War, Peace, and the Ideologies of the Twentieth Century

Author(s): James Kurth

Source: Current History, Vol. 98, No. 624, War and Peace, 1914–1999 (JANUARY 1999), pp.
3-8
Published by: University of California Press
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 CURRENT HISTORY
January 1 999

Born in war and shaped by competing ideologies, the " short twentieth
century " that Current History has chronicled will stand as one of the
bloodiest in history. James Kurth surveys the complex interplay between
war and ideology that has marked the last 85 years.

War, Peace, and the Ideologies of the

Twentieth Century
James Kurth

within the aftermath of the French Revolution of

Aron once termed this the "century of total the eighteenth century. The ideological system was
war." Recently, at its closing, Harvard politi-
The war." Aron French once Recently, termed political at its this philosopher closing, the "century Harvard Raymond of politi- total
also multipolar.
cal scientist Samuel Huntington has referred to it as The central ideology at the beginning of the
the century of ideological conflict. These two char- twentieth century was liberalism. In the economic
acterizations - total war and ideological conflict- arena, this meant free-market capitalism; in the
are integrally connected. Indeed, the twentieth political it meant liberal democracy. The great pow-
century's distinctive character was shaped by the ers most representative of liberalism and its capi-
interaction between the two. Historians in the next talist and democratic affiliates were the United
century will likely look back in amazement at these States, Britain, and France, the Western great pow-
two phenomena and their conjunction, for in the ers of the international system.
history of the world there has rarely been anything Contending with liberalism on the right was con-
like this. Perhaps the closest comparison is with the servatism. Economically, this meant state-imposed
"crisis of the seventeenth century," when during the constraints on free-market capitalism; politically it
Thirty Years War and its unsetded aftermath (from meant state-imposed constraints on democratic par-
1648 to about 1689 - the year of the Glorious Rev- ties. The great powers that most represented con-
olution in Britain), the peoples of Europe were servatism and its authoritarian affiliates were
totally disrupted by religious or theological con- Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Japan, the
flicts. eastern great powers of the international system.
Liberalism's contender on the left was socialism.
The peace before the storm On the economic side, this meant state-ownership
At the beginning of the twentieth century, of major industries and utilities; on the political it
Europe was home to the world's five great powers: meant what was termed "social democracy." Of
Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and course, at the beginning of the twentieth century, no
Russia. To the far west and to the far east of Europe great powers represented socialism and its affiliates.
were two rising great powers, the United States and In the United States, as had been famously
Japan. The international system was multipolar. observed by analysts from Alexis de Tocqueville
Several great ideologies or "isms" also marked (Democracy in America ) to Werner Sombart (Why
the beginning of the century. Their identities were Is There No Socialism in the United States?), there
not as clearly defined as those of the great powers, was neither conservatism nor socialism in the Euro-
but most were products of the Industrial Revolution pean sense. In America, there were really only vari-
of the nineteenth century, as it had developed eties of liberals, be they called Democrats or
Republicans.
James Kurth is a professor of political science at Swarthmore The three ideologies of liberalism, conservatism,
College. and socialism had developed during the nineteenth

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4 • CURRENT HISTORY • January 1999

