance that drove five miles into the enemy lines, and with relatively few casualties.

The French soon followed with their own tanks. They were less effective, however. The Germans were contemptuous of the new tanks and considered them a sign of weakness. However, they, too, finally got around to producing their own tank--the A7V. It was unstable, required a crew of eighteen, and saw little action, however.

By 1918, the British had developed a Mark V model that had a more powerful engine and could be more easily maneuvered. Tanks, now used in large numbers and coordinated with infantry and artillery, became effective instruments in pushing back the retreating German army.

The tank came too late to have a great effect on the outcome of World War I. The lesson, however, was not lost on those who realized the tank's potential for creating a whole new kind of warfare. In World War II, lightning attacks that depended on tank columns and massive air power enabled armies to cut quickly across battle lines and encircle enemy armies. It was a far cry from the trench warfare of World War I.

Questions:

1. Which country developed the first tank?
2. Why were the German contemptuous of the new tanks?
3. What impact did the development of tanks have on warfare?

***The Red Baron***

His bright red Fokker triplane made him famous as "the Red Baron"--Germany's top flying ace in World War I. The model of a young German officer, Manfred von Richthofen was a hero to millions in Germany and a daring figure even to his enemies. In his short career, he was credited with shooting down 80 Allied planes: 79 British and one Belgian.

The son of an aristocratic Prussian military family, Richthofen was expected to be a professional soldier like his father. As a boy, he became an expert hunter and marksman. He went away to military school at age 11, then to the Royal Military Academy. Only a fair student, he was a good athlete and soon was eager for a military career. In 1911 he joined the Uhlans, a prestigious cavalry unit in the German army. When war broke out, he was bored with his first duties and asked for a transfer. In 1915 he was assigned to the air service, where officers flew only as observers, with ordinary soldiers as their pilots.

After some months of this duty, Richthofen decided to be a flier himself. He learned quickly and his next ambition was to win glory as a fighter pilot. He especially wanted the official medal known as the Blue Max, given for shooting down 16 enemy planes. He won the medal early in 1917 and went on to break all records for fighter pilots. German officials immediately began to use their new hero in a propaganda campaign, which Richthofen hated.

Soon he returned to action, taking command of the air combat group known as "Richthofen's Flying Circus." (One pilot in the group was Hermann Goering, who would later head Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe.) Richthofen's bright red airplane was known everywhere. After being wounded in the summer of 1917, he became quieter, depressed by the way the war was going for Germany. He spent time mainly with his dog, a Great Dane named Moritz.

In April 1918, the Red Baron himself was shot down over France as his squadron joined a frantic aerial dogfight. He was not quite 26 years old. Allied officers and French villagers gave him a full military funeral near where his plane had crashed to earth. One wreath, from the Australian squadron read, "To our gallant and worthy foe."

Questions:

1. How and why did Richthofen become a professional soldier?
2. As a pilot, what were Richthofen's ambitions?
3. Though he was their enemy, Allied soldiers honored Richthofen at his death. What does this indicate about attitudes toward fighting and soldiering in World War I? Do you think views of war have changed since then? Explain.

***French Troops Mutiny***

In the spring of 1917, after two and a half years of relentless slaughter on the western front, morale began to buckle in the French army. News of revolution in Russia may have helped trigger a series of mutinies, but the underlying cause was simply profound war-weariness. Only by a combination of harsh crackdowns and conciliatory promises was discipline restored, narrowly averting a general collapse of the French war effort. These extracts from a French officer's diary describe something of what happened.

1 June

The spirit of the troops is turning sour. There is talk of mutiny and of troops refusing to go to the lines. The "bad hats" amongst them are more vociferous.

3 June

All the companies are in a state of turmoil; the men are receiving letters from friends informing them of the present spirit and urging them not to march; the ringleaders are becoming insolent; others are trying to influence their comrades. My company does not escape this plague: a squad, under the sway of its corporal, refuses to fall in, the men claiming that they are ill. Just as we move to take them to the guardroom, they run off in the fields and insult the N.C.O.s. Some only return the following day.

