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T h e P e o p l e s’ War?
33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 1 2022-08-11 14:48

The Peoples’ War?
The Second World War

in Sociopolitical Perspective
Edited by
A lexa nder W il s on,
R ic har d Ham m ond,
a nd J onathan F e nne l l
McGill-Queen’s University Press

Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2022
ISB N 978-0-2280-1470-6 (cloth)
ISB N 978-0-2280-1471-3 (paper)
ISB N 978-0-2280-1589-5 (eP DF )
ISB N 978-0-2280-1590-1 (eP UB)
Legal deposit fourth quarter 2022
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
The production of this volume was assisted generously by a grant from
the K CL SSPP Publication Subvention Fund.
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The peoples’ war?: the Second World War in sociopolitical perspective /
edited by Alexander Wilson, Richard Hammond, and Jonathan Fennell.
Names: Wilson, Alexander , 1989- editor. | Hammond, Richard,
1985- editor. | Fennell, Jonathan, 1979- editor.
Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220272921 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220272999 |
ISB N 9780228014706 (cloth) | IS BN 9780228014713 (paper) |
ISB N 9780228015895 (eP DF ) | IS BN 9780228015901 (eP U B )
Subjects: LC S H: World War, 1939-1945—Social aspects. | L C SH : World War,
1939-1945—Political aspects.
Classification: L CC D744.6 .P 46 2022 | DDC 940.53—dc23
This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.

Contents
Introduction: In Search of a New History of the Second

World War 3
Alexander Wilson, Richard Hammond, and Jonathan Fennell
T he me O n e P ro b l e m at iz ing “People’s Wars ”

1 World War, Worldwide Mobilization: How Global History
Complicates the “People’s War” Narrative 19
Andrew N. Buchanan
T he me T wo M o b il iz at io n and Remobi li zati on

f or “P e o p l e ’ s W a rs ”
2 Fascist Warfare on the Home Front: War Mobilization
and the Fragmentation of Italian Society, 1935–1943 45
Nicolò Da Lio
3 Building an Enemy: Great Britain as Depicted by Italian
Fascist Propaganda 71
Jacopo Pili
4 Growing Up in Kaifeng: Young People, Ideology,
and Mobilization in Occupied China, 1938–1945 90
Mark Baker
5 “What the Soldier Thinks”: Mobilizing the Mind of the American
Soldier in the Second World War 113
Edward J.K. Gitre

vi Contents
T he me T h r e e “ P e o p l e ’ s W a rs ” as Dri vers
of Chang e
6 Health Care and Disease in Italy’s War, 1940–1945 135
Fabio De Ninno
7 The Second World War and the New Deal for American Science 162
Richard V. Damms
8 Edward Murrow and the “Little People” of the Blitz: A Study
in American Idealism 185
Sean Dettman
T he me F o u r W a rs A m o n g t he People
9 German Anti-partisan Warfare: The Spectrum of Ruthlessness
to Restraint 207
Ben H. Shepherd
10 Italian Occupation Policies and Counterinsurgency Campaigns
in France and in the Balkans, 1940–1943 230
Emanuele Sica
11 Divided Loyalties: Indian Prisoners of War in Singapore,
February 1942 to May 1943 251
Kevin Noles
12 Spawning Fratricide: Occupation and Resistance in Greece,
1941–1944 276
Christina J.M. Goulter
13 Gender and Community During War: The Amorous Relationships
of Western P OWs and German Women in Nazi Germany 300
Raffael Scheck
T he me F iv e T h e H is to ry a nd Memory
of “P e o p l e ’ s W a rs ”
14 Framing Myths of the Second World War through Ministry
of Information Propaganda Posters 327
Katherine Howells

Contents vii
15 Beyond a “People’s War”: The Polish Past and the Second

World War in Contemporary Perspective 353
Jadwiga Biskupska
Contributors 377
Index 383

T h e P e o p l e s’ War?

In t ro du cti on
In Search of a New History

of the Second World War
Alexander Wilson, Richard Hammond,

and Jonathan Fennell
In contrast to the military or the political and ideological histories

of the Second World War there is no narrative frame for the
Second World War as a global economic, social and cultural event.
Michael Geyer and Adam Tooze,
The Cambridge History of the Second World War1
The Second World War was a global event of close to unparalleled

human significance. Yet, as Michael Geyer and Adam Tooze have
argued, a comprehensive and convincing account of the cultural, social,
and economic dynamics that influenced its causes, underpinned its
conduct, and drove its consequences has yet to be produced. Geyer
and Tooze’s volume of The Cambridge History of the Second World
War goes some way to addressing this gap, but it also sounded a clarion
call for more research. It invited historians to explore new ways of
engaging with the conflict, to rethink “what we ought to know and
the way we might wish to tell the history of a war that was fought by
peoples against peoples and engulfed the entire world.”2 A key element
of the rationale underpinning this volume is a response to that call.3
This collection approaches the challenge of a new history of the
Second World War in two ways. First, it presents research on aspects

4 Alexander Wilson, Richard Hammond, and Jonathan Fennell
of the war that have previously been marginalized in core military and
political accounts, as well as in existing social and cultural ones. It
includes work on regions and nations that have typically been afforded
limited scholarly attention in English-language publications, such as
China, Japan, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Greece.4 The collection
also incorporates under-represented themes and methods of research.
It interrogates the wartime experiences of ethnic minorities and colonial
subjects, as well as those of women and children. Several contributions
focus on the highest levels of civil-military relations and on institu-
tions of wartime governance, while others assess wartime experiences
from below, examining the experiences of prisoners of war and the
processes of the construction of post-war memory. As we lift our eyes
from the battlefield, we see that: enemies fell in love; for the young, the
grand ideological narratives meant little; loyalties could wax and wane;
and violence always lingered, even if below the surface.
Second, the volume pursues theoretical and methodological insights;
it synthesizes and evaluates the new research to fashion fresh
understandings. When transcending traditional national boundaries,
it interrogates the potential of panoramas that encompass the global
nature of the conflict. The volume engages with research on parts of
Asia, Africa, Europe, the Pacific, and North America, giving it the
capacity to both disrupt prevailing orthodoxies and build bridges
between existing accounts that have become siloed in national or
campaign-focused histories.5 The book does not attempt to “go the
distance” on producing the comprehensive new account called for by
Geyer and Tooze, but instead takes a step toward this important
ultimate objective.
T h e C o n c e p t o f “ P eople’s War”
The nation is the standard “unit of analysis” employed by scholars

writing about the Second World War.6 These national narratives are
constructed even during the war itself, as states mobilize ideas to influ-
ence their citizens, sway their allies, or undercut their opponents. This
battle of the narrative is waged through political rhetoric, propaganda,
and journalism that collectively comprise the first draft of the historical
record.7 In the years immediately after the Second World War, nation-
ally bounded accounts gained credence as new and old nations tried
to understand the transformative changes that had just occurred. The
war displaced millions in Europe, Africa, and Asia; it created new states

Introduction 5
Figure 0.1 Women of the Auxiliary Territorial Service run to their posts at
an anti-aircraft battery, Britain 1942. © Imperial War Museum, I W M D8292.
with fresh boundaries; it accelerated processes of imperial decline; and

it radically shifted the distribution of global power.8 All this had to be
explained, and in many cases it was done on national terms.
In the United States, for example, the conflict was seen as having
been a “Good War”; the war transformed the American economy,
created untold wealth for its citizens, and catapulted the United States
into a dominant global role.9 For the Soviet Union (and, later, the
Russian state), the blood sacrifice encompassed in the “Great Patriotic
War” became a matter of national mourning and pride. This, in line
with the wishes of Stalin and his ruling circle, justified their global
clout and legitimized their lasting presence in Eastern Europe.10 The
People’s Republic of China, meanwhile, emphasized national unity in

the face of foreign aggression to smooth over the cracks of a concur-

rent civil war and pave the way toward a unified Communist state.11
German popular memory emphasized shared suffering as a means of
assuaging the stigma of national shame, but matters were often
different for her former allies.12 In Italy, the fractured nature of the
memory of the conflict at least partially mirrors the intensely complex
Italian experience of the war itself; this has hindered the creation of
any unifying narrative. 13 In Japan, successive administrations
eschewed addressing the question of how to remember the war.
Instead, commemoration has frequently been left to citizens’ move-
ments or special interest groups, each with their own agendas.14
The “People’s War” narrative in the United Kingdom, from which
this collection takes its name, is perhaps the exemplar of a nationally
configured account.15 During the war years, Britons engaged with the
conflict on a range of nuanced levels.16 It was understood, of course,
as a national struggle, but it was also interpreted as an imperial, Allied,
European, and global endeavour.17 With the retreat from Empire in
the post-war years and the “birth” of the post-imperial British nation,
historians increasingly began to treat the war in more national terms.
Scholars adopted the term “People’s War” to describe the British

experience. They held that the war had exposed flaws in the stratified
class-based society that had existed in Britain before and during the
war. This awakening provided the impetus for national rejuvenation,
which, as ordinary Britons shrugged off the power of the patrician
classes, invoked the solidarity needed to fight fascism and forge a new
national consensus for the future beyond victory.18 These perspectives
reflected the British zeitgeist of the late 1960s through to the mid-1980s
and have proven remarkably resilient to challenge.19 Britain’s public
service broadcaster (the BBC), for example, has continued to use the
phrase “People’s War” as the title of its flagship online archive into
the twenty-first century.20
More recent scholarship, however, has powerfully critiqued the con-
ceptual and empirical underpinnings of the “People’s War” paradigm.
Historians such as Daniel Todman, David Edgerton, John Darwin,
Ashley Jackson, Yasmin Khan, Andrew Stewart, Douglas E. Delaney,
and Jonathan Fennell, among others, have re-emphasized the imperial
nature of Britain’s war, while Sonya Rose and Wendy Webster have
highlighted the extensive role played by ethnic minorities and foreign
fighters in wartime Britain.21 Collectively, this new corpus has raised
important questions about the limits of nationally configured narratives
in a global war.

Introduction 7
Beyond the British example, as we shall see, the conceptual limita-

tions of the “People’s War” paradigm have also become clear; in many
ways, they cast a shadow over fresh approaches of study. “Such ideas,”
according to David Edgerton, “have powerfully constrained the writ-
ing of histories, much more so than they constrained or explained the
actions of historical actors.” Increasingly, the position is that “we no
longer need to think with such clichés, but rather with new principles
which help us understand the power they once had.”22 Thus, it does
appear to be the right time to revisit nationally configured accounts
of the conflict, to search for new principles and seek the rich gains to
be had from a more transnational and global approach.
M as t e r N a r rati ves
a n d M u lt ip l e Narrati ves
Many national narratives of the war portray the experience of their

populations in exceptional terms. Nevertheless, even a cursory
appraisal of the strands that define each national narrative reveals
more similarities than differences. When studied in concert, common
themes can hold the key to fashioning a global account, one in which
the currents that permeated and crossed boundaries are represented
in their appropriate historical context. Such an approach certainly
does not pave the way toward a single master narrative of the war.
It does, however, highlight the potential for “a global history, or rather
multiple global histories.” As John Horne has argued in relation to the
First World War, “if there are to be master narratives, they should at
the very least be explicitly multiple.”23
This collection engages with five of these possible master narratives,
or themes. First, it critically interrogates the concept of “People’s War”
and problematizes nationally configured accounts that treat the nation,
and its people, as an unchanging entity and impermeable block. Second,
it explores patterns of mobilization and remobilization and challenges
narratives that depict these dynamics as virtually unfettered processes;
for many, if not all, belligerents, the war was a far cry from an unparal-
leled moment of national solidarity. Third, it analyzes the war as a
driver of change and scrutinizes accounts that emphasize the transfor-
mative characteristics of the conflict. Fourth, it delves into the dynamics
of a war that was fought not only on far-away battlefields, but also
on the doorsteps of people at home; the proximity of the war, and
the pressures associated with it, challenged loyalties and left space
for the full spectrum of human frailties, loves, and hatreds. Fifth, it