century as responses, first to the French Revolution
and then to the Industrial Revolution. Each had its
main base in an industrializing economy. Industry
and finance formed the base of liberalism (and cap-
italism). Conservatism's base was in agriculture,
most obviously landlords but also on occasion (in
regions of France, Germany, and Austria) indepen-
dent farmers. Industrial workers comprised radi-
calism's base.
This tripartite division was not wholly in equi-
librium, with the relationship between the three
parts shifting. The progress of industrialization saw
a concomitant increase in the power of industry and
finance and decrease in the power of agriculture. At
the same time, however, the growth of industry
induced growth in the number and power of indus-
trial workers, which steadily increased the natural
base for socialism. This produced some rather odd
conjunctions and coalitions, such as the
Lib-Lab (Liberal and Labour) coalition in
Britain, the Radical-Socialist Party in
France, and conservative-initiated social
welfare programs in Germany and Aus-
socialism seemed
tria-Hungary.
Within an international context of the path to the
peace and progress, the natural, logical future.
development of this ideological system
might have led, in a mature industrial
society, to a pattern defined by one ideology and
political party based on pro-capital positions, and
another ideology and political party based on pro-
labor views. But since labor had more voters than
capitalists, the pro-capital party had to add an ide-
ological element to attract other voters. This ele-
ment could be variously pro-religion (Catholicism
in France), pro-nation (nationalism in Germany),
pro-empire (imperialism in Britain), or against
some particular group (anti-Semitism in Austria).
The radicalization of ideologies
The First World War was not caused by ideology
(although some simplistic analyses have blamed
nationalism or imperialism), but rather by the pecu-
liar form that the balance of power and the balance
of trade had taken by the beginning of the twenti-
eth century. The real cause of World War I was the
inability of the old power and trade balances to
absorb the great and rapid rise in the military and
economic power of Germany after its unification in
1871. Bismarck had tried to use conservative ideol-
ogy (in the form of the Three Emperors League
between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia) to
finesse Germany's rise in power, but this effort
quickly fell apart after Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissed
him in 1890.
Once the "Great War" started, however, it had
profound consequences for the existing ideologies.
In the course of the four years of bloodletting, each
ideology became a starker, harsher, more extreme
version of itself. Conservatism became nationalism
(especially in Germany and France), liberalism
became democracy (especially in the United States,
with President Woodrow Wilson's portrayal of
World War I as a great struggle between democracy
and autocracy), and part of socialism became com-
munism (especially in Russia, with Lenin portray-
ing the war as a major struggle between competing
imperialisms).
Had the Great War remained European, it would
have ended in a German victory, brought about by
Germany's defeat of Russia in the east in 1917 and
the German offensive in the west in the
spring of 1918. The development of
In the summer of European history would have issued in
German hegemony over the European
1940. . .national
continent. Only because of the United
States entry into the war, and the mil-
lions of fresh American troops arriving
on the Western front in 1918, was the
German offensive in the spring turned
back and then reversed with the Allied
offensive in the fall.
The victory of the Western nations appeared to
validate their ideology of liberalism, including
democracy and capitalism. This was the case not
only in nations of the West, but initially also those
in the East, where discredited monarchies were at
first replaced by apparent democracies. But
although defeated by the Western allies, Germany
and Austria-Hungary were not conquered by them.
And although convulsed for a few months in 1918
and 1919 by leftist revolutions, the peoples of Cen-
tral Europe were not transformed by them. The
absence of either conquest or revolution meant that
the pillars of the old social order and the old con-
servative ideology - particularly the landlords -
were, after being shaken up a bit, restored to their
old place. Military defeat and the fall of the monar-
chies may have brought liberals and democrats to
formal power, but the deeper social realities were
not liberal or democratic. These were now societies
traumatized by the vast, wasted sacrifices of the
Great War and by the grave threats from the com-
munist upsurge - a Red Scare or Great Fear that
was especially compelling in the neighbors of Soviet
Russia. The Great War and the Great Fear served as

