The Path to Extremism
New York City, 2001. A paradigm shift takes place before our eyes.
On September 11, 2001, the world changed. As the second jetliner crashed into the world trade centre, those watching realised the significance of the events they were witnessing. What was unfolding in the morning skies above New York was a paradigm shift- a total reconfiguring of the public consciousness. Extremism, and governmental reactions to extremism, have become a defining theme of our young century. While straying into a singular and uncompromising ideology is certainly nothing new, the debate over how we deal with extremists has attained a new intensity since the events of September 11. Perhaps this is a logical development- for too long, the interventions of those at the fringes of ideology have had a disproportionate effect on the world around us.
Think of Gavrilo Princep, the 23-year-old Yugoslav nationalist who plunged Europe into the First World War with just a few bullets into the open-topped vehicle of Franz Ferdinand. Or Yigal Amir, who managed to derail promising efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by assassinating Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. One was supporting a secular pan-nationalist agenda, the other a radical religious ideology intent on reestablishing a unified Jewish state whatever the cost may be. While their ideals were very different, the effect they had on the future of their nations was profound. Neither represented the collective will of their community, but both were able to influence the course of history to a troubling extent. In Europe, the continent erupted into the bloody insanity of the First World War. In Israel, the conflict with the Palestinians continued to wane and flare while the Oslo accords were largely forgotten. This promising diplomatic development has never been repeated in the region. Did either of those men deserve to influence the course of nations the way that they did? The answer, I would hope, is no. But the reality is that they were both instrumental in the subsequent misfortunes that befell their countries.
As outrageous as the extent of their influence may seem, it is a reminder that we cannot afford to ignore extremism. Extreme ideologies are defined by popular rejection, but their effect on history is often disproportionate to the number of people who subscribe to them. Extreme ideologies are commonly associated with violence. Violence exists both as a cause, and as an effect of extremism. Extremism is a profound insult to the enlightenment ideals of reason and consensus. Despite the presence of such groups on the ballot papers of the world, subscribing to an extreme ideology is profoundly undemocratic. Be it in the form of the Westboro Baptist Church or Al-Qaeda, extremism is an existential threat to the evolution of an enlightened society. As such, it must be thoroughly understood and combated at every stage.
Extremism comes in many flavours, but while the end result is wildly variant ideologies, the factors that produce it are remarkably similar. In this article, i’ll try and identify a few of the factors that seem to produce extremism time and time again. I’ll also deconstruct a few key moments just before extreme ideologies have hypnotised entire societies. The results of these ideologies are well know, but it is the cause of their success that it is most important to understand. While extreme reactions may confound the logical mind, i would argue that there is a consistent and logical recipe for extreme acts of hatred and violence. Identifying the factors that lead to extremism may be a step towards curtailing the spread of these damaging ideologies. Because extremism is something that can only be fought with knowledge. It is not something that can be bombed out of existence. When it comes to extreme ideologies, violence is usually counter-productive and often has a perverse way of reenforcing the message we are trying to undermine.
The Khmer Rouge and Operation Menu
April, 1975. The Khmer Rouge take control of Phnom Penh and attempt to erase the national consciousness with their extreme ideology.
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge swept into the streets of Phnom Penh in the form of a column of malnourished teenagers. These ragged troops were equipped with kalashnikov assault rifles and a peculiar brand of ultra-nationalist communism that would ravage the country over the next four years. Immediately after taking power, Pol Pot rewound the national clock to 'year zero’ and attempted to restart the country as a totally collectivised agrian society. This was straight from imperial capitalism to communism without any interlude of socialism. Unsurprisingly, this extreme change was accompanied by extreme violence. During the Khmer Rouge period, almost two million Cambodian citizens lost their lives. Some starved, some were worked to death, and more still were brutally tortured and executed by the state.