engages with the memory of a conflict that still looms as a touchpoint

for national shame, pride, and resentment today; it unpacks the ways
in which the “People’s War” continues and survives as a “living war”
into the twenty-first century.
The first theme, “Problematizing ‘People’s Wars,’” shows what can
be achieved by looking beyond the horizon of national history. Andrew
Buchanan’s survey of the demographic makeup of belligerent forces
during the war highlights the complexities and contradictions evident
in many histories of the conflict. Buchanan cautions against the notion
of national homogeneity, instead emphasizing the ubiquity of diversity
and extranational service in the militaries of all major combatant
nations. Cossacks, Spaniards, and Danes fought for the Wehrmacht;
Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Polish soldiers served the Soviet Union; Imperial
Japanese ranks harboured Taiwanese and Korean troops; while Irish
and Jamaican pilots flew for the R A F during the Battle of Britain. In
many such cases, including that of African Americans, soldiers osten-
sibly fighting for global freedom were deprived of their own freedoms
at home. This suggests that extranational experience was, in fact,
characteristic for many soldiers, calling into question the extent to
which the nation should continue to form the standard “unit of analy-
sis” in the context of a global war.
The second theme, “Mobilization and Remobilization for ‘People’s
Wars,’” offers a critical appraisal of the processes of national mobiliza-
tion, and engages with the question of why some states managed to
mobilize their societies more effectively than others. Nicolò Da Lio’s
chapter argues that Italy, the original fascist state, struggled in particu-
lar with the challenges of mobilization. When impediments to popular
mobilization occurred, the authorities resorted to repressive or puni-
tive measures. Corrupt officials and business elites adeptly evaded
these coercive activities, leaving ordinary workers to bear the brunt
of the costs of failure. This alienated key strata of Italian society from
the regime and hampered Italy’s ability to generate military capability.
If the Fascist regime encountered challenges with the mechanics of
mobilization, it also struggled in the domain of ideas. Jacopo Pili’s
chapter evaluates the effectiveness of Italian propaganda during the
conflict. He looks at patterns of anti-British propaganda and shows
that the Fascist regime lost control of its messaging during key
moments of the war. If Italy’s inability to mobilize effectively has been
interpreted typically as a function of deficient expertise and resources,24
this new research makes the case that the key failings lay in the

Introduction 9
inability of the Fascist state to generate popular support and arbitrate

effectively between sectional interests in society.
There are parallels between Italy’s struggle to mobilize its domestic
workforce and the Axis experience at the other end of the Eurasian
landmass. Using the case study of the city of Kaifeng in occupied China,
Mark Baker’s chapter argues that Japanese efforts to mobilize Chinese
youth behind a new vision for the country failed. Chinese minors,
who comprised one-tenth of the global population during the war
years, constituted a significant pool of potential person-power.
However, Japan struggled to articulate a clear and consistent message
to underpin its political agenda in China. In the ensuing ideological
vacuum, Chinese youth reacted to the mobilization process with apathy,
disengagement, lassitude, and, ultimately, passivity. In fact, sheer lack
of interest and detachment ensured that occupation and collaboration
passed into irrelevance. Here, again, the post-war n
arrative championed
by the state, the Chinese “War of Resistance,” resonates little with some
key aspects of the individual lived experience.
The Allied powers faced similar challenges in mobilizing their own
societies for war. Edward Gitre’s chapter reveals that even in the United
States, a country that curates a memory of a “Good War,” the wartime
authorities grappled hard with the problem of aligning state policy with
popular desires. Gitre shows that for military mobilization to work,
uniquely intrusive methods were required, including applying social
surveys to enable the US Army’s command to shape their approach
around the sentiments of the millions of ordinary soldiers who were
swept into the ranks. These mass surveys provided the Army with the
information needed to effectively assimilate citizens into military life.
What the contrasting cases of Axis and Allied mobilization show is that
the notion of smooth state and societal mobilization cannot be assumed.
States with more equitable and efficient processes tended to fare better.
Additionally, it was clearly important for states to recognize that
national policy had to reflect and coincide with individuals’ hopes and
experiences. In other words, big ideas and little stories had to align;25
in this, the Americans proved more astute than many others.
The third theme engages with the Second World War as a “Driver
of Change” and challenges the notion of transformation at the core of
many national narratives of the struggle. While the contributors to
this volume do indeed accept that change occurred, their chapters
serve as a call for a more critical approach; the dynamics of change,
continuity, and causality remain open for debate. Fabio De Ninno’s

chapter demonstrates that the Italian state entered the war with a
health-care system woefully unprepared for the strains of a high-
intensity conflict that would eventually engulf the homeland itself.
This led to disaster, with thousands of Italians dying from infectious
diseases. These events occupied a central place in Italian wartime
experience, and subsequently catalyzed efforts to create a new
approach to how the state provided health care in the post-war years.
However, the greater effect of this process over time must be explained
by looking beyond the wartime and immediate post-war periods, as
political frictions delayed the implementation of genuinely sweeping
change for decades. Richard V. Damms, in his study of American
science, provides insights into how processes of innovation unfolded
during the conflict. By scrutinizing the relationships between political
elites and American scientists, he demonstrates that while the war
created the opportunity for change, bureaucratic politics ultimately
determined the shape of this change. This is an underappreciated
dynamic within the broader narrative of the American transition to
post-war superpower status. Sean Dettman’s chapter, meanwhile,
addresses the hitherto underexamined role of American reporters,
especially Ed Murrow, during the London Blitz, who used their
positions of influence to shape ideas. Although they were not actually
British citizens, they were key architects of the “People’s War” narra-
tive; they positioned a new national solidarity at the centre of their
stories and thus habituated global audiences to viewing the war as a
dynamic moment of change.
The fourth theme, “Wars among the People,” addresses dynamics
of occupation, insurgency, civil war, and captivity. It shows, perhaps
surprisingly, that love and loyalty can be as central to our understand-
ing of these topics as hatred and violence. Ben H. Shepherd’s chapter
examines German anti-partisan operations on the Eastern Front, and
in the Balkans, Italy, and Greece. He demonstrates that levels of
German brutality and restraint fluctuated widely across time and
space; structural factors, such as environmental conditions, levels of
insurgency, organizational culture, and ideology played their part, as
did the outlook and experience of tactical commanders on the ground.
These conclusions resonate within Emanuele Sica’s assessment of the
Italian experience of occupation and counterinsurgency. Whereas
the Italian military presence in southeastern France was typically
characterized by an absence of violence, Italian anti-partisan activity
in the Balkans generally involved high levels of brutality. These

Introduction 11
variations were influenced by the structural conditions of both occu-

pations, differing levels of reciprocal violence, as well as by Fascist
thinking and colonial experience. However, individual responses also
played a powerful role in shaping events. Explanations that focus on
grand ideological, military, or political determinants of behaviour
must always be balanced by an understanding of individual agency
and local events.
Questions of loyalty feature in the next two chapters in this theme.
Kevin Noles provides fresh perspectives on the birth of the Indian
National Army. His chapter engages with the question of why prison-
ers of war from the British-led colonial Indian Army chose to slip the
bonds of their previous life and soldier afresh with a new institution
aligned with Japan. Whereas existing accounts have tended to empha-
size big reasons, foremost among them the influence of ideology
(Indian nationalism) or the fear of coercion, this chapter emphasizes
a range of alternatives. Soldiers enlisted or refrained on the basis of
friendships, resentment toward rivals, charismatic leadership, and
ethno-religious ties. Thus, while loyalties ostensibly switched at the
national level, they often did so because of competing obligations and
interests at the level of the individual. Christina Goulter, meanwhile,
provides new insights into the contest of loyalties encompassed in the
Greek Civil War. Her chapter serves as a valuable reminder that civil
conflict was a core feature of the experience of global war. Competing
visions for the future and the fragmentation of the resistance move-
ment in Greece made the conflict anything but a “People’s War.”
In contrast to these studies, which to a significant extent place
hatred and violence in the fore, Raffael Scheck reminds us of the
circumstances in which love could flourish between people caught on
opposing sides of the conflict. His chapter on romantic relationships
between Allied prisoners of war and German women reveals that the
search for intimacy and companionship could not be suppressed, even
in the most trying of circumstances. Neither official punishment nor
the possible stigma of societal shame could quell love or lust between
couples. Moreover, as the judicial records show, the Nazi regime
became alarmed over periodic outpourings of sympathy for women
on trial, revealing that ideology could not always prevail over
human instincts. Collectively, these chapters illuminate the range
of human experiences that played out below national flags. Love could
coexist alongside hatred; old loyalties could lapse or endure; and new
ties could form; while the war could destroy, it could also create.

The fifth theme addresses the “History and Memory of ‘People’s

Wars’” with a view to offering a critical reflection of the processes by
which survivors and their descendants have interpreted the conflict.
Katherine Howells uses wartime British Ministry of Information
posters to evaluate how they function as a touchpoint for memory
today. She combines innovative survey methods with visual sources to
establish that the posters, and their ongoing circulation, play an impor-
tant role in perpetuating popularly held myths about the war. Jadwiga
Biskupska then rounds off the volume with an analysis of the memory
of the war in Poland. Her chapter, which refocuses our attention on
the core issue of “People’s War,” emphasizes what is lost in nationally
bounded histories of wartime experience. In contrast to the homoge-
nous national narrative of the war driven by contemporary right-wing
Polish politicians, Biskupska argues that the question of a national
memory of the Second World War ought to be contested in the case of
Poland. While most assessments accept that the story of Poland’s war
encompasses those who endured Nazi occupation and fought with
Allied Armies, many accounts omit the experience of Polish Jews, a
large proportion of whom were murdered, and of groups such as ethnic
Germans, who were Polish by nationality and residency at the start of
the war, but were purged from the nation by its end. Clearly, all of these
individuals played a part in the Polish war, but only some loom large
in the way it is remembered. Thus, the message from the last theme of
this volume is that national narratives and memory tend to curate the
past in ways that too rarely reflect the diversity of human experience.
Although unpacking memory can prove a challenging task, it can
offer powerful insights into why a prevailing consensus exists and
why other facets of the war remain far from public consciousness.
M a r g in a l iz e d Hi stori es
In summary, this volume presents novel work addressing hitherto

neglected aspects of the cultural, social, and economic history of the
Second World War.26 Within the substance of the chapters themselves,
the volume explores five themes that are intended to enrich our under-
standing of this global conflict. First, it advances a critique of narrowly
defined nationally bounded histories and calls for inclusiveness in the
writing of national and transnational histories of the war. Second, it
shows that the interests of states and their peoples did not always
align; the degree of divergence in this respect often made the difference