I have five court-martialled, to get rid of the worst. Alas! that's just what many want--a motive to be court-martialled, so as to spend a year in prison; they are counting on some future amnesty and, during their stay in prison, they will be far from the Front. Once again, it will be the good who will go and get themselves killed and the scoundrels who will be protected.

In addition, a law has just increased the men's pay: first payment today. These men who are getting 20-20 francs rush to spend them on drink; drunkenness all along the line. Command becomes difficult.

5 June

I sit in judgment at the court-martial. What a procession of rogues! How stupid they seem in front of their judges. In their company they tried to be smart, insulted their superiors, tried to get their chums to desert; here they are now, sheepish, not daring to look up, full of repentance....

The Army is becoming more and more a prey to this ill-feeling; those on leave on their return home from the front, are assailed by agitators who, going as far as uncoupling the trains, urge them not to return. I must go to Meaux to re-establish order.

Questions:

1. How did many of the soldiers avoid their duties?
2. Why was the idea of prison so appealing to many of the soldiers?
3. What is a court-martial?
4. According to the French officer, describe the behavior of the "troublemakers" in court.

***Horsemeat in Vienna***

As in Germany, the prolonged war made increasing demands on the citizens at home in Austria-Hungary. Anna Eisenmenger, whose prewar status was assured through her husband's work as a Vienna doctor, was responsible for feeding a family of four children, a son-in-law, a grandson, and an aunt. Toward the end of the war, her husband and one son had died, the son-in-law and two other sons were invalids, and her daughter and aunt were sick from malnutrition. Eisenmenger resorted to hoarding food--an illegal act--bartering away her dead husband's tobacco, and did what was necessary to survive.

Ten dekagrammes [3.5 ounces] of horse-flesh per head are to be given out today for the week. The cavalry horses held in reserve by the military authorities are being slaughtered for lack of fodder, and the people of Vienna are for a change to get a few mouthfuls of meat of which they have so long been deprived. Horse flesh!...My loathing of it is based, I believe, not on a physical but on a psychological prejudice.

I overcame my repugnance, rebuked myself for being sentimental, and left the house. A soft, steady rain was falling....As I left the house before seven o'clock and the meat distribution did not begin until nine o'clock, I hoped to get well to the front of the queue....

I estimated the crowd waiting here for a meagre mid-day meal at two thousand at least. Hundreds of women had spent the night here in order to be among the first and make sure of getting their bit of meat....No one seemed to mind the rain, although many were already wet through. They passed the time chattering, and the theme was a familiar one: What have you had to eat? What are you going to eat? One could sense an atmosphere of mistrust in these conversations: they were all careful not to say too much or to betray anything that might get them in trouble.

At length the sale began. Slowly, infinitely slowly, we moved forward. The most determined, who had spent the night outside the gates of the hall, displayed their booty to the waiting crowd: a ragged, quite freshly slaughtered piece of meat with the characteristic yellow fat. [Others] alarmed those standing at the back by telling them that there was only a very small supply of meat and not half the people waiting would get a share of it. The crowd became very uneasy and impatient, and before the police on guard could prevent it, those standing in front organized an attack on the hall....Everyone seized whatever he could lay his hands on, and in a few moments all the eatables had vanished. In the confusion stands were overturned, and the police forced back the aggressors and closed the gates. The crowds waiting outside, many of whom had been there all night and were soaked through, angrily demanded their due, whereupon the mounted police made a little charge, provoking a wild panic and much screaming and cursing. At length, I reached home, depressed and disgusted.

Source: From Anna Eisenmenger, Blockade: The Diary of an Austrian Middle-Class Woman, 1914-1924, trans. Winifred Ray (New York: Ray Long and Richard R. Smith, 1932), pp. 63-68.

Questions:

1. Why do you think Anna Eisenmenger had a psychological prejudice against eating horse meat?
2. Describe the scene at the distribution hall.
3. Why do you think people were cautious about what they were saying to one another?
4. What happened as the horse meat was passed out to the people?