The reality that extremism consistently produces brutal violence should come as no surprise. This is an established fact, and it is often the case that extreme ideologies are often not recognised for what they are until they produce some sort of violence. However, it is almost always violence that helps to produce extreme ideologies. Too often, those who examine the past look to the chief authors of these ideologies in an effort to understand their success. The chief example of this is the obsessive examination of Adolf Hitler’s life. For decades, historians amateur and professional alike have examined every detail of Hitler’s upbringing looking for a wider explanation of the Second World War and the Holocaust. To me, the genesis of Hitler’s megalomania and anti-Semitism are interesting, but they are not central to understanding the rise of the Nazis. The truly relevant question is not how Pol Pot or Hitler underwent their own radicalisation, but how the citizens of both their countries were put into a position where they were ready to enforce such a violent and extreme solution.
In both cases, one of the main priming factors was a terrifying conflict on their soil. In Germany’s case, it was the catastrophe of the First World War. In the case of the Khmer Rouge, the violence that helped crystallise their nihilistic ideology is a little less well-known.
In March 1969, President Nixon held a Sunday-morning meeting in the Oval office. Attending were the joint chiefs of staff, his secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Nixon’s chief of staff, one H.R Haldeman. The meeting was held directly after a church service, and was over within a few short hours. The end product was an agreed-upon secret operation to bomb Viet Cong supply routes in Laos and Cambodia. This was a highly secretive undertaking, and the full details were not revealed until key files were declassified by the Clinton administration in 2000. Their plan was given the name 'Operation Menu', and to this day it remains one of the least acknowledged war crimes in the history of the United States.
Between 1965 and August 1973, the United states covertly bombed huge parts of southern Cambodia and eastern Laos. At first, the air attacks were described as ‘tactical’- based on specific intelligence and carefully targeted. By the early 70’s, Nixon had authorised the use of B-52s to carpet bomb large sections of the countryside. Between 1965 and 1973, the united states dropped around 2.7 million tonnes of ordinance on Cambodia. A common point of comparison are the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki- if we are to take kilotonnage dropped as a measure of devastation, then the secret bombing of Cambodia exceeded the combined atomic bombings of Japan by more than a million tonnes of ordinance. As a result of this campaign, as many as 500,000 Cambodians were killed and around 30% of the country’s population became internally displaced.
A key feature of this operation was the designation of ‘free-fire’ zones along the Cambodia-Vietnam border. By the admission of the White House, there were over 400,000 civilians living in the areas designated for carpet bombing. The database declassified by the Clinton administration gives us a portrait of the indiscriminate nature of these attacks: "2,756,941 tons’ worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having “unknown” targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all.” Once interpreted, this evidence reveals a shocking fact. During this period, the United States was carpet-bombing sections of the countrysideknown to contain large populations of civilians without a specific target in mind. The take-away from this data is clear; Operation Menu was a grievous war crime. The fact that it was successfully buried is an indictment on the American government.
Unsurprisingly, these attacks were a central factor in the spread of the Khmer Rouge ideology in Cambodia. Pol Pot’s audience were illiterate, displaced, and enraged at being indiscriminately bombed by a foreign agent for reasons they did not understand. It was at this point that Pol Pot provided them with a reason, and framed these despicable attacks within the larger rhetoric of class struggle and nationalism. Operation Menu had the effect of priming the rural population of Cambodia to receive an extreme ideology. Operation Menu was not the only cause of the Khmer Rouge genocide, but it is fair to say that it probably would not have taken the form it did if not for that fateful Sunday-morning meeting in Washington.
Exposure to indiscriminate violence on a massive scale is one of the best indicators that an extreme ideology may take root in the future. It may be the carpet bombing of rural Cambodian communities, the apocalyptic conditions of the western front, or the sectarian chaos of post-invasion Iraq. Whatever form it takes, the result is the same; a centrally important factor in the formation of extreme ideologies. In the case of Cambodia, it is American foreign policy that holds a significant degree of responsibility for the Khmer Rouge genocide.
The Islamic State and the De-Ba'athification of Iraq
Iraq, 2014. Islamic State militants on the streets of Mosul. The same weapons, the same anger, the same violence with a different flag and a different ideology.
In March 2003, the United States military began a much more public operation. Over the next month, they led an international coalition in an invasion of the Iraqi state. Saddam Hussein’s armies were toppled with predictable ease; for the most part, they had little in the way of equipment or motivation to deal with the most sophisticated military on the planet. By May, the American military had captured Baghdad and deposed the Ba’athist government that had held the country in its grip for over forty years.