Introduction 13
between effective or ineffective popular mobilization. Third, it argues

that the study of change needs to be handled with care; the war created
possibilities for change, but real change was often determined by
complex political and bureaucratic processes that took place in the
years following the end of hostilities. Fourth, the volume argues that
the dynamics of love and loyalty should be as central to our under-
standing of the war as the topics of hatred and violence. Finally, it
shows that a comprehension of the complex pathways of memory is
key to determining what is celebrated, mythologized, and excluded
from the public account of the war today.
The book, of course, does not claim to be an exhaustive exploration
of these themes and ideas. Instead, it both offers a contribution and
acts as a signpost to “point the way.” The chapters help us to think
about experiences and contributions in regions that are often ignored
in the historiography, including parts of Africa, Asia, and the periphery
of Europe. However, like so many books on the conflict, the collection
adds little to our understanding of the war in the Middle East and
Latin America. Its paradigmatic and theoretical insights are necessarily
limited by the range of case studies and themes explored; a full under-
standing of the war’s sociopolitical aspects will undoubtedly prove to
be an extended pursuit. Rather, it is hoped that the collection will
emphasize opportunities and pitfalls for historians engaged with the
task of creating new national, regional, transnational, or global
accounts. If the study inspires complementary work, which incremen-
tally contributes to overcoming the many gaps in our collective knowl-
edge, then it will have served its purpose.
Notes
1 Michael Geyer and Adam Tooze, eds., The Cambridge History of the
Second World War, vol. 3, Total War: Economy, Society and Culture
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 1.
2 Ibid., 2.
3 It is also the product of another intellectual agenda, a desire to build a
community of practice around the study of the Second World War. With
this aim in mind, an international scholarly society, the Second World
War Research Group (S W W RG ), was set up in 2014. The SWWR G was
established to promote innovative research on the conflict and its global
aspects and act as a forum for new perspectives and collaboration. It was

also conceived as an organizational hub for conferences, seminars, and

other events relating to the conflict. It was at the group’s 2018 conference
that the chapters comprising this volume were first presented.
4 There remains a dearth of published English-language research into the war-
time experiences for each of these nations when held in comparison with
those of the major Allied powers, or of Germany as the leading Axis power.
5 Jonathan Fennell, Fighting the People’s War: The British and
Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2019), 5.
6 For a different approach, see for example, Andrew Buchanan, World War
II in Global Perspective, 1931–1953: A Short History (Chichester: Wiley
Blackwell, 2019).
7 For an analysis of how this process develops, see, for example, David
Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the
Second World War (London: Penguin, 2005).
8 For an over-arching examination of the issue of displaced populations,
see Gerard Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons
in the Postwar Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) for
a starting point, and Jessica Reinisch and Elizabeth White, eds., The
Disentanglement of Populations Migration, Expulsion and Displacement
in postwar Europe, 1944–49 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
for an excellent range of case studies. On the creation of new states, see
Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, The Internationalists: How a Radical
Plan to Outlaw War remade the World (London: Simon & Schuster,
2017); for the comparative British and French “roads” from Empire,
see Martin Thomas, Fight or Flight: Britain, France and their Roads
from Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
9 For a critique of the “Good War” concept, see Michael C.C. Adams,
The Best War Ever: America and World War II (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 1994); For a broader assessment of the impact of the
war on US society, see James T. Sparrow, Warfare State: World War II
Americans and the Age of Big Government (Oxford University Press,
2011); On American ascension to superpower status, the latest research
by Stephen Wertheim argues that the war offered an opportunity for the
United States to assert global dominance that was willingly seized rather
than reluctantly accepted, see Wertheim, Tomorrow the World: The Birth
of US Global Supremacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020).
10 For an introduction to the forging and development of Soviet memory
of the war, see David R. Marples, “Introduction: Historical Memory and
the Great Patriotic War,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 54, nos. 3–4 (2012),
285–94; on the aims and strategy of the Soviet leadership for superpower

Introduction 15
status, see Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Stalin’s Cold War: Soviet Strategies

in Europe, 1943–1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995);
and Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet
Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
11 See Rana Mitter, China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a
New Nationalism (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2020).
12 For an introduction to the German case, see Michael Geyer and Michael
Latham “The Place of the Second World War in German Memory and
History,” New German Critique 71 (1997), 5–40; Bill Niven, ed.,
Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany
(Houndsmills: Palgrave, 2006); Nicholas Stargardt, The German War:
A Nation Under Arms, 1939–45 (London: Vintage, 2015), introduction.
13 For a starting point on fractured memory and the war, see John Foot,
Italy’s Divided Memory (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009). See
also Robert Ventresca, “Mussolini’s Ghost: Italy’s Duce in History and
Memory” History and Memory 18, no. 1 (2006), 86–119; Paolo Pezzino,
“The Italian Resistance between History and Memory,” Journal of
Modern Italian Studies 10, no. 4 (2006), 396–412.
14 For an exploration of this, and a starting point on Japanese memory of
the war in general, see Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics
in Japan, 1945–2005 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).
15 The first in-depth scholarly analysis of the concept was the landmark
work by Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain, 1939–45 (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1969).
16 For an example of contemporary wartime disagreement over the
usage of the term see British Library, I OR : L/P&J /5/163: Fortnightly
Reports of Governors, Chief Commissioners and Chief Secretaries:
Bombay Fortnightly Report for the second half of June, 3 July 1942.
17 Sonya Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in
Britain, 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Andrew
Stewart, A Very British Experience: Coalition, Defence and Strategy in
the Second World War (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2012); Ashley
Jackson, Yasmin Khan, and Gajendra Singh, An Imperial World at War:
Aspects of the British Empire’s war experience, 1939–1945 (London
and New York: Routledge, 2017).
18 Jeremy A. Crang, The British Army and the People’s War (Manchester
and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000); Jeremy A. Crang,
“The British Army as a Social Institution, 1939–45” in The British Army,
Manpower and Society: Towards 2000, ed. Hew Strachan (London: Frank
Cass, 2000), 16–35; Paul Addison, The Road to 1945 (London: Jonathan
Cape, 1975); Paul Addison, Churchill on the Home Front, 1900–1955

(London: Faber and Faber, 2002); Paul Addison and Angus Calder,
eds., Time to Kill: The Soldier’s Experience of War in the West, 1939–45
(London: Pimlico, 1997).
19 For revisions on the part of the authors, see Angus Calder, The Myth of
the Blitz (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991); Paul Addison and Jeremy A.
Crang, eds., The Spirit of the Blitz: Home Intelligence and British Morale,
September 1940 to June 1941 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020);
For reflection on the challenge of shifting the public discourse, see David
Olusoga, “Lost Empire: It’s a Myth that Britain Stood Alone Against
Hitler,” 2 September 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/
2019/sep/02/empire-britain-second-world-war-hitler.
20 B B C , “WW2 People’s War: An Archive of World War Two memories –
written by the public, gathered by the BBC,” 15 October 2014, https://
www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/about/archive_information.shtml.
21 Todman, Britain’s War; Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation;
John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World
System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009);
Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War
(London: Hambledown Continuum, 2006); Ashley Jackson, Distant
Drums: The Role of Colonies in British Imperial Warfare (Eastbourne:
Sussex Academic Press, 2010); Delaney, The Imperial Army Project;
Stewart, A Very British Experience; Fennell, Fighting the People’s War;
Yasmin Khan, The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World
War (London: Bodley Head, 2015); Wendy Webster, Mixing it: Diversity
in World War Two Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
22 David Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-
Century History (London: Penguin Books, 2019), xxxv, 72–4.
23 John Horne, “The End of a Paradigm,” Past and Present 242, no. 1
(February 2019), 185, 192.
24 See, for example, Vera Zmagni, “Italy: how to lose the war and win
the peace” in The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in
International Comparison, ed. Mark Harrison (Cambridge University
Press, 1998), 213–14.
25 For another example of this concept, see Neil Roos, Ordinary Springboks:
White Servicemen and Social Justice in South Africa, 1939–1961
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 11, 43.
26 Michael Geyer and Adam Tooze, “Introduction to Volume III,” in The
Cambridge History of the Second World War, vol. 3, Total War: Economy,
Society and Culture, ed. Michael Geyer and Adam Tooze, 4 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2015).

T h e m e On e
Problematizing “People’s Wars”

1
World War, Worldwide Mobilization

How Global History Complicates
the “People’s War” Narrative
Andrew N. Buchanan
On 8 May 1942, in an effort to meet the demands of its sprawling

multi-front war in China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, the Japanese
cabinet decided to extend conscription to its colony of Korea. Koreans
were legally regarded as Japanese nationals, and since Tokyo’s invasion
of China in 1937 they had been encouraged to join the Imperial
Japanese Army (I J A ). Nearly 17,000 Korean volunteers were already
serving in the Japanese military when the conscription law finally went
into effect in 1944, and they were soon joined by over 200,000 draftees.1
In 1945, Tokyo extended conscription to Japanese-ruled Taiwan, and
by the time the war ended in August, around 200,000 Taiwanese had
been drafted. Like the Korean conscripts, Taiwanese recruits were not
segregated in separate colonial units but were integrated into the regular
army. IJA forces were also augmented by troops raised by the nominally
independent government of Japanese-occupied Manchuria and by
several pro-Japanese regimes in China. Together, these non-Japanese
troops made a substantial, perhaps even an indispensable, contribution
to Tokyo’s war effort.
Tokyo’s recruitment of Korean and Taiwanese conscripts highlights
the complexity of Japanese colonialism, which combined violent
repression with appeals to colonial subjects to view themselves as
collaborators working “beneath the emperor’s benevolent gaze” to
resist European imperialism. These tensions were reflected among

20 Andrew N. Buchanan
Japanese policymakers, who feared that disloyal Koreans might be

“parasites within a lion” while simultaneously recognizing that
conscription implied inclusion in a broader “national community”
that brought with it at least some limited political rights.2 Undoubtedly,
many Koreans were unenthusiastic conscripts who quickly deserted,
but others served their Japanese emperor loyally.3 In addition to offer-
ing insights into Japanese colonialism, the recruitment of nearly
500,000 non-Japanese soldiers pushes us to think about the overall
character of Japan’s armed forces, challenging pervasive Western
images of ethnic homogeneity that are themselves partly rooted in
American wartime propaganda that depicted Japanese people as
undifferentiated “photographic prints off the same negative.”4
The participation of these Korean and Taiwanese conscripts, along
with millions of other non-nationals in the seemingly homogeneous
armies of every major power, is in some ways the hidden history of
the Second World War. It is not hidden because the basic facts have
been lost: on the contrary, the stories of soldiers recruited from the
colonies, from prisoner of war camps, from more or less willing allies,
and from racial and ethnic minorities within the imperial heartlands
are all well-known or easily researched. They are hidden – often in
plain sight – because they have been made marginal to historiographies
rooted within the nation-state. They are integral to the wartime
histories of all the major combatants, but their experiences have been
reduced to intriguing footnotes to narratives centred on the nation-
state and intolerant of complexity. This chapter aims to encapsulate
the central message of this volume by situating these stories at the
centre of the world war and to see them as elements that complicate
and globalize the narrative of a “People’s War.”5
N at io n - S tat e s a n d Imperi al Armi es
In contrast to Tokyo’s conscription of Koreans and Taiwanese, Britain’s

imperial mobilization has been well studied, and the ubiquitous pres-
ence of soldiers from Britain’s dominions, colonies, and protectorates
suggests that “British” forces should be universally referred to as
“British-Imperial.”6 Names matter: imperial troops fought in every
major campaign, and to continue to refer to these forces as “British”
simply protracts their marginalization. Perhaps most significantly,
by 1945 the thirteen infantry divisions of General Slim’s Fourteenth
Army in Burma were drawn from India (eight), West Africa (two),