***Two Voices of Peacemaking: Wilson and Clemenceau***

When the Allied powers met at Paris in January 1919, it soon became apparent that the victors had different opinions on the kind of peace they expected. The first excerpt is from a speech of Woodrow Wilson in which the American president presented his idealistic goals for a peace based on justice and reconcilliation. In the second selection, notice the French viewpoint, and how it differs from the Wilsonian perspective.

Woodrow Wilson, May 26, 1917

We are fighting for the liberty, the self-government, and the undictated development of all peoples, and every feature of the settlement that concludes this war must be conceived and executed for that purpose. Wrongs must first be righted and then adequate safeguards must be created to prevent their being committed again....

No people must be forced under sovereignty under which it does not wish to live. No territory must change hands except for the purpose of securing those who inhabit it a fair chance of life and liberty. No indemnities must be insisted on except those that constitute payment for manifest wrongs done. No readjustments of power must be made except such as will tend to secure the future peace of the world and the future welfare and happiness of its peoples.

And then the free peoples of the world must draw together in some common covenant, some genuine and practical cooperation that will in effect combine their force to secure peace and justice in the dealings of nations with one another.

Georges Clemenceau, Grandeur and Misery of Victory

War and peace, with their strong contrasts, alternate against a common background. For the catastrophe of 1914 the Germans are responsible. Only a professional liar would deny this....

I have sometimes penetrated into the sacred cave of the Germanic cult, which is, as every one knows, the Bierhaus[beer hall]. A great aisle of massive humanity where there accumulate, amid the fumes of tobacco and beer, the popular rumblings of a nationalism upheld by the sonorous brasses blaring to the heavens the supreme voice of Germany. Deutschland ueber alles! Germany above everything! Men, women, and children, all petrified in reverence before the diving stoneware pot, brows furrowed with irrepressible power, eyes lost in a dream of infinity, mouths twisted by the intensity of willpower, drink in long draughts the celestial hope of vague expectations. These only remain to be realized presently when the chief marked out by Destiny shall have given the word. There you have the ultimate framework of an old but childish race.

Questions:

1. According to Wilson, what was the purpose of the peace settlement?
2. What does Wilson mean by a common covenant?
3. What is Clemenceau's view of the German people?
4. How does his speech primarily differ from Wilson's speech?

***Ten Days That Shook the World***

Text Reference, Chapter 25, World History, The Human Odyssey.

John Reed was an American journalist who helped found the American Communist Labor party. Accused of treason, he fled the United States and went to Russia. In Ten Days That Shook the World, Reed left an eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution. He considered V.I. Lenin the great hero of the Bolshevik success.

It was just 8:40 when a thundering wave of cheers announced the entrance of the presidium, with Lenin--great Lenin--among them. A short, stocky figure, with a big head set down in his shoulders, bald and bulging. Little eyes, a snubbish nose, wide, generous mouth, and a heavy chin. Dressed in shabby clothes, his trousers much too long for him. Unimpressive, to be the idol of a mob, loved and revered as perhaps few leaders in history have been....

Now Lenin, gripping the edge of the reading stand, letting his little winking eyes travel over the crowd as he stood there waiting, apparently oblivious to the long-rolling ovation, which lasted several minutes. When it finished, he said simply, "We shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order!" Again that overwhelming human roar.

"The first thing is the adoption of practical measures to realize peace....We shall offer peace to the people of all the warring countries upon the basis of the Soviet terms--no annexations, no indemnities, and the right of self-determination of peoples....This proposal of peace will meet with resistance on the part of the imperialist governments--we don't fool ourselves on that score. But we hope that revolution will soon break out in all the warring countries; that is why we address ourselves especially to the workers of France, England and Germany....

"The revolution of November 6th and 7th," he ended, "has opened the era of the Socialist Revolution....The labour movement, in the name of peace and Socialism, shall win, and fulfill its destiny...."

There was something quiet and powerful in all this, which stirred the souls of men. It was understandable why people believed when Lenin spoke.