In June of 2014, Iraq suffered another military attack that took place with equally astonishing speed. In the northern city of Mosul, the streets were suddenly filled with Sunni militants waving the black flag of the Islamic state. This was extremism in its most pure form- a radical interpretation of Islam that held the establishment of a purified Islamic Caliphate as one of its core principles. Just as the Nazis used violence to purge their state of those outside their ideology, the Islamic State began a campaign of shocking violence against those who it saw as apostates or enemies of their cause. The emergence of this group had taken even the Iraqi government by surprise. Within months, their vicious brand of pan-national radical Islam had captured the undivided attention of the west.
What made the violence of the Islamic State so distinctive was its public nature. While the beheadings and mass executions were nothing new to the region, the public transmission and celebration of these acts was something the world had not dealt with before. To many, it seemed as though this group had emerged from a vacuum. The public nature of their atrocities when combined with the singular nature of their ideology made it easy to classify them according to our worst fears. To many in the west, the IS are the agents of an Islamic apocalypse. Immediately, our governments began their preparations to re-enter the killing zones of northern Iraq.
The Islamic State did not spring from a vacuum. While it may be easy to classify this extreme ideology as the manifestation of some ethereal evil, there is a very real reason for the existence of this group. For an ideology like that of the Islamic State to gain widespread social traction, a conditioned population is required. The men who we see waving kalashnikovs and executing aid workers under the black flag were driven to that point by the aftermath of the US invasion in 2003. This shockingly public brand of extremism is the result of a policy by the Bush administration to deliberately marginalise anyone associated (however loosely) with the Ba’ath Party or broader Sunni interests from the new Iraqi government. This was a catastrophic failure of planning and policy, and the violence that resulted should have been predictable.
In order to understand the dynamic at play here, we must once again look into history. The ideology at the heart of the Islamic state is a deeply conservative interpretation of Sunni Islam. There are two major interpretations of the Islamic religion in the Middle East- the Sunni, and the Shi’ite. The roots of this conflict lie in a disagreement over the lineage of the Prophet. The Shi’ite recognise the divinity of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, while the Sunni interpretation of Islam believes that the message of Allah began and ended with the life of Muhammad. This description is a paraphrasing of the origins of the conflict, but it does give you an insight into the theological nature of the dispute. Like so many theological disputes, violence was a predictable result. Over the years, this disagreement often became the whipping-post for conflicts over the usual commodities- land, resources and influence. As it stands, the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict is an emblem of division in the region. In Iraq, over 90% of the population are Muslims. The Muslims of Iraq recognise a remarkable amount of common ground in terms of their religion. However, they have been consistently divided through the short history of that country. The issue is sectarian- around 65% of the population are Shi’ite Muslims, while 15-20% are adherents to Sunni Islam.
This divide has been at the heart of much of the ongoing violence that has taken place in the country since its formation. While the country was under the administration of Saddam Hussein, the Sunni minority was at the center of the power structure. This was a tenuous hold- considering that the Sunnis were always a minority in Iraq, Hussein’s Ba’ath party necessarily held its grip on the country through fear and violence. Their atrocities were numerous and terrible, and most likely motivated by fear of being deposed by the Shi'ite majority. It is tempting to wonder how such a volatile mix was ever united under one flag.
The answer to this question lies in the departure of the British empire from the Middle East in the aftermath of the Second World War. Iraq is a country that was defined by colonialism in a most important way. In the aftermath of the First World War, the control of the country was passed from the defeated Ottoman empire into the hands of the victorious British. The British defined a new set of borders that in no way reflected the sectarian make-up of the country. This had the effect of trapping several groups with deep-rooted hostilities under the same flag. The British established a Sunni puppet monarch and began exploiting the country’s resources while sponsoring the ruthless suppression of any Shi’ite or Kurdish attempts at independence.