World War, Worldwide Mobilization 21
East Africa (one), and the UK (two); clearly, it was a “British” army
in name only. In addition to providing ground troops, large numbers
of personnel from the “White Dominions” and from the West Indies
served in the “British” Royal Air Force, while civilian labourers from
across the Empire performed critical military tasks, from constructing
infrastructure to moving supplies.
The broad mobilization of British-imperial forces also included the
recruitment of Indigenous, Aboriginal, and Maori peoples into the armed
forces of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This was not necessarily
a straightforward process: in Canada, for example, both the navy and
the air force initially rejected recruits who were not “of pure European
descent and of the white race.” Barriers fell as the demand for person-
power increased, and by the end of the war 5 per cent of the Indigenous
population of Australia had been enlisted, along with 3 per cent in
Canada and fully 16 per cent in New Zealand. With the exception of
the 3,600 men of the 28th Maori Battalion, formed to showcase
Indigenous support for the war effort, all served in integrated units.7
The Indian Army offers a lens through which to examine some of
the broader processes at work. Between 1940 and 1945, the Indian
Army was transformed from a 190,000-strong professional army
organized to police the borders of empire into a 2-million-person
volunteer force tasked primarily with re-establishing British rule in
Southeast Asia.8 The pre-war Indian Army had been organized around
a set of organizational practices rooted in the imperial knowledge
produced by decades of British colonial rule. In particular, recruitment
drew disproportionately upon the Sikh and Muslim “martial races” of
northern India. These practices were overwhelmed by wartime
demands, and as traditional pools of manpower were drained, recruit-
ers reached into the Hindu populations of central and southern India,
encouraging enlistment with promises of good food, regular pay,
and technical training.9 As is often the case, “voluntary” enlistment
was prompted more by the pinch of hardship and promise of oppor-
tunity than by loyalty to the Raj.
Expansion necessitated far-reaching changes. In 1939, Indians
accounted for just 400 of the 5,000-man officer corps, but by 1945
they were providing one-third of the officers.10 British officials had
long regarded Indians as “simple country folk” who were brave and
loyal but unequipped to master modern technology; these assumptions
were jettisoned to meet the demand for drivers, mechanics, radio
operators, and, to a lesser extent, skilled infantrymen, turning the army

into a “vast centre of education” that taught literacy and numeracy

as well as technical skills. 11 These changes were implemented follow-
ing the destruction of much of the pre-war Indian Army in Malaya,
Burma, and North Africa in 1942, and by 1945 the British had pro-
duced a battle-tested new army that was indispensable to the imperial
war effort. In the process, this mobilization unsettled the reified rituals
and orientalist knowledge upon which the Raj was based, “denatural-
izing” colonial rule for “Indians and British alike.”12 Even teaching
Indian soldiers to read was a “two-edged sword,” enabling them to
form new impressions of their place in the world even as it equipped
them for service in a modern army.13 By the end of the war, the Indian
Army had become a site of vibrant political discourse and nationalist
politics; as army commander Claude Auchinleck noted ruefully, “every
Indian officer worth his salt is today a nationalist.”14 The British
colonial state made the Indian Army, but that army – or rather the
agency of its soldiers – played a major role in unmaking the Raj.
Given the pre-existence of a popular movement for Indian indepen-
dence, the dialectic between wartime mobilization and anti-colonialism
was particularly salient in the Raj, but the same questions were mani-
fest in other British colonies. In much of British-ruled Africa, British
officials relied largely on allegedly traditional structures of chiefly
authority, carefully buttressed by the colonial state, to coerce military
service. But even as they recruited African soldiers, officials worried
about the domestic social consequences of military service, and
advance planning for demobilization began in 1942.15 As in India,
officials feared that once African soldiers had been exposed to new
experiences and a broader world view, they would become hostile to
ongoing colonial rule in their homelands. While concern over demo-
bilization may not have been quite a “panic,” there was a generalized
fear that the war had permanently unsettled colonial rule.16 These fears
were heightened by the fact that as many as 40,000 Indian soldiers
captured by the Japanese elected to join the anti-British Indian
National Army, an occurrence that Kevin Noles examines in depth
within this volume. As Noles argues, these were rarely purely ideologi-
cal choices, but the scale of the defections did point to underlying
issues of loyalty embedded in all colonial military service.17
Colonial soldiers contributed to the war efforts of other imperial
powers, including the Netherlands, Italy, and France. Much of the
defence of the Dutch East Indies fell to locally recruited troops.18 At
the start of its colonial expansion in 1885, Italy began recruiting

Figure 1.1 Indian soldiers of the British Empire fraternizing with Italian civilians,
n.d. © Imperial War Museum, IWM NA8533.
Eritrean askaris, who played a major part in the disastrous invasion

of Abyssinia in 1895, in the 1911–12 conquest of Libya, and in the
brutal 1922–31 Libyan counterinsurgency.19 Paralleling British “martial
race” theory, Italian officials developed colonial knowledge with which
to understand the military use of Black bodies, imagining that the hero-
ism and resilience they valorized stemmed from an ancestral love of
war. At the same time, they argued, the askaris’ “impulsive” behaviour
required tempering by white male rationality to forge it into an effec-
tive instrument of modern war.20 The benefits of employing Africans
went beyond racialized notions of their martial abilities: Italian elites
were keenly interested in “empire on the cheap,” and the low cost of
maintaining the askaris went along with the fact that even heavy casu-
alties produced no adverse domestic political consequences.21

Italian authorities added Eritrean cavalry, artillery, and armoured

car units for the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, and they were joined in
the Regio Corpo Truppe Coloniali (RCTC) by recruits from Libya and
Somaliland.22 The RCTC served as shock troops, and despite the well-
publicized aerial and mechanized dimensions of the campaign, their
efforts were critical to the Italian victory.23 Rome expanded the RCTC
in the late 1930s, raising two full divisions – including a paratroop
regiment known as the “Black Devils” – in Libya and two more in
Somaliland. Totalling over 200,000 men, the RCTC made a significant
contribution to Italy’s offensive campaigns in 1940, with the Libyan
Sibelle and Pescatore divisions providing one-quarter of the infantry
in the invasion of British-occupied Egypt, while Eritrean and Somalian
askaris facilitated the conquest of British Somaliland.24 Italian-led
advances were quickly followed by British-imperial counteroffensives
that outmanoeuvred Italian forces unequipped for modern mobile
warfare, effectively destroying the RCTC.25 The Italian army in North
Africa fought on with often-unrecognized determination, but with its
former colonies under British occupation it could not rebuild the
colonial army.
France’s mobilization of colonial person-power is well known but,
like Italy’s, it is often marginalized. In the First World War, colonial
soldiers – including tirailleurs sénégalais recruited in French West
Africa and units of the Armée d’Afrique raised in the Maghreb – served
on the Western Front, at Gallipoli, and in the postwar occupation of
the Rhineland. The 1928 decision to reduce military service in metro-
politan France to one year limited the size of the French Army to
around 500,000 troops, producing a force that was “undermanned,
ill-trained, and short on modern weaponry.”26 These constraints
increased the relative importance of France’s colonial troops, 75,000 of
whom were serving in France at the time of the German invasion in
May 1940. Around 10,000 colonial soldiers were killed, wounded, or
captured during the fighting in France, and 1,500 to 3,000 prisoners
of war were killed by German troops; arguably, these racially moti-
vated massacres form a “missing link” between German atrocities in
Poland and genocidal war in the Soviet Union.27
After the fall of France, the French Empire became a site of struggle
between the Vichy regime and forces supporting Charles de Gaulle’s
Free French. De Gaulle made little headway in recruiting French
soldiers who had remained in Britain after being evacuated from
Dunkirk, and in its early stages the movement relied heavily on

colonial troops. Félix Éboué, governor of Chad and the first African
to hold high office in the French Empire, rallied his colony to de Gaulle
in August 1940. Cameroon and Congo soon followed, giving de
Gaulle a territorial base for military operations against Gabon, which
was captured in November. In early 1941, a Free French column of
Chadian tirailleurs sénégalais and local camel cavalry raided the
southern Fezzan region of Italian-ruled Libya, capturing the key oasis
at Kufra. The following January, an army largely composed of African
troops under Philippe de Hauteclocque – known by his nom de guerre
Leclerc – crossed the Libyan desert to join British-Imperial forces in
Tripoli for the Allied advance into Tunisia.
Following the Allied victory in Tunisia, Leclerc’s command was sent
to Britain and re-equipped by the United States as the 2e Division
Blindée (2nd Armored Division) for the cross-channel invasion of
France. During this process, the division’s ethnic composition changed
as many Black soldiers were rotated back to North Africa and replaced
by white Frenchmen. Nevertheless, in April 1944 the 2e D B was still
around 25 per cent North African (3,600/14,490) and its diversity
was increased by 350 Republican veterans of the Spanish Civil War.28
Free French military strength was further reinforced by the Maghreb-
based Armée d’Afrique, which included Arab and Berber tirailleurs,
Algerian light infantry Goumiers, Zouave regiments of conscripted
French settlers, and units of the Foreign Legion. At the January 1943
Casablanca conference, the United States pledged to re-equip 11 divi-
sions of the Armée d’Afrique along US Army lines with the intention
of using its 175,000 French and 230,000 African soldiers in an inva-
sion of southern France.29 American officials also hoped that this force
would strengthen General Henri Giraud – Washington’s favoured
French leader – against de Gaulle.30
Rearmament progressed quickly, and in July 1943 a four-division
French Expeditionary Corps (CEFI) composed largely of Maghrebis
was attached to the US Fifth Army in Italy, where the Moroccan
Goumiers distinguished themselves in the battles to break through
the German defences south of Rome.31 The political results of the
rearmament were less satisfactory for Washington. During 1943,
de Gaulle emerged as the main leader of the French Committee for
National Liberation, marginalizing Giraud and ensuring that when
the Armée d’Afrique was reformed into Armée B for the invasion of
southern France in summer 1944, it was led by loyal Gaullists. The
Operation Dragoon landings were quickly followed by Armée B’s

capture of the ports of Toulon and Marseilles, the ending of the

German occupation of southern France, and a rapid advance up the
Rhône Valley. More important, Armée B gave de Gaulle’s newly estab-
lished government in Paris its own armed forces with which to buttress
its legitimacy and authority in the metropole. The government moved
quickly to induct the guerilla forces of the French Resistance, many
led by the Communist Party, into the regular army, thereby bringing
potential political opponents under military discipline. The flipside of
this development was the rapid demobilization of many of the army’s
Arab, Berber, and West African soldiers in a process referred to as the
blanchiment, or “whitening.” By the time Armé B – now redesignated
the First Army – reached the German border, it was possible, as
Army Commander Jean de Lattre de Tassigny observed cynically,
to “search in vain for a black soldier” in regiments that still bore the
title “Senegalese.”32
The blanchiment helped to create the illusion that the “French”
contribution to the ending of the German occupation had been largely
the work of white Frenchmen. In fact, the true face of the Free French
forces, from the first campaigns in Equatorial Africa, through opera-
tions in Libya and Tunisia, to the campaigns of the C E F I and of
Armée B, was largely non-white. This dichotomy was heightened by
the rapid sharpening of tensions between Paris and its colonial subjects
in the Maghreb, where widespread nationalist protests unfolded in
1944–45; as Algerian nationalist Ferhat Abbas noted in his 1943
Manifesto, France only “admits equality with Muslim Algeria on one
level: sacrifice on the battlefield.”33 Abbas’s understanding that, despite
promises of sweeping political reforms, French leaders viewed their
Maghrebi subjects as disposable (and largely unacknowledged) mili-
tary assets, fed into deepening popular hostility to French rule. On
8 May 1945, a march in Sétif celebrating the end of the war and calling
for the release of imprisoned nationalist leaders led to clashes with
French authorities and to massive government repression that left
thousands of Algerians dead.34 Returning home just days after the
massacre, the soldiers of the 7th Algerian Tirailleurs were appalled by
what they heard and saw; many, including decorated veteran
and future National Liberation Front leader Ahmed Ben Bella,
concluded that the only solution was to fight for “Algeria for the
Algerians.”35 As in British India, the military mobilization of colonial
subjects made a key contribution to military victory while simultaneously
advancing the disintegration of the empire.