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the major ideological simplifiers in Central Europe:
liberals became more democratic and some even
became radical; socialists became more Marxist and
some even became communist; and conservatives
became more nationalist and some even became
fascist.
Fascism in fashion
At the end of the twentieth century, the ideology
of fascism certainly appears to be unintelligent and
unintelligible. This is especially the case with its
most extreme version, national socialism. How
could these two ideologies have appealed to large
numbers of ordinary people in such advanced soci-
eties as Germany and Italy? Today this phe-
nomenon seems bizarre, even surreal.
Sixty or seventy years ago, however, the percep-
tion was quite different. During the 1920s, in the
aftermath of the First World War and the Bolshevik
Revolution, and especially during the 1930s in the
midst of the Great Depression, fascism and national
socialism appeared to many to offer the best solu-
tions to critical social problems. In particular, they
appeared to be better solutions than those offered
by liberalism or democracy and by socialism or
communism.
The appeals of fascism and national socialism
derived from three major sources: their relevance to
the experience of frontline soldiers during the Great
War; their relevance to the experience of ordinary
citizens during the Great Fear; and their creative
combination of popular elements found in the ear-
lier ideologies of conservatism, including national-
ism, and socialism (but definitely not liberalism).
First, the experience of frontline soldiers in
World War I was unique in its unrelieved horror.
The uselessness and meaninglessness of the vast
expenditure in blood and treasure were especially
painful in the defeated countries, Germany and
Austria-Hungary, and in Italy, which, although for-
mally a victor, actually gained very little in the
peace settlement. For years, frontline veterans
would be haunted by their sacrifices and those of
their comrades, and they would seek recognition
and redemption. The liberal, democratic, and
1 During the 1930s and 1940s, Americans often compared
Japanese militarism with German national socialism and
Italian fascism. The Japanese experience during the Great
War, and with leftist threats, was completely different, how-
ever. Japanese militarism included elements of national
socialism and fascism, but it actually had more in common
with the nationalism and militarism of Germany before the
First World War.
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War, Peace, and the Ideologies of lhe Twentieth Century • 5
socialist political parties - born decades before in
an era of international peace and led by older men
who had come of age long before the Great War -
could not understand this yearning. But the new
fascist parties - with their glorification of the
nation, their rhetoric of combat, and their military-
style uniforms and routines - were perfecdy in tune
with it.
For ordinary citizens the brief postwar period of
communist upsurge had left a widespread fear of
revolution. This fear was especially intense, again,
in the defeated countries, Germany and Austria-
Hungary (communist parties actually seized power
for several months in 1919 in Hungary and the Ger-
man states of Bavaria and Thuringia), and in Italy,
where for several years both industrial and agricul-
tural workers carried out disruptive strikes and
occupations of factories and farms. Middle-class cit-
izens were haunted by the threats and insults that
they experienced during this period, and they
sought assurance that the communists would never
again come to power.
Third, fascism combined popular elements of the
two prewar nonliberal ideologies - conservatism
(especially its nationalism) and socialism. Obvi-
ously, this was most explicit with the National
Socialist (Nazi) Party in Germany. From conser-
vatism and nationalism, the new ideologies drew
the idea that the state should control the society.
From socialism they drew the idea that society
should support the state. From both they drew the
doctrine and practice that the state should and
could impose constraints on free-market capitalism
and on particular political parties and, if conditions
required it, even impose direction on them.
The conservatives and nationalists had empha-
sized conditions of warlike economic struggle; the
socialists had emphasized conditions of depression-
induced economic stagnation. By the 1930s, both
conditions were clearly present. Operating within
the legacy of the Great War and the reality of the
Great Depression, the fascists and national social-
ists convincingly emphasized both conditions. The
Great War had demonstrated the need for organi-
zation, planning, discipline, and energy in running
the wartime economy. The Great Depression and its
attendant international economic struggles demon-
strated the need for all these once again, i
Within a few years after coming to power in
1933, national socialism eliminated unemployment
in Germany and appeared to have solved the prob-
lem of the Great Depression better than any other
ideology - certainly better than the liberal govern-
6 • CURRENT HISTORY • January 1999
ments of the United States, Britain, and France,
where unemployment hovered at 20 percent or
more. We now know that the astonishing success
of national socialism came at great costs: military
rearmament and then military aggression. However,
this was not obvious in, say, 1936, the year of the
Berlin Olympics, which provided another exhibi-
tion of the peacetime achievements of national
socialism.
The coming of the Second World War brought a
new demonstration of the superiority of national
socialism, with the extraordinary victory of the Ger-
man army over the French army in June 1940. This
brought Germany to where it would have been in
the spring of 1918 had the United States not inter-
vened in the First World War. At long last, after
tremendous sacrifices but with ultimate redemp-
tion, the natural development of European his-
tory - German hegemony over the European
continent - had been realized. The New Order of
national socialism appeared to be the final solution
to the European problem of endemic
international and social conflict.
In the summer of 1940, this was the
reasonable conclusion to be drawn from
the torturous path European history had
taken since 1914. Communism was of
limited appeal everywhere, discredited by
its 20-vear historv of brutalitv and terror.
But liberalism was also of limited appeal on the