In 2003, the Americans attempted to totally reconfigure Iraqi society. Once Hussein’s regime had been removed from power, there was a concentrated effort to purge all Sunni elements from the government. Paul Wolfowitz, under the purview of Donald Rumsfeld, was the chief architect of this policy. It remains one of the most catastrophic mistakes in the entire conflict. In my opinion, one of the chief reasons for the emergence of the Islamic State is the ignorance of Wolfowitz and his refusal to listen to those who understood the dynamics at play in the country. Wolfowitz established the ‘De-Ba’athification council’ to purge all Sunni influence from the government. All public-sector employees with links to the Ba’ath party were removed from their positions and banned from future employment by the government. High-ranking figures in the Iraqi military were also removed from their positions. Their predictable response was to head underground and join the Sunni insurgency which plagued the country over the next decade and eventually mutated into the Islamic State.
The Sunni elements of Iraqi society were totally denied any say in the future of their country. This was a minority that was too large to marginalise- without a say in the running of their government, the only alternative was an overthrow of that government. This response was utterly predictable within the scope of world history. To deny a large, armed group with a history of regional dominance a say in the running of their country is to invite insurrection in the clearest way. The US administration also appointed a Shi'ite Prime Minister- Anwar Al-Aliki. Al-Aliki continued to enforce this policy of purging all Sunni influence from the Iraqi government. The establishment of the Iraqi National Congress was an ineffective attempt at democratising the country. The Sunni population boycotted elections under the instructions of their leaders. Even if they had entered parliament in a meaningful way, there is every chance that a representative democracy would not have been capable of functioning in the presence of two ideologies that were so extreme in opposition. In Weimar Germany, a similar system under similar circumstances found itself totally unable to function given the violent opposition of far-right parties and the socialists. There, the result was the emergence of a terrifying third alternative- the Nazi party. In Iraq, the story was no different.
There was little hope for the newly-formed Iraqi national congress to resolve the bitter historical dispute between Iraq’s Sunni and Shi’ite population. This was the great ignorance of the neo-conservative movement laying waste to prospects for Iraqi peace. While they so dogmatically insisted that democracy could solve the problems of Iraq, they were clearly unwilling to design a system that gave the sizeable Sunni population a meaningful say in the running of their country.
The Sunnis of Iraq were totally deposed. They were isolated from any influence, removed from their professions, and purged from the military. The only political system available to them was imposed by a hated invader and engineered to exclude them while protecting the all-important image of democracy. Over the years following the invasion, their resentment began to harden in the face of unending sectarian violence in their communities. This violence came from a hated external agent, and their historical enemy who had callously teamed up with the invaders. While there were some later attempts to bring them back into the military, these mostly consisted of laughably idiotic cash donations to tribal leaders in the Sunni community. The fact that these cash injections were used to purchase some of the weapons we see in the hands of the Islamic State today should come as no surprise.
We see here a perfect recipe for extremism. When the astonishing ignorance of the Bush administration is considered, it should be of little surprise that the west is dealing with an opponent so brutal and extreme. Revisiting the original reasons for the 2003 invasion, one cannot help but be struck by a tragic irony. In 2003, the Americans invaded the country by the claiming that the Hussein regime represented an existential threat to western ‘freedom'. Their possession of weapons of mass destruction was a threat to the world and its way of life. This potential violence, they claimed, could reach us all. This, as we now know, was a lie. We recognised it then, and we recognise it now. When I look at the Islamic State today, I cannot help but be reminded of this existential threat that was publicly conjured by Bush, Powell and Rumsfeld. In 2003, there was no great threat to us fermenting in Iraq. Today, there is. The Islamic state is a trans-national brand of terror that has shown itself capable of reaching us anywhere. There was no Islamic bogey-man when the tanks rolled over the border in 2003. Now, thanks to the stupidity of American foreign policy, there is. And just as the blood of innocent Cambodians is on the hands of Nixon and his ilk, the blood of every victim of the Islamic state is on the hands of Donald Rumsfeld and his agents in Iraq.
The Treaty of Versailles and the Rise of the Nazi Party
Berlin, 1920. Far-right revolutionaries gather under the Imperial War Flag, an important symbol of German nationalism. In just eight years they would be united with their political enemies under the flag of the Nazi state.
In 1928, Germany underwent a national election. At this time, their system of government was one of the most purely democratic that had ever been designed. It was based around a system of proportional representation- instead of voting for representatives who would then go on to form larger parties, the people of Germany voted directly for political parties. At the time, the system was under an incredible amount of pressure, facing existential challenges from both within and without. On the 20th of May, the people of Germany arrived to have their say in the future of the country. The turnout was high- over 75% of those on the electoral role cast their ballots that day.