N o n - n at io n a l S oldi ers
in N at io n a l Armi es
Colonial subjects were not the only non-metropolitan soldiers who

changed the face of the armed forces of the major powers. During the
Battle of Britain, for example, the Royal Air Force’s Fighter Command
was a “diverse, international force” in which those who had escaped
from occupied Europe flew alongside pilots from Britain and the
British Empire.36 Fliers from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, and
Poland accounted for around 10 per cent of Fighter Command’s front-
line strength, and they were joined by men from neutral countries
(at least eight from Eire and seven from the United States of America)
and one from Palestine.37 The Poles were particularly effective, with
the majority-Polish 303 Squadron shooting down more German
aircraft than any other RAF unit in the battle.38 These pilots were part
of a larger Polish military diaspora. After the German invasion of the
U SSR in June 1941, London encouraged the Polish government-in-
exile to sign an agreement with Moscow that freed thousands of Poles
from the Soviet prison camps they had been in since the German-Soviet
partition of their homeland in 1939. The former P O W s were encour-
aged to join a new Polish Army being formed in the U S S R.
Despite the Sikorski-Maisky Agreement, tensions between the
government-in-exile and Moscow continued, and in March 1942 the
“Anders Army,” named after its leader, General Władysław Anders,
left the U SSR on an arduous odyssey through Iran and the Middle
East to British-ruled Palestine. Anders’s 110,000 followers included
at least 36,000 women and children. Three thousand Polish Jews,
including future Israeli leader Menachem Begin, elected to remain in
Palestine, but the remainder went on to form the basis of the Polish II
Corps attached to British-Imperial forces in Italy.39 The II Corps also
recruited Poles who had been forcibly conscripted into the German
military and had subsequently either deserted to the Allies or been
captured by them, and by 1945 it numbered over 100,000 men and
women.40 Other Polish soldiers, including an armoured division and
a brigade of paratroopers fought in northern Europe, while 300 officers
followed an even more tortuous path. After escaping to Britain
in 1940, these men were dispatched to British West Africa to provide
what Churchill called a “white infusion” needed to train the West
African Field Force.41 British colonial officials soon found the Poles
too sympathetic to the African soldiers under their command and too

relaxed in their relations with African women, but over 60 of them

went on to lead men of the 81st and 82nd West African Divisions in
combat in Burma.42
Poles also fought in large numbers in the Soviet Red Army, which,
by the time of the invasion of Germany in 1945, included two entire
Polish armies. The first soldiers recruited into the First Polish Army,
or “Berling Army” after its commander, Zygmunt Berling, were former
prisoners of war who had remained in the Soviet Union after the
departure of the Anders Army, and they were joined by men con-
scripted into the Wehrmacht before being captured by the Soviets.43
As the Red Army advanced into Poland, the new pro-Soviet Provisional
Government introduced conscription, and former combatants
of the Armia Krejowa (Home Army [AK]), the guerrilla force loyal to
the government-in-exile, were also inducted. There was not much
ideological commitment involved: former AK fighters could either join
the Red Army or face deportation to Soviet labour camps. Equipped
and organized as regular Soviet formations and integrated into the
Red Army’s command structure, the two Polish armies suffered heavy
casualties in the final battles of the war. The Soviets ensured that these
forces were led by Soviet officers and trusted Polish communists, but,
like their British-Imperial and French counterparts, they always
doubted the loyalty of the rank-and-file. Nor was this doubt misplaced:
many Polish soldiers in the Red Army hoped that they would be joined
in a newly independent Poland by the Anders Army advancing from
the west, and while political commissars and secret policemen tried
to suppress such sentiments, some of these men did go on to resist the
post-war Sovietization of Poland.44
Soviet commanders believed they faced similar problems with sol-
diers recruited from the non-Russian states of the Soviet Union, who
by summer 1944 comprised just under 50 per cent of the Red Army’s
total person-power.45 Here, again, names matter. Although it has
become commonplace to use “Russia” and “Soviet Union” inter-
changeably, the constant repetition of “Russia” obscures the fact that
the USSR was a union, if under Stalin a forced one, of soviet republics,
and reinforces a Russian chauvinist vision of the Soviet Union as a
homogeneous entity. Moscow’s propagandists made strenuous efforts
to highlight the participation of non-Russians in the Great Patriotic
War, but they did so within the framework of a supranational and
pan-Soviet patriotism that was, in fact, as Soviet war correspondent
Ilya Ehrenburg explained, simply a “natural continuation of Russian

[rossikkii] patriotism.”46 “Soviet patriotism” rested on a specifically

Russian history and genealogy that referenced national heroes from
Alexandr Nevskii to Field Marshal Kutuzov.47 Appeals to a Soviet
patriotism that repackaged great Russian chauvinism had little appeal
in the non-Russian, non-Slavic, and non-Orthodox republics, particu-
larly since many people were already inclined to view the USSR as an
“exploitive, repressive, hegemonic Russian invention.”48 At the same
time, an adherence to the 1917 Russian Revolution as a popular and
progressive accomplishment continued strongly in Russia despite the
repressive character of the Stalinist regime but was much less influen-
tial in the non-Russian republics.
As a result of these factors, the non-Russian republics did not expe-
rience the great wave of voluntary enlistment that swept Russia
following the German invasion, and their rates of draft evasion and
desertion were significantly higher.49 Across much of the Ostfront,
some non-Russian populations initially viewed the Germans as libera-
tors, and they volunteered to fight with them against the Soviets. The
racialized character of the Nazi colonial project rendered Germany
entirely incapable of taking advantage of these sentiments. The only
partial exception was in relation to the Cossacks, who, in a German
version of “martial race” theory, were recognized with “clichéd benev-
olence” as a warlike people with a long history of opposition to
Stalinist centralization.50 Moreover, despite the difficulty of mobilizing
its non-Russian populations, Moscow desperately needed them, and it
sought to stimulate recruitment by making concessions that projected
confidence in the loyalty of non-Russians.
In fall 1941, Moscow resumed the recruitment of nationally-based
units from individual republics, a practice that had been ended in 1938
after Stalin denounced them as potential nuclei of anti-Soviet agita-
tion.51 The re-establishment of national units seems to have encouraged
recruitment, although on occasion looks could be deceiving: only
32 per cent of the newly formed 16th Latvian Rifle Division were
ethnic Latvians, with the remainder composed of Russians, Jews, and
members of other nationalities living in Latvia and recategorized as
Latvians for propaganda purposes. 52 As with its Polish armies,
Moscow never entirely trusted the loyalty of its non-Russian forces,
but as reserves of military-age Russians were depleted after long years
of fighting, it had no choice but to rely on them. As a result, by 1945
the face of the Red Army – particularly in its front-line infantry
formations – was strikingly non-Russian and increasingly Siberian,

Mongolian, or Central Asian, a key fact of hybridization obfuscated

by constant references to “Russians.”
Ironically, the word “German” has a similar effect. The German
military in the Second World War has long been imagined in both
popular and scholarly history as a force characterized by mechanized
modernity and ethnic homogeneity. Scholars like David Stahel have
highlighted just how limited the Wehrmacht’s mechanization actually
was, picturing two German armies invading the U S S R: one that was
small, mechanized, and mobile and one that relied on foot marches
and horse-drawn transport and was “large, slow and cumbersome.”53
As losses mounted and supply systems broke down, the Wehrmacht
was increasingly demodernized; at the same time, it must be noted, it
became increasingly de-Germanized.
The precise number of non-Germans serving in the German military’s
support services and in the allied armies under its command is unknow-
able, but as Robert Citino concludes, it is clear that by the end of the
war the “Wehrmacht wouldn’t have been in the field at all were it not
for non-German foreigners.”54 Non-Germans served on the Ostfront
in three major capacities: first, as volunteer soldiers in special Waffen-SS
units enlisted in support of the Nazi crusade against “Bolshevism”;
second, as members of national armies – Finnish, Hungarian, Italian,
and Romanian – fighting under German command; and third, as former
Soviet soldiers recruited from German prisoner of war camps and put
to work as Hilfswillige (willing helpers) or “Hiwis.”55
Some Hiwis, particularly those from the Baltic States, Byelorussia,
and Ukraine, were opponents of the Stalinist regime who welcomed
the opportunity to fight against it, but the great majority were former
Red Army soldiers who calculated that their chances of survival were
better in the Wehrmacht than in prison camps. At the start of
Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the first two categories of non-
Germans contributed well over 700,000 soldiers to a total invasion
force of nearly 4 million, and some 1,200 miles (over 1,900 kilometers)
out of the 2,000-mile front (over 3,200 kilometers) were held by Finns,
Hungarians, and Romanians.56 As the invasion progressed, German
field commanders quickly began to defy official prohibitions on
recruiting Slavs and started using captured Soviet soldiers for logistical
tasks. By June 1943, at least 800,000 Hiwis were serving in the
Wehrmacht in some capacity; given that both Soviet and German
authorities had an interest in under-reporting the numbers of Hiwis,
the actual figure was probably far higher.57

Beginning in 1938, “Germanic” volunteers who were not German

nationals were admitted into the Waffen-SS. Recruited from the
so-called Germanic lands, these volunteer soldiers initially served
primarily to give physical substance to the National Socialist notion
of a Greater German Reich and to project political and ideological
influence throughout northern Europe.58 As the Nazis’ anti-Bolshevik
crusade unfolded following the invasion of the Soviet Union in
June 1941, voluntary recruitment to the Waffen-SS swelled to produce
a series of “Germanic” formations – from small contingents to entire
divisions – composed of Danes, Dutch, Finns, Flemings, Norwegians,
and Swedes. Many of these soldiers had participated in fascist
organizations in their own countries and were highly motivated and
ideologically committed Nazis, and their units, like the 5th SS Panzer
Division Wiking, were elite formations. As the war went on, however,
SS units in occupied territories from the Baltic to the Balkans began
forcibly conscripting local men, often for counterinsurgency duties.
As many as 500,000 non-Germans served in the Waffen-SS in some
capacity, and by 1945 non-Germans outnumbered Germans in the
Nazi’s signature formation.59 Faced with an increasingly difficult
military situation, racial ideology was set aside in practice; even the
last-ditch defence of Berlin fell in part to the Scandinavian volunteers
of SS Panzergrenadier Division Nordland.60
The invasion of the Soviet Union underscored the importance of
expanding the armed forces under German command, and a
June 1941 meeting involving representatives of the Wehrmacht, the
Reich Main Security Office, the Foreign Office, and the Nazi Party
determined that some “non-Germanic” soldiers – including French,
Croats, and Spaniards – could fight with the Wehrmacht.61 The largest
single group of “non-Germanic” volunteers on Germany’s Ostfront
were the 45,000 Spaniards who served in the Division Azul (Blue
Division) between October 1941 and October 1943. The division was
raised by an uneasy alliance between army leaders and the fascist
Falange, and its ostensibly all-volunteer character was designed to
demonstrate Spanish dictator Francisco Franco’s support for
Germany’s anti-Communist crusade while preserving his country’s
non-belligerent status.
Uniformed, trained, and equipped by Germany, the Division
Azul was incorporated into the Wehrmacht as the 250th Infantry
Division. Originally slated to support the push toward Moscow, the
division was reassigned to the front around Leningrad after German

officers expressed doubts about its discipline. The Spaniards finally

arrived after a gruelling series of marches that highlight the
Wehrmacht’s lack of motorized transport. The Division Azul performed
well despite its lack of winter equipment, but German commanders
thought that the Spanish soldiers were too inclined to fraternize with
the local population – including having “orgies with Jewesses” – and
they reported a level of technical incompetence that allegedly included
using a hammer to assemble MG-34 machine guns. Expressing typical
great-power chauvinism, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge asked
whether the Spaniards were “soldiers or gypsies?”62
The Hungarian, Italian, and Romanian armies fighting on the
Ostfront suffered similar German disdain. Although all were signato-
ries of the Tripartite Pact, Berlin viewed its allies as subordinate states
whose armies were at Germany’s disposal, and there was never any
question of integrating them into top-level strategic planning. Hitler
respected Romanian leader Ion Antonescu as a loyal anti-communist
crusader and an honorary man of “Germanic origin,” but lamented
that it was his “misfortune to have Romanians under his command.”63
Despite German disdain, Romania committed two armies and over
325,000 soldiers to the war against the U S S R, and the other allied
nations also made major commitments. By the opening of Operation
Blau in summer 1942, Allied troops accounted for around 25 per cent
of the “German” force, making it, as General Gerd von Runstedt noted
ironically, an “absolute League of Nations army.”64
German contempt for the armies of the “lower nations” has contin-
ued to colour historical memory. Germany’s allies largely figure in
accounts of the Ostfront as hapless fall guys: the Romanian Third and
Fourth Armies, for example, are rarely discussed except in the context
of their collapse in the face of the Soviet counteroffensive around
Stalingrad in November 1942. The destruction of the Romanian armies
allowed the entrapment of the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad, but
these poorly equipped and massively overstretched forces could never
reasonably have been expected to hold back the Red Army’s armoured
spearheads; in fact, perhaps reflecting their dismissive attitude toward
the Romanians, German commanders refused to take their reports
of heavy Soviet attacks seriously until it was too late to mount an
effective response.65 Following the destruction of the Romanian
Third and Fourth Armies – some 3,000 survivors were among the
90,000 “German” prisoners captured in Stalingrad – the Italian Eighth
Army and the Hungarian Second Army each lost over 80,000 men