Questions:

1. Did John Reed agree or disagree with Lenin? Explain.
2. How do you know that Reed's account of Lenin is biased?

***Two Responses to the Peasants’ Urgent Land-Hunger***

“Land and Liberty” was the slogan of the Russian Revolution, and the peasants were eager to take all the land they could. The first selection, below, was among the earliest proclamations issued by the Russian Provisional Government in 1917, while Prince L’vov was still their leader. Kerensky, who soon took over leadership, was at this time minister of justice. The second selection is the account, not much later, by one of the locals (as it happened, a Bolshevik) asked by the Provisional Government to do some of the “preparatory work” called for in the first selection.

Text reference: Chapter 25, World History, The Human Odyssey.

A. THE GOVERNMENT DECLARATION OF MARCH 19

The war and the downfall of the old regime have brought the most serious economic problems of Russia to the fore.

Land reform—the cherished dream of many generations of the entire agricultural population of the country—constitutes the basic demand in the programs of all the democratic parties.

The land question cannot be resolved by means of any [arbitrary] seizures. Violence and robbery are the worst and most dangerous expedients in the realm of economic relations. Only enemies of the people can push them onto such a perilous course, from which there can be no reasonable outcome. The land question must be resolved by means of law, passed by the representatives of the people.

Proper consideration and passage of a land law is impossible without serious preparatory work.

On the basis of the above considerations, the Provisional Government has resolved:
1) To recognize the urgency of the preparation and elaboration of materials on the land question.
2) To entrust this [task] to the Ministry of Agriculture.
3) To form a Land Committee in the Ministry of Agriculture for the purpose indicated.
4) To direct the Minister of Agriculture to submit to the Government at the earliest moment a plan for the establishment of such a Committee together with an estimate of the funds necessary for its work.

Prince L’vov, Minister-President [and other ministers] March 19, 1917

B. THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE PEASANTS

…As volost commissar I received through the uezd Soviet of Workers’ Deputies instructions from the Kerensky government to organize the volost committees. I called a general meeting in order to discuss the matter and make my report. [The peasants] shouted at me: “What are you talking about a committee for? Better tell us about the land; can we take it away from the landlords? Never mind your committees.”

I then told the gathering that my own party [Bolshevik] looks at the question in this way: “Take the land and be done with it! Don’t be waiting for them to let you have it. Kerensky’s flunkies are only saying they will give it to you, but actually they won’t give you anything.”

“And may we take the lake, too?”

That lake was surrounded by the fields and belonged to the Catholic bishop; one could not even bathe in it without paying for it.

“You may,” I answered.

“Hear that, Uncle Mikhei? The chief says we can take everything right away.”

“Go on,” said the old man; “you might get us into trouble.”

“What nonsense are you speaking, Uncle? The chief surely knows better. He is one of those Bolsheviks whose law is, take everything.”

And so the rumor went out to all the volosts of the Rezhitsa Uezd that the Ruzhinskaia volost had resolved to confiscate the land, water, and forests from the landlords and monasteries, and that their chief had explained to them that there was such a law. In a mighty wave the excitement spread all over Latgalia ….In some places there were armed clashes between the peasants and the government.

Great Issues in Western Civilization, Volume II, Third Edition (New York: Random House, 1976), pp. 516-518.

Questions:

1. Summarize the difference between the government’s approach and the peasants’ and Bolsheviks’ approach to land reform.
2. Taking both short-term and long-term results into account, what are the advantages and the disadvantages of each approach?
3. Had you been the leader of the Provisional Government, what course of action concerning land reform (other than the two described) would you have taken, considering the circumstances in Russia at the time? Explain your reasoning.

***Using Any Means, Lawful Or Unlawful***

The International Workingmen’s Association, established in London in 1864 and dissolved in 1876, was followed by the Second International, founded in 1889 and dissolved in 1914 as member socialist parties gave their patriotic support to their home governments in World War I. The Third International, also known as the Comintern, was founded by Lenin in 1919 to bring about world revolution. Its program, part of which is reproduced below, was laid out in 1920. The Comintern was dissolved in 1943 as a gesture of reassurance toward Russia’s capitalist allies in World War II.

Text reference: Chapters 26 and 27, World History, The Human Odyssey.