continent, discredited by its failure to solve the
Great Depression and by its dramatic defeats in the
new Second World War. National socialism seemed
the path to the future.
Of course, history soon took the opposite path.
Embedded within national socialism was its fatal
flaw: German racism. This racism derived more
from the experience of the German minority within
the Hapsburg Empire than from that of the over-
whelming German majority within Germany itself.2
It was this racist component that drove Hitler (who
had grown up in Austria) to invade the Soviet
Union and that largely shaped Germany's occupa-
tion policies in the conquered territories in the East,
including, of course, the Holocaust.
2To justify the privileged position of the German people (a
demographic minority) among the more numerous other
peoples of the Hapsburg empire, the Germans were cast as
an elite in the cultural (and also economic and political)
sense. This ideology of cultural superiority, given the Social-
Darwinist fashions of the time, became an ideology of bio-
logical superiority, that is, racism.
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The long duel
The decisive defeat and conquest of Nazi Ger-
many and Fascist Italy in World War II served as a
great simplifier, removing fascism and national
socialism from serious contention and leaving the
remaining two ideological families - liberalism/
democracy and socialism/communism - to confront
each other in a long duel, which became the cold
war.
We have already noted that the experiences of
frondine soldiers during World War I in Europe led
some of them to become fascists or national social-
ists. Similarly, what partisan guerrillas experienced
during the Second World War in Asia led many of
them to become communists (in, for example,
China, Korea, Vietnam, and Malaya). These
wartime experiences would shape (and distort) the
domestic policies of the communist regimes that
came to power in China, North Korea, and North
Vietnam; they would also guide the manner in
which they would fight the United States in two hot
wars in Asia, within what was the cold
war more generally.
Liberalism now Among their other appeals, fascism and
national socialism had held that they
stands alone ,
could best protect and promote heavy
triumphant.
industry and capital goods (steel, chemi-
cals, machinery, and, of course, arma-
ments), especially with the collapse of
international trade during the Great Depression.
Communism made the same claim, but it made
heavy industry even more central to its ideology
(Joseph Stalin's own name was a pseudonym that
meant "steel," and he seems to have considered
steel to be the solution for most problems). In this
respect, communism equaled national socialism
minus the capitalist organization of industry.
In the first two decades after the Second World
War, communism proved to be very good at the
rapid development of heavy industry and capital
goods ("forced-draft industrialization"). These hap-
pened to be the areas that had been so crucial to the
Allied victories in the First and Second World Wars,
and communists expected them to be crucial in
winning the cold war. This combination of war
communism and steel communism seemed to pro-
duce spectacular achievements for national inde-
pendence and national industrialization.
By the 1970s, however, it became apparent that
this kind of communism was incapable of moving
from a wartime environment to peacetime, from
capital goods to consumer goods, and from heavy
industry to high technology. Confronted with this
 War, Peace, and the Ideologies of the Twentieth Century • 7
shift, communism brought only national autarky
and stagnation. To some communist reformers, it
became clear that Marxism-Leninism would have
to be replaced with something like market-Lenin-
ism: a market economy within an authoritarian pol-
itics. This was the project that Mikhail Gorbachev
tried and failed to effect in the Soviet Union and
that Deng Xiaoping succeeded in effecting in China.
The liberal triumph
After its victories over fascism and national
socialism in World War II, and its victories over
Marxism and communism in the cold war, liberal-
ism now stands alone, triumphant. Over the past
half-century, it has succeeded in undermining both
the social bases and the problem-solving appeals of
all its ideological adversaries. Advanced by the
United States, the sole superpower and the leader
of the global economy, liberalism promises to make
the new century one of ideological consensus -
indeed, the end of ideology - and of international
peace. How did it defeat its adversaries?
Conservatism
The main base of conservatism was agriculture,
most obviously landlords but also independent
farmers. Unlike the defeat of Germany and Austria-
Hungary in World War I, the defeat and occupation
of Germany and Japan after the Second World War
resulted in major land-reform programs imposed by
the United States (and in East Germany by the
Soviet Union), which eliminated the German and
Japanese landlord classes. However, a social base for
conservatism still remained in the large number of
independent farmers, which in the 1950s compro-
mised between 20 and 25 percent of the populations
of such major nations as France, West Germany,
Italy, and Japan. But the next three decades saw the
American-constructed liberal order of international
trade and economic expansion result in the steady
growth of the industrial sector and the steady
decline of the agricultural in liberal-capitalist
economies. This brought about a profound under-
mining of the social base for conservatism.
Fascism
One of the major appeals of the ideology of fas-
cism and national socialism was its call to use the
state to protect and promote capitalist industry. Had
there been a new Great Depression a few years after
World War II, the collapse of international trade
would have presented a renewed crisis for capital-
ist industry, which might have driven it to some
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Current History, 1946
Aside from Russia's own actions, there may be
three other factors which help explain the ebb in
the communist tide. (1) The wisdom, moderation,
and solid strength of the British Labor party has
given hope and encouragement to the millions on
the Continent who have similar Social Democratic
aspirations. They want moderate leftist policies,
but they do not want to be dictated to by
Communists controlled from Moscow. (2) The
resurgence of Christian or Church influence, not as
a reactionary but as a moderate factor toward social