fighting to defend the line of the River Don, and the survivors were
withdrawn from combat and repatriated.66
The third and most numerous group of non-Germans on the
Ostfront were the Hiwis. From early on in Barbarossa, local
commanders began employing increasing numbers of Hiwis, first as
non-combatants and then in combat roles. In a triumph of pragmatism
over ideology, the Army High Command agreed during the summer
of 1942 that up to 10 per cent of the positions in German divisions
could be filled by non-combatant Hiwis. Despite this o stensibly
temporary concession, racial ideology led senior Nazis to derail army
plans for the formation of a “Russian Liberation Army” (ROA) led by
former Red Army General Andrey Vlasov.67 Many of the Hiwis
incorporated into German units dug latrines and moved supplies, but
some were pulled into combat roles.68 Many wore German uniforms
and were visually indistinguishable from Germans, a fact of integra-
tion that has contributed to their historical invisibility. During the
Battle of Stalingrad, around 19,000 (10 per cent) of Sixth Army
soldiers were Hiwis, and in some divisions they accounted for 50 per
cent of combat strength; later, when Army Group Centre prepared
for the inevitable Soviet offensive in the summer of 1944, it counted
103,000 Hiwis out of a ration strength of 849,000, and many more
no doubt went unrecorded.69 In the desperate days that followed the
collapse of Army Group Centre, Berlin finally approved the creation
of the Russian Liberation Army, and Hitler appointed Vlasov “supreme
commander of Russian armed forces.”70 It was too little and too late:
Vlasov’s scattered forces spent the final weeks of the war manoeuvring
to surrender to the Americans, but most of the 20,000 ROA soldiers
who ended the war in US prisoner-of-war camps were later handed
over to the Soviets.
German officials had a more positive attitude to Cossacks than to
ethnic Slavs, and in April 1942 Hitler approved them for front-line
duty and anti-partisan operations.71 Eventually, Cossack forces grew
to a 25,000-strong cavalry corps, although, perhaps reflecting lingering
doubts about their loyalty, they were deployed away from the Ostfront
on counterinsurgency operations in Yugoslavia.72 At the same time,
the recapture of Cossack homelands by the Red Army in 1943 ended
speculative discussions in Berlin on the establishment of a Cossack
puppet state. At the end of the war, some 32,000 Cossacks who had
fought under German command were rounded up in Carinthia
(southern Austria) by British authorities and turned over to the Soviets.

Hiwis and other forcibly impressed soldiers were concentrated on

Germany’s Ostfront but, like the Poles who escaped to join II Corps
in Italy, they also served in significant numbers elsewhere. In fall 1943,
German commanders began assembling Ost-Bataillonen or “eastern
battalions” for France in preparation for an Allied landing. These units
were composed of both Hiwis and non-German volunteers, including
Cossacks, Georgians, Turkmens, Volga Tatars, and Azeris, and they
made a significant contribution to the Wehrmacht’s infantry combat
strength; in LXXXIV Corps, for example, they comprised eight out
of forty-two battalions.73
R ac ia l a n d E t h n ic Mi nori ti es
in t h e U S M ili tary
The numbers make it clear that, despite the obvious ideological dif-
ficulties, Germany simply could not have sustained its military effort
without the participation of very large numbers of non-Germans.74
The wartime experience of the United States offers some interesting
points of comparison. In the context of fighting a war in which the
strategic emphasis on the production of war materiel necessarily lim-
ited the availability of Caucasian military manpower, the United States
relied heavily on the mobilization of racial and ethnic minorities,
colonial troops, and allied armies. US authorities faced an ideological
challenge, but whereas German racial ideology had to accommodate
mobilizing non-Germans, America fought the war under a banner of
democracy and racial equality while actually practising racial segrega-
tion. In a manner that paralleled the outlook of other imperial elites,
American commanders argued that African Americans were too
educationally backward to master modern weapons, but unlike their
colonial contemporaries they also argued that Blacks were unsuited
for combat. There was no American equivalent of “martial race”
theory except, perhaps, in the valorization of a Native American past
that had already been effectively extirpated.
During the interwar years, Black soldiers in the remaining four
African American regiments had been dispersed into “housekeeping
detachments” on bases around the United States.75 When the wartime
expansion of the military began in 1940, the Army agreed to induct
African Americans in proportion to the population, but in practice
proficiency tests were used to slow their recruitment. Prompted by a
public campaign in the Black press, more African Americans were

recruited as personnel shortages began to bite, and eventually some

1.25 million served – a number roughly proportional to their weight
in the population.76 Most were assigned to labour or service units,
and critical but often unheralded operations like the construction of
the Ledo Road in Burma or the Red Ball Express trucking operation
in France were carried out largely by African Americans. If technically
non-combatant, this work was not without danger: in July 1944, over
250 Black stevedores were killed while loading ammunition at Port
Chicago, California.
Manpower shortages prompted the formation of two Black divi-
sions that were deployed in 1944 in Bougainville and in Italy, but
poor training and antagonism between white officers and Black
soldiers marred their combat performance. By late 1944, however, a
lack of trained soldiers in the European Theatre persuaded command-
ers to assign small African American units – tank and artillery
battalions and infantry platoons – to previously all-white formations.
The results were impressive.77 These moves – and parallel develop-
ments in the Air Corps and the Navy – were undertaken for pragmatic
reasons and stopped short of full integration, but they nevertheless
started to break down segregation. Moreover, African American
veterans took their experience of fighting racism and segregation in
the military home with them, where it helped to fuel the rise of the
Civil Rights movement.78
Members of other ethnic groups also served in the US military in
significant numbers. Precise numbers are impossible to determine,
but they include 850,000 Italian Americans, as many as 500,000
Mexican Americans and other “Hispanics,” and over 25,000 Japanese
Americans.79 As reported by the Bureau of Native Affairs, around
25,000 Native Americans – around 7 per cent of the Indigenous popu-
lation – also served, and they were joined by at least another
20,000 “off-reservation” Native Americans.80 Soldiers from these
ethnic minorities did not face the systemic segregation that confronted
African Americans, and with the exception of the 53,000 Puerto
Ricans who served in the territorially defined Puerto Rican National
Guard and the 65th Infantry Regiment, and the Japanese-American
members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, they did not fight
in separate units. Nevertheless, many faced varying degrees of preju-
dice and discrimination; Italian and Hispanic American men, for
example, were held by many US elites to have non-white and feminine
characteristics that made them unsuitable for military service.81 Native

American military service, on the other hand, was often framed by

an Americanized version of martial race theory that valorized
Indigenous warrior traditions even as it mythologized them. Popular
perceptions of martial valour paved the way to acceptance, enabling
at least some Native Americans to experience their time in the military
as one of “cultural reaffirmation and renewal.”82
The United States also raised at least 200,000 fighters from its
colony in the Philippines where, contrary to popular images of
American victimhood, Filipinos accounted for all but 600 of the
7,000 men who died on the 1942 Bataan Death March.83 In Italy,
the American Fifth Army included the 25,000-strong Brazilian
Expeditionary Force. Raised in exchange for US economic and military
aid, this Brazilian contingent was itself an ethnically diverse force
that included a large number of Afro-Brazilians and even some
Italian-Brazilians.84
C o n c l u s ion
The work of thinking about the recruitment of colonial conscripts,

non-national soldiers, and members of racial and ethnic minorities
into the armed forces of all the major protagonists in the Second World
War adds depth and texture to our understanding of the war on a
number of different levels. First, it rescues the stories of millions from
what E.P. Thompson called the “enormous condescension of poster-
ity.”85 Second, it illuminates the commonalities of imperial practice,
linking the attitudes of the Japanese in Korea, the British in India, and
mutatis mutandis, of white US officers toward the African Americans
under their command. Third, by bringing the subaltern to the centre,
these entangled histories challenge the national frameworks that have
dominated the historiography of the Second World War, allowing the
weight and ubiquity of the worldwide mobilization of military person-
power to globalize our understanding of the war itself.
If, as James Belich et al. contend, global history foregrounds “uneven
or differential connectedness” and is “centrally concerned with the
history of mobility,” then the Second World War can be reimagined
as transnational vectors describing the movement of armies, matériel,
people, ideas, and – as discussed above – of millions of soldiers
recruited outside the imperial metropolises.86 At the very least, this
mobility and connectivity complicates the previously all-pervasive
image of the war as a struggle between homogeneous nation-states