The Communist International makes its aim to put up an armed struggle for the overthrow of the International bourgeoisie and to create an Internation[al] Soviet Republic as transition stage to the complete abolition of the State. The Communist International considers the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only means for the liberation of humanity from the horrors of capitalism. The Communist International considers the Soviet form of government as the historically evolved form of this dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Communist International once and forever breaks with the traditions of the Second International which in reality only recognized the white race. The Communist International makes it its task to emancipate the workers of the entire world. The ranks of the Communist International fraternally unite men of all colors: white, yellow, and black—the toilers of the entire world.

For all countries, even for most free “legal” and “peaceful” ones in the sense of a lesser acuteness in the class struggle, the period has arrived, when it has become absolutely necessary for every Communist party to join systematically lawful and unlawful work, lawful and unlawful organization.

[Since all governments aim to destroy communism, no matter what they say, the necessary conclusion is]…an immediate formation by all lawful Communist parties of unlawful organizations for systematic unlawful work, for their complete preparation at any moment to thwart any steps on the part of the bourgeoisie. It is especially necessary to carry on unlawful work in the army, navy, and police, as, after the imperialist slaughter, all the governments in the world are becoming afraid of the national armies, open to all peasants and workingmen, and they are setting up in secret all kinds of select military organizations recruited from the bourgeoisie.

On the other hand, it is also necessary, in all cases without exception, not to limit oneself to unlawful work, but to carry on also lawful work overcoming all difficulties, founding a lawful press and lawful organizations under the most diverse, and in case of need, frequently changing names. This is now being done by the illegal Communist parties in Finland, in part in Germany, Poland, Latvia, etc. It is thus that the I.W.W. [Industrial Workers of the World) in America should act, as well as all the lawful Communist parties at present…

In particular, the situation of the Labor press in the more advanced capitalist countries shows with special force both the falsity of liberty and equality under the bourgeois democracy, and the necessity of a systematic blending of the lawful and unlawful work. Both in vanquished Germany and in victorious America all the powers of the governmental apparatus of the bourgeoisie, and all the tricks of its financial kings are being set in motion in order to deprive the workingmen of their press; prosecutions and arrests (or murder by means of hired murderers) of the editors, denial of mailing privilege, curtailing of paper supply, etc. Moreover, the information necessary for a daily paper is in the hands of bourgeois telegraph agencies, and the advertisements, without which a large paper cannot pay its way, are at the “free” disposal of capitalists. On the whole, by means of deception, the pressure of capital, and the bourgeois government, the bourgeoisie deprives the revolutionary proletariat of its press.

For the struggle against this state of things the Communist parties must create a new type of periodical press for extensive circulation among the workmen:

1. Lawful publications, in which the Communists without calling themselves such and without mentioning their connection with the party, learn to utilize the slightest liberty allowed by the laws, as the Bolsheviks did at the “time of the Tsar,” after 1905.
2. Illegal sheets, although of the smallest dimensions and irregularly published, but reproduced in most of the printing offices by the workingman (in secret, or if the movement has grown stronger by means of a revolutionary seizure of the printing offices) giving the proletariat undiluted revolutionary information and the revolutionary mottoes.

Without a Communist press the preparation for the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible.

“Theses and Statutes of the Third (Communist) International, 1920,” in The Communist Conspiracy: Strategy and Tactics of World Communism, Part I, Section C (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, May 29, 1956), pp. 25–26, 35–36.

Questions:

1. Why do you think the Third International broke with the tradition of the Second, which “only recognized the white race”?
2. Why does the Communist International insist on “the necessity of a systematic blending of the lawful and unlawful work,” particularly in establishing a Communist press?
3. Considering the programs of the Nazi Party and the Comintern, which do you think would have appeared as the greater threat to the western democracies after World War I? Why?

***Lenin Argues for the Necessity of a Secret and Elite Party of Professional Revolutionaries***

Social democratic parties in western Europe had mass memberships and generally democratic structures of organization. In this passage from What Is to Be Done? (1902), Lenin explains why the autocratic political conditions of Russia demanded a different kind of organization for the Russian Social Democratic Party. Lenin's ideas became the guiding principles of Bolshevik organization.