reform. It is significant that so many parties have
"Christian" in their name. One of the new forces
that serves as a barrier or as a hopeful alternative to
communism is not the democratic liberalism that
we Americans oppose to the communist wave. It
has something of the liberalism, but also along with
it the elements of socialism and of a faith that is still
older and is personified for many in the Church.
(3) The death of so many men in the war means
that everywhere in Europe women form a very con-
siderable majority of those entitled to vote, and
women perhaps are more responsive than men to
the influences of tradition, private property and the
Church.
- Sidney B. Fay, "Ebb in the Communist Tide"
kind of nationalist, even neofascist or neonational
socialist solution, despite their role in causing the
Second World War. However, the American-con-
structed liberal order prevented a new Great
Depression and provided capitalist industry with
international integration as an alternative to
national separation. Any new version of fascism or
national socialism became unnecessary.
Socialism
Industrial workers formed the main base of
socialism. At first, the liberal order, with its eco-
nomic growth, helped expand this base. But the
process of economic development has moved on,
from capital goods to consumer goods, from heavy
industry to high technology, and even from the
industrial economy to the postindustrial or infor-
mation economy. Like the agricultural sector and
the independent farmer class earlier, industry and
the industrial working class have shrunk in the past
two decades, bringing about a decline in socialism's
natural constituency.
Communism
Had the most advanced capitalist economies
remained stuck at the level of heavy industry, com-
munism might have seemed a reasonable and effec-
8 • CURRENT HISTORY • January 1999
tive way of reaching this stage of economic devel-
opment. But as the capitalist economies moved
beyond this level while communist economies did
not, it became clear that communism no longer
produced national independence, but rather a new
form of international dependence.
National socialism's fatal flaw had been its ele-
ment of German racism. This meant that it could
never serve as a stable ideology with which to gov-
ern multinational, multiethnic Europe. Commu-
nism had an analogous fatal flaw. At its core was the
idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which
might be seen as a form of proletarian classism.
Communism could never serve as a stable ideology
with which to govern an economy that was moving
beyond heavy industry, a society composed of many
classes that together were more numerous than the
industrial workers. Of course, the national socialist
and communist regimes compensated for their lim-
iting and unstable ideologies by developing brutal
and ruthless repression.
Resistance to liberalism
Does liberalism confront any serious adversary
that could thwart its grand project of a global econ-
omy and international peace? Samuel Huntington
has famously atgued that the central conflicts of the
next century will not be between ideologies but
between cultures or civilizations. Already, the major
resistance to the American-led liberal project has
been mounted by countries with either an Islamic
or a Confucian tradition and culture. They see lib-
eralism as merely the distinctive product of West-
em civilization.
For Western political analysts who stress alien
ideologies and terrorist actions as the main source
of foreign threats, Islamic fundamentalism has clear
analogies with the previous enemies of liberalism,
national socialism and communism. However, this
analogy does not impress other political analysts -
the "realists" - who see hostile great powers as the
main source of foreign threats. They note that there
is no Islamic great power, certainly not in the cen-
ter of the Eurasian landmass and certainly not on
the scale of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. The
closest candidate is Iran, whose military threat was
contained by Iraq in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
The only other real potential threat in the region is
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Iraq, which is a non-Islamist state. For great-power
realists, the problem of Islamic fundamentalism can
be readily handled by a policy of dual containment
and balance of power, that is, by using Iran and Iraq
to contain each other.
For political analysts who stress hostile great
powers and military forces as the main threat,
China - the leader of "Sinic civilization" - has clear
similarities to the pre- 1989 Soviet Union and with
pre- 1945 Germany. Some Americans strongly
believe that China will become the central threat to
the United States, and that containment of China
should be the organizing principle of American for-
eign policy.
It is possible, however, that not much will come
of Islamic and Confucian resistance. Islam is not a
monolithic force, but a religion variously inter-
preted and practiced by many different peoples in
many different states, none of which has much
prospect of becoming a great power in international
politics. Furthermore, the current crisis in several
Asian economies has discredited Asian-style capi-
talism based on the "Asian" or anti-liberal values of
authority and community, whether those values are
rooted in Islam (Indonesia and Malaysia) or in Con-
fucianism (Japan, South Korea, and the Chinese
communities in Indonesia and Malaysia).
Does liberalism have a fatal flaw, as did national
socialism and communism? It is certainly difficult
to discern one at this time. Liberalism was the prod-
uct of the international peace and economic growth
of what many historians call the long nineteenth
century, the era between 1789 and 1914 that saw
the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and
their lengthy aftermath. It then, astonishingly,
turned out to be the ultimate victor in the world
wars - two hot and one cold - and economic
depression of what the historian Eric Hobsbawm
has called the short twentieth century from 1914 to
1989. But wars and depression produced formidable
enemies of liberalism, which could only be van-
quished at the cost of millions of lives and trillions
of dollars. As long as liberalism can deliver on its
promise to make the twenty-first century one of
peace and prosperity, it will maintain its ideological
hegemony. But if that project should fail, the
twenty-first century is likely to be another century
of total war and ideological conflict. ■