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Bank of North America.
“I wrote to him about it, and he said that he desired me not to
communicate with him again until he should be free. Then he would
call upon me. If I were to die I was to provide in my will that the
money should be placed with some trust company for him.
“Well, as I said, he called on me yesterday. He asked me for two
hundred dollars, and I gave it to him.”
The gentleman paused.
“How much was the full amount?” asked Nick, upon whom the
cashier’s information was making a clear impression of innocence on
the part of Alfred Lawrence.
“About seven thousand dollars,” the cashier answered.
“Did Lawrence talk about his family?”
“He did not.”
“Did he talk about any one?”
“All he said was that he intended to prove that he was not a forger.”
“Did he say how he was going to do it?”
“No.”
“Were you ever acquainted with Simeon Rich?”
“No.”
“Is he living in the city?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you don’t know what became of Lawrence’s wife and child?”
“I do not.”
“Did you know that Lawrence’s house on Beach Street has remained
vacant for years?”
“No.”
“When Lawrence left you did he say where he was going?”
“He did not.”
“Did he say that he would call on you again?”
“He promised to call and see me to-morrow.”
“Did Lawrence run a safe deposit box?”
“He did. He had one with our company.”
“Did he open it yesterday?”
“No. He told me that he intended to open it to-morrow.”
“Did he have the key?”
“He did.”
“Do you know the number of the box?”
“I do not.”
“To-morrow I will find out the number for you.”
“Can’t you do so to-day?”
“Why?”
“I want to examine the contents of that box.”
“You will have to wait until to-morrow, Mr. Carter. Then I will get
permission for you to open the box.”
“I suppose I’ll have to wait.”
“I am sorry that I can’t help you to-day.”
“So am I.”
Carter gave the cashier an account of the mysterious murder at the
Red Dragon Inn and then he departed, promising to call on him at
his office early the next morning.
So far he had progressed fairly well with the case, though he had not
secured any information which would throw light on the mystery.
The murdered man’s identity was established and Carter had
learned something about his history.
But that was not much.
Who could have committed the crime?
Was Lawrence murdered by a common thief or by one who was
afraid of him and desired to put him out of the way?
Carter asked himself these questions.
He was not prepared to answer either one of them.
He had discovered no clew.
He had learned nothing upon which he could base a theory.
Leaving the cashier’s house, he dismissed the cabman, and, hailing
a taxicab, rode home, where he went to his study and sat down to
smoke and think.
It was now evening. He had not wasted a moment since early in the
morning, but he was not satisfied with his work. He had looked
through the directory and had not been able to find in it the name of
the man who had been instrumental in sending Lawrence to State’s
prison.
Did he have any suspicion that that man could have anything to do
with the murder?
If he did not, then why was he so anxious to find out what had
become of that man? He wished he had a more accurate description
of the man who had entered the barroom of the Red Dragon Inn after
Lawrence.
“That man may know nothing,” he muttered as he thought about him,
“but, nevertheless, I should like to find him.
“Who is he?
“What was he doing in the inn?
“Did he simply step in to get a drink, or did he follow Lawrence in?
“I’m puzzled.”
The detective arose from his chair and commenced to pace back
and forth across the room.
All the time he puffed away vigorously on his cigar and blew the
smoke out in a long stream. Whenever he was annoyed about
anything he always smoked in this way. He was so deep in thought
that he did not hear a knock on the door until the person without had
knocked several times.
Carter halted in the center of the room and called out:
“Come in.”
The door was opened by Nick’s butler and Peter Wright entered the
room.
At a glance the detective saw he was excited.
“I’m glad you are in, Mr. Carter,” Wright ejaculated, as he sank down
in a chair.
He was puffing and blowing from exertion, and it was several
minutes before he became composed. He mopped his brow with a
large red bandanna and laid his hat down on the floor by the side of
his chair.
“It was a peculiar experience,” he ejaculated, looking at the
detective, “very peculiar—very peculiar——”
Mr. Wright had a rapid way of speaking when he was excited, and he
had a habit of repeating certain words and phrases to emphasize
what he said.
“It was deucedly peculiar,” he repeated, after a slight pause.
Carter could not help smiling as he said:
“Mr. Wright, you forget that I know nothing about it.”
“That’s so—confound it! I am so excited I can hardly collect my
thoughts. But it was a deucedly peculiar experience, all the same,”
he replied.
“Tell me all about it.”
“Tell you all about it? So I will—yes—yes. Peculiar—it was very
peculiar——”
“No doubt. Try and collect your thoughts.”
“I will.”
Mr. Wright mopped his brow for the twentieth time, blew his nose,
and then, rolling his bandanna up into a ball, threw it into his hat,
saying, as he rested his elbows upon the arms of the chair and
leaned forward:
“Mr. Carter, I think I have important information for you.”
“That is what I want,” the detective replied.
Nick was perfectly calm.
Not a muscle of his face moved.
But those shrewd eyes of his sparkled like two gems.
“It was this way,” Mr. Wright continued, after a momentary silence:
“After you left me I returned to my room in the hotel and sat down to
glance at the morning newspaper. I could not remain quiet for any
length of time, because my mind was dwelling continuously on the
murder.
“Well, an hour passed. I was pacing up and down the room trying to
recall to my mind everything I had known and had heard about
Lawrence, when there came a knock at my door.
“I called out for the party to come in, and a tall, handsome, stylishly
dressed woman entered the room.
“I was taken by surprise and was slightly confused. I thought at first
the woman had mistaken my room for some one else’s. But she
looked at me very calmly, and when I did not speak she said:
“‘Are you not Mr. Wright?’
“Instantly I pulled myself together and acknowledged that I was the
individual. I invited her to be seated.
“As far as I could remember, Mr. Carter, I had never seen the woman
before in all my life.
“‘You are Mr. Peter Wright?’ she asked again, as soon as she was
seated, and she placed considerable emphasis upon ‘Peter,’ looking
me straight in the eyes with such intensity as if she were
endeavoring to read my most secret thoughts.
“‘My name is Peter Wright,’ I said, and I commenced to experience a
creeping sensation all over me.
“Never before had I been in such a position.
“It may have been my imagination, but I thought that she was making
an effort to exert some influence over me.
“Well, that is neither here nor there. It is a waste of time for me to go
into details about my feelings——”
“Go on,” Carter interrupted, “tell your story your own way, and do not
make any attempt to abridge it. I am deeply interested.”
“Let me see—oh, yes. As I said, I thought she was trying to
hypnotize me.
“As soon as I said that I was Peter Wright she asked:
“‘Were you the owner of the Red Dragon Inn at one time?’
“I replied in the affirmative, and I saw a smile encircle her lips.
“‘You don’t remember me,’ she said, after a pause.
“‘Indeed, I do not,’ I replied. ‘I cannot recall that I ever saw you
before.’
“‘No doubt, no doubt,’ she murmured. She glanced around the room
and ran her hand across her forehead. ‘I have changed wonderfully,’
she went on. ‘Twenty years works wonderful changes in all of us,’
and she smiled, with the sweetest smile I ever beheld upon the face
of a woman.
“‘We all change,’ I interpolated, and she replied:
“‘You are right. I was a girl when you saw me last, and now I am a
woman. Mr. Wright, do you not remember Isabella Porter?’
“The instant she mentioned the name I remembered her.
“Her parents used to live a few doors from the Red Dragon Inn. Her
father was a produce merchant. When she was a small girl I used to
give her pennies to spend. Her father died and her mother moved
out of the neighborhood. I lost track of them, and I had not seen nor
heard of Isabella until she appeared in my room.
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Carter, even after she had told me who she
was, I studied her face, but could not see a line in it that was familiar
to me. I believed she was Isabella Porter, all the same.
“I told her that I remembered her name, and then for a time she was
silent. She bowed her head, and seemed lost in deep thought.
“Suddenly she glanced up at me.
“‘I’ve called to see you on a peculiar errand,’ she informed me.
“‘What is it?’ I asked.
“‘One night about ten or eleven years ago,’ she said, ‘a man called
on you at the Red Dragon Inn and gave you a package to keep.
“‘The man was a stranger to you.
“‘On the package was written the name of Edward Peters.
“‘You put the package in your safe and the man never called for it.’
“She paused and fastened her eyes upon me, Mr. Carter, with that
strange, uncanny, searching look—it was certainly peculiar, very
peculiar!
“I recalled the incident distinctly, but something within me seemed to
tell me to pretend ignorance about the package, to try and draw her
out and find out what she was aiming at, so I said:
“‘I don’t remember any such incident.’
“Isabella Porter started and her face darkened.
“‘You don’t?’ she ejaculated, in a tone of annoyance.
“‘No,’ I replied. I was perfectly calm now, you see, and I had full
command of my senses.
“Isabella eyed me closely, but I returned her gaze unflinchingly.
“Why I acted in this way I cannot tell. An unseen force seemed to be
guiding me.
“‘What did you do with the contents of your safe?’ Isabella asked.
“‘When I sold the place,’ I replied, ‘I removed the contents of the
safe. I placed the paper in a box and locked it up in the safe deposit
vault. Since that time I have never looked at it,’ which was the truth.
“‘Then the package must be in your box,’ Isabella ejaculated, and
her countenance brightened. ‘Mr. Wright, I want that package.’
“‘If it should be among my papers,’ I replied, ‘I can’t see why I should
deliver it to you. It does not belong to you.’
“She bit her lips with annoyance and exclaimed:
“‘I must get possession of that package, Mr. Wright.’
“‘Why?’ I asked.
“‘I can’t tell you the reason why,’ she answered. ‘You would not
understand if I were able to explain. But, Mr. Wright, please let me
have that package.’
“‘What is in it?’ I asked.
“‘I can’t tell you,’ she replied.
“‘Oh, well,’ I said, with a false laugh. ‘It is nothing to me. To-morrow I
will hunt through my papers at the safe deposit company and I will
see if the package is among them.’
“‘Can’t you look to-day?’ she asked, with great eagerness.
“‘No,’ I replied; ‘to-day is a holiday and the vault is closed.’
“‘Then I suppose I must wait. What time shall I call upon you to-
morrow?’
“‘About eleven o’clock,’ I answered.
“‘I will be here on time,’ she said, and she arose from her chair.
“‘Where are you living?’ I inquired.
“‘At No. — West Nineteenth Street,’ she replied.
“‘With your mother?’
“‘My mother has been dead five years. I reside in a flat alone.’
“‘Are you married?’
“‘No, no,’ she laughed.
“I wanted to question her further, but I refrained.
“Isabella departed.
“As soon as she was out of the room I locked the door.
“I had lied to her, Mr. Carter. The box with the contents of my old
safe in it was not in the vault of the safe deposit company, but it was
resting under my bed.
“I pulled it out into the center of the room and unlocked it. I examined
the contents, and at last came across the package with the name of
Edward Peters written across the face.
“It was sealed.
“I broke the seals and tore off the wrapper.
“Another wrapper was beneath, and upon it was writing.
“I read the indorsement.
“As the words appeared before my eyes I was so overcome with
excitement that I could not move or think for some time.”
Mr. Wright paused, looked at Carter, put his hand into the breast
pocket of his coat, and pulled out a large package.
CHAPTER V.
AN IMPORTANT PACKAGE.
“This is the package,” Mr. Wright ejaculated, as he held up the