I assert that it is far more difficult [for government police] to unearth a dozen wise men than a hundred fools. This position I will defend, no matter how much you instigate the masses against me for my "anti-democratic" views, etc. As I have stated repeatedly, by "wise men," in connection with organization, I mean professional revolutionaries, irrespective of whether they have developed from among students or working men. I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organization of leaders maintaining continuity; (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more urgent the need for such an organization, and the more solid this organization must be...; (3) that such an organization must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity; (4) that in an autocratic state [such as Russia], the more we confine the membership of such an organization to people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity and who have been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to unearth the organization; and (5) the greater will be the number of people from the working class and from other social classes who will be able to join the movement and perform active work in it....

The only serious organization principle for the active workers of our movement should be the strictest secrecy, the strictest selection of members, and the training of professional revolutionaries.

Questions:

1. What does Lenin mean by "professional revolutionaries"?
2. Why are such revolutionaries especially needed in Russia?
3. How does Lenin reconcile his antidemocratic views to the goal of aiding the working class?

***Trotsky Urges the Use of Terror***

Leon Trotsky led the Red Army to victory in the brutal and extensive civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918. He became a major opponent, and later a victim, of Stalin. In this 1920 discussion, he explains how terror and intimidation must be used to achieve communist revolution. He contends that capitalist society itself came to power through the use of force and that only force will allow the working class to establish its dominance. He argues that there is no real moral argument against the use of terror and violence. In particular, he directs his remarks toward liberals, who thought that social change could be achieved by parliamentary means, and against the German Marxist socialists, the Kautskians, who had argued that historical forces would bring about the revolution of the working class without the use of violence. These words of Trotsky help explain the fear of Bolshevism that swept across much of Europe immediately after World War I, a fear right-wing politicians manipulated during the 1920s and 1930s.

The problem of revoultion, as of war, consists in breaking the will of the foe, forcing him to capitulate and to accept the conditions of the conqueror. The will, of course, is a fact of the physical world, but in contradistinction to a meeting, a dispute, or a congress, the revolution carries out its object by means of the employment of material resources--though to a lesser degree than war. The bourgeoisie itself conquered power by means of revolts, and consolidated it by the civil war. In the peace period, it retains power by means of a system of repression. As long as class society, founded on the most deep-rooted antagonisms, continues to exist, repression remains a necessary means of breaking the will of the opposing side.

Even if, in one country or another, the dictatorship of the proletariat grew up within the external framework of democracy, this would by no means avert the civil war. The question as to who is to rule the country, i.e., of the life or death of the bourgeoisie, will be decided on either side, not by references to the paragraphs of the constitution, but by the employment of all forms of violence....

The question of the form of repression, or of its degree, of course, is not one of "principle." It is a question of expediency....

...Terror can be very efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the scene of operations. Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both internationally and internally. A victorious war, generally speaking, destroys only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the remainder and breaking their will. The revolution works in the same way: it kills individuals, and intimidates thousands. In this sense, the Red Terror is not distinguishable from the armed insurrection, the direct continuation of which it represents. The State terror of a revolutionary class can be condemned "morally" only by a man who, as a principle, rejects (in words) every form of violence whatsoever--consequently, every war and every uprising. For this one has to be merely and simply a hypocritical Quaker.

"But, in that case, in what do your tactics differ from the tactics of Tsarism?" we are asked by the high priests of Liberalism and Kautskianism.

You do not understand this, holy men? We shall explain it to you. The terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. The gendarmarie of Tsarism throttled the workers who were fighting for the Socialist order. Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords, capitalists, and generals who are striving to restore the capitalist order. Do you grasp this--distinction? Yes? For us Communists it is quite sufficient.

Questions:

1. How does Trotsky's justification of terror compare with that associated with the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution?
2. How might the circumstances of the Russian civil war have led Trotsky to these views?
3. Do you agree that the communist terror advocated by Trotsky differed from the repressive police policies of the czars?