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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T h e P e o p l e s’ War?
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
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
Contributors 377
Index 383
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”
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.
M as t e r N a r rati ves
a n d M u lt ip l e Narrati ves
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
M a r g in a l iz e d Hi stori es
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
(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).
Andrew N. Buchanan
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
Figure 1.1 Indian soldiers of the British Empire fraternizing with Italian civilians,
n.d. © Imperial War Museum, IWM NA8533.
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
N o n - n at io n a l S oldi ers
in N at io n a l Armi es
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.
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
C o n c l u s ion
“‘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.