bundle. “I have not opened it.”
“What is the indorsement?” Carter asked.
“Listen and I will read.”
“Read.”
“‘Papers relating to the Lawrence will case.’”
“The deuce you say!”
“Read for yourself.”
Mr. Wright handed the package to the detective.
Carter took hold of it and read the indorsement.
“The writing is bold and clear,” he said. “No name signed to it.”
“It is peculiar,” Mr. Wright rejoined. “It seems strange that this should
turn up just at this time, and it is remarkable that I should have been
impelled to act as I did.”
“Yes,” Carter remarked, and he became thoughtful, while he held the
package in his hand and gazed at it fixedly.
“What do you suppose those papers contain?”
“We will examine them.”
“Why was Isabella Porter so anxious to get possession of them?”
“That we will have to find out.”
“Who was Edward Peters?”
“I can’t answer the question.”
Carter laughed as he glanced at Mr. Wright, who joined him,
remarking:
“If I were not so excited I would never have asked such a question,
Mr. Carter.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Let us examine those papers. There may be something in them
which will furnish you with a clew.”
“Or they may deepen the mystery.”
Carter broke the seals and tore off the wrapper.
Five documents fell into his lap.
Mr. Wright drew up his chair close to the detective’s side.
Carter picked up one of the papers and read the indorsement:
“‘Confession of George Blanchard, butler, employed by Alfred
Lawrence, Esq.’”
“Phew!” Mr. Wright gave a prolonged whistle.
His and the detective’s eyes met.
For some time they did not speak.
“Confession of George Blanchard,” repeated Mr. Wright.
“We will read it,” the detective remarked, and he opened the paper.
Mr. Wright leaned back in his chair.
Carter cleared his throat and commenced to read:
“‘I, George Blanchard, knowing that I am about to die and
to be called upon to face my Maker, desiring to make
reparation for grievous wrongs and sins which I have
committed, do make the following confession, hoping
thereby to ease my conscience. May God have mercy
upon my soul!
“‘I was born in Manchester, England, and at the age of
twenty I came to America.
“‘Shortly after my arrival in New York I was engaged by
Alfred Lawrence, Esq., to act as his butler, and I went to
work at his house, No. — Beach Street.
“‘Mr. Lawrence was engaged in business with his uncle,
after whom he was named.
“‘Old Mr. Lawrence died, and when the will was read it
was found that his nephew was left all of the property.
“‘Simeon Rich, another nephew of the deceased,
proceeded to contest the will, and he claimed that Mr.
Alfred Lawrence had forged the document.
“‘Previous to the death of old Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Alfred
Lawrence and his wife became estranged.
“‘They used to quarrel frequently.
“‘Mrs. Lawrence was a cold, willful, and heartless woman.
“‘One day I discovered that she was meeting Simeon Rich
clandestinely. This was before the death of her husband’s
uncle.
“‘I saw that I had her in my power, and I made a demand
upon her for hush money, which she gave to me.
“‘I threatened her with exposure, and I received from her
several hundred dollars.
“‘One night shortly after the death of old Mr. Lawrence,
Simeon Rich came to me and told me that he was going to
contest the will. He said he would pay me ten thousand
dollars if I would swear that I had seen Mr. Alfred
Lawrence forge the will.
“‘Mrs. Lawrence, he told me, would be on his side.
“‘He paid me one thousand dollars down, and the balance
he promised to give me as soon as the will was broken.
“‘I entered into the plot.
“‘Papers which would have cleared Mr. Alfred Lawrence of
the charge of forgery I stole from his safe.
“‘These papers I have always kept in my possession, and
they will be found with this confession.
“‘One of the papers was a statement of the lawyer who
had drawn up the will and who had died just before the
contest.
“‘From time to time Simeon Rich has tried to get
possession of these papers, but I would never give them
to him.
“‘Another paper was a letter written by Mrs. Lawrence to
Rich, in which she outlined the whole plot.
“‘Mr. Alfred Lawrence in some way got hold of this letter.
“‘He was sent to State’s prison a year ago to-day.
“‘Mrs. Lawrence and Rich have gone abroad together.
“‘Two weeks ago, while crossing Broadway, I was knocked
down by a runaway team and taken to this hospital.
“‘I have suffered terrible agony, and the doctors have
informed me that I cannot live.
“‘I intrust this confession and the stolen documents, which
will clear Mr. Alfred Lawrence, to my chum, Edward
Peters, with instructions to deliver them to the proper
authorities.
“‘(Signed) George Blanchard.
“‘Witnessed by:
“‘Edward Peters,
“‘Leonard Thompson, M. D., House Physician,
Bellevue Hospital.
“‘Dated August 17, 19—’”
For some time after Carter finished reading he and Mr. Wright sat in
silence.
Mr. Wright was the first to speak.
“That confession shows that Lawrence was innocent,” he remarked.
“Yes,” the detective rejoined, “but it throws no light on the murder.”
“I wonder what became of Edward Peters and what induced him to
leave the package of documents with me? If I had only known the
value of those papers years ago, I would have had Lawrence out of
Sing Sing in a jiffy.”
“I wonder if Doctor Leonard Thompson, whose signature is attached
to this confession, is the famous specialist who now resides on
upper Fifth Avenue?”
“We can easily find out by calling on him.”
“We will start for his house immediately.”
Carter put the papers into the inside pocket of his coat, and then he
and Mr. Wright started for the house of the Fifth Avenue physician.
When the detective and his companion arrived at the palatial
mansion they were shown into a small reception room in which a
number of patients were seated.
Carter gave his card to the butler, requesting him to present it to his
master and state that he desired to see the doctor on important
business.
In a few minutes the butler returned and said that the doctor would
see them.
Doctor Thompson was a man of fine physique and aristocratic
bearing.
At first he acted rather coldly when the detective and Mr. Wright
entered his private office. However, he invited them to be seated and
asked what they desired.
“Were you ever house physician at Bellevue Hospital?” Carter
inquired.
“I was,” Doctor Thompson replied.
“Is this your signature?”
The detective took the Blanchard confession out of his pocket and
showed the doctor the signature.
“This is my signature,” the physician said, after he had glanced at it,
and instantly he thawed out and became interested. “What is that
paper?”
“A confession of a man named George Blanchard,” the detective
answered. “He was at one time a butler for a Mr. Alfred Lawrence.”
“I remember the man. He died from injuries received in a runaway. I
never knew what the confession related to.
“A man named Peters was with him all the afternoon before he died.
I came up to the cot just as he signed the paper, and Peters
requested me to witness the signature, which I did.
“My mind was busy with other matters, and I never thought to ask
what was in the paper.
“I signed the death certificate, and, if my memory does not play me
false, I think Peters claimed the body and buried it.
“A month later Peters was brought to the hospital in a dying
condition. He had been stabbed, I think, in some dark street
downtown.
“I recognized him as the man who had been with Blanchard and who
had requested me to sign the paper.
“He died without recovering consciousness.
“I can’t tell whether any one claimed his body or not.”
“The records at Bellevue will show that?”
“Certainly.”
“Doctor, we are greatly obliged to you for this information.”
“Why are you so anxious——”
“I can’t tell you anything just at present——”
“I understand, Mr. Carter. Well, if I can be of any further service to
you, don’t hesitate to call on me.”
“Thank you.”
Carter and Wright departed.
As soon as they were outside in the street, the latter turned to the
former and said:
“What are you going to do next?”
“We will go over to Bellevue,” the detective rejoined.
At the hospital Carter proceeded to examine the record of deaths.
After a long search, he found the name of Edward Peters.
“Here it is,” he said, turning to Peter Wright and holding his finger on
the name.
“Read what the record says,” said Wright.
“‘Peters, Edward. Forty, unmarried, native of England. Cause of
death: stab wound in back, over left lobe of heart. Occupation: butler.
Where employed: No. — Fifth Avenue. Name of employer: Mrs.
Isabella Porter. Body claimed by Mrs. Porter. Date, September 21.’”
“Well!” Wright ejaculated, and he looked at Carter, with a quizzical
expression upon his face.
“More mystery,” the detective rejoined.
“Peters stopped at the Red Dragon Inn on the night of September
20.”
“How do you know that?”
“I put the date on the wrapper of the package.”
“Did you leave that wrapper in your room?”
“I did.”
“From this record, it appears that the man was Mrs. Porter’s butler.”
“Yes. She never had a butler when they lived on West Broadway,
and I was not aware that she had gone to reside on Fifth Avenue.”
“Mrs. Porter’s daughter was named after her?”
“Obviously!”
“Let us go to your hotel. When Miss Isabella Porter calls on you to-
morrow, tell her that you could not find the package.”
“I’d like to know how she learned about it.”
“That we will find out all in good time.”
“I will put these papers away in a safe place.”
“Do so.”
It was quite late when the detective and Wright reached the hotel.
Carter recovered the wrapper which had been outside of the
package. He sealed the documents up in an envelope, and had the
bundle locked up in the hotel safe.
When he reached his house, an hour later, he did not retire to rest.
As soon as he locked the door of his sanctum, he proceeded to
change his clothing.
In a quarter of an hour he had changed his appearance so
completely that his most intimate acquaintance could not have
recognized him.
What did he intend to do?
From the manner in which he acted, it was quite clear that he did not
propose to remain in. He examined his notebook before leaving the
room, and as he went out he muttered:
“We will see what kind of place Miss Porter lives in.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE THREAT.
Carter desired to learn something about Isabella Porter.

Her appearance at this time and her anxiety to secure the papers
which had been left in Mr. Wright’s possession so many years before
seemed peculiar.
As the detective reviewed the incidents, and recalled the record of
Peters’ death to his mind, he was almost certain that the man had
been attacked by some one who desired to put him out of the way.
Was Peters’ death planned because he had in his possession these
damaging papers?
Carter pondered over this question.
The circumstance was puzzling.
Why was no attempt ever made until now to get possession of the
documents?
How did Isabella Porter come to know or suppose that they were in
the possession of Mr. Wright?
Was it any wonder that Carter was in a quandary when these
questions were presented to his mind?
He did not know what to think.
He was in the dark.
There was a veil before his eyes, figuratively speaking.
He felt that Isabella Porter had some connection with the mystery of
the Red Dragon Inn, but what this connection was he could not
determine.
Presently he arrived at the address on West Nineteenth Street.
It was an apartment house. He went into the vestibule and examined
the names on the letter boxes.
The name of the woman was not among them.
“It is as I supposed,” the detective muttered, “she does not live here,
and she gave Mr. Wright this address simply as a blind.”
To make sure that he was not wrong in his surmise, Carter called on
the janitor and questioned him.
The man did not know any woman by the name of Isabella Porter,
and he was sure that no woman answering to her description lived in
the house.
“She had some deep object in view when she gave that false
address,” the detective thought. “The discovery alone is sufficient to
make one suspect her.”
Early the next morning the detective called at the address on Fifth
Avenue which he had found in the record of Peters’ death.
No one knew anything about any person by the name of Porter.
He returned to the hotel, and went to Mr. Wright’s room, intending to
remain there until the woman called.
He sent a message to the cashier of the safe deposit company,
stating that he had important business on hand, and he would see
him later in the day.
Noon arrived, and Isabella Porter did not appear.
Carter was impatient.
“I’ve wasted the whole morning,” he remarked to Wright.
“That woman promised to call early,” Wright rejoined. “Do you think
her suspicions were aroused?”
“That I cannot tell.”
“It is curious.”
“Very.”
Carter strode over to the window and looked out into the street. He
was in a brown study.
What should he do?
Just then some one knocked on the door, and the detective opened
it.
A messenger boy stood before him.
“I’ve got a note for Mr. Peter Wright,” the boy said.
Mr. Wright took the note, and opened it. He glanced at it, and then
turning to the boy, asked:
“From whom did you receive this?”
“A man,” the boy replied.
“Where was he when he gave it to you?”
“In the barroom of the Humberland House.”
“What kind of a looking man was he?”
“He was tall, had a smooth face and black hair.”
“What did he say when he gave you the note?”
“He said simply to fetch it down to you.”
“Was that all?”
“That was all.”
“Did he pay you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You may go.”
“Wait, sonny.”
It was Carter who spoke. He had remained quiet during the time
Peter Wright was questioning the lad.
“Let me see that note?” he asked, and Wright handed the message
to him. He read it, and a smile crossed his face.

The Peoples War The Second World War in Socio Political Perspective 1St Edition Alexander Wilson Online Ebook Texxtbook Full Chapter PDF

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The Peoples War The Second World

War In Socio political Perspective 1st

Battle of Leyte Gulf The Largest Sea Battle of the

The Second World War Illustrated The Fifth Year Jack

The Second World War A Military History Gordon Corrigan

The Conflict Revisited The Second World War in Post

British Subversive Propaganda during the Second World

The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post

The Second World War Illustrated The Second Year

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 1 2022-08-11 14:48

The Second World War

McGill-­Queen’s University Press

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 3 2022-08-11 14:48

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 4 2022-08-11 14:48

Introduction: In Search of a New History of the Second

T he me O n e P ro b l e m at iz ing “People’s Wars ”

T he me T wo M o b il iz at io n and Remobi li zati on

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 5 2022-08-11 14:48

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 6 2022-08-11 14:48

15 Beyond a “People’s War”: The Polish Past and the Second

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33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 1 2022-08-11 14:48

In Search of a New History

Alexander Wilson, Richard Hammond,

In contrast to the military or the political and ideological histories

The Second World War was a global event of close to unparalleled

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 3 2022-08-11 14:48

The nation is the standard “unit of analysis” employed by scholars

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 4 2022-08-11 14:48

with fresh boundaries; it accelerated processes of imperial decline; and

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 5 2022-08-11 14:48

the face of foreign aggression to smooth over the cracks of a concur-

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 6 2022-08-11 14:48

Beyond the British example, as we shall see, the conceptual limita-

Many national narratives of the war portray the experience of their

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 7 2022-08-11 14:48

engages with the memory of a conflict that still looms as a touchpoint

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 8 2022-08-11 14:48

inability of the Fascist state to generate popular support and arbitrate

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 9 2022-08-11 14:48

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 10 2022-08-11 14:48

variations were influenced by the structural conditions of both occu-

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 11 2022-08-11 14:48

The fifth theme addresses the “History and Memory of ‘People’s

In summary, this volume presents novel work addressing hitherto

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 12 2022-08-11 14:48

between effective or ineffective popular mobilization. Third, it argues

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 13 2022-08-11 14:48

also conceived as an organizational hub for conferences, seminars, and

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 14 2022-08-11 14:48

status, see Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Stalin’s Cold War: Soviet Strategies

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 15 2022-08-11 14:48

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 16 2022-08-11 14:48

Problematizing “People’s Wars”

33106_Wilson_Hammond_Fennell.indd 17 2022-08-11 14:48

World War, Worldwide Mobilization

McGill-Queen’s University Press