While participation was nearly unanimous, the result was far from consistent. The largest majority achieved by any party was 29.8%, by the Socialist Democrat Party. Following in their wake were the natural enemies of the socialists, a coalition of far-right parties under the banner of the German National People’s Party.
The two most popular parties in the 1928 election were united in their seething hatred of one another, but little else. A few years earlier, they had been battling in the streets as part of the Kapp Putsch, an attempt by far-right elements to overthrow the dysfunctional Weimar Republic. In desperation, the weakened government called upon the Socialist parties to put a stop to the coup. The Socialists, with their close links to the labour union movement, were able to declare a general strike and bring the entire infrastructure of the nation grinding to a halt. The coup was prevented, but the cost was a violent dispute between the two groups that played out in the form of a series of running battles on the streets of Berlin. President Friedrich Ebert’s government clung to power, but this came at the cost of a bitter rivalry between the two most popular political groups in the country.
Neither the nationalists or socialists could come anywhere near claiming a majority. The rest of the ballots cast were dispersed among a dizzying array of minority parties. The Saxon Peasant Party managed 0.4% of the vote, with 127,000 ballots cast. The Agricultural League managed 0.7%. These are the notable achievers of the 1928 election- the rest of those on the ballot did not even accomplish a tenth of a percentage of the vote. 16 parties on the ballot received enough votes to be recorded, but not enough to even numerically register as a meaningful count. At the bottom of the pile was the Lithuanian People’s Party, who managed to record only 297 votes in 1928.
Another statistic gives an important picture of the dysfunction of this system. In the 1928 election, 412, 528 people cast invalid or ‘donkey’ ballots. Almost half a million Germans were sufficiently cynical to not even bother filling out the form.
There are two things we can take from these numbers.
The first is the crippling dysfunction of the Weimar government. With a leading majority of just under 30%, the ‘victorious’ Socialist Democrat Party had no reasonable hope of getting any new laws through the Parliament. Their bitterest enemies were nipping at their heels, and they could all but guarantee that any motion they introduced, no matter how constructive, would be immediately opposed by the far-right parties as a matter of principle. The Socialists, according to the far right, were traitors to the ideal of German independence. They looked east toward the Soviet Union for their leadership and guidance. If the Socialists had their way, there would be no Germany. The Treaty of Versailles had almost destroyed the motherland; it was the stated goal of the Socialists to finish that work.
The second is the German exasperation with the moderate center of politics. The aftermath of the first world war had been catastrophic for Germany. The problems the country faced were both numerous and severe, and the German voters demanded revolutionary solutions. They flocked either to the far right, embracing brutal nationalism, or to the far left, looking to the increasing momentum of communism as a solution to the country’s problems. Moderate politicians with reasonable responses were no longer sufficient- the Germans, in an extreme situation, needed an extreme solution.
Germany was politically crippled. This impasse in parliament was merely a symptom of an impasse in their society. If it is the job of a democratic government to reflect the will of the people, then the Weimar Government was doing exactly that. If the 1928 election gives us anything, it is a portrait of a deeply divided and insecure society. This was the reality of Germany after the First World War. It was not the fault of the constitution that the country was so divided; instead, it was a variety of external factors that eventually pushed the German people toward Hitler’s radical message.
By the time the next election rolled around, it was a very different story. Hitler's National Socialist Party had emerged from nowhere to achieve a staggering 43% of the vote. The Nazi party was an incredible political innovation. It managed to appeal to disenfranchised extremists on both sides of politics. It targeted the bruised nationalism of the far right; Hitler preached isolationism and promised to return the prestige of the German state through his Third Reich. He promised a future of German dominance in Europe, a future where the endless bullying of the French and the Russians would be a thing of the past. To this end, he perverted German mythology to support his message. The Iron Cross, a powerful symbol of the Teutonic crusaders, became the highest honour available in that society and was etched on the national flag.
To the socialists, he promised a departure from capitalism and a move towards a collectivist society. Importantly, he preached socialism in isolation. Rather than looking to the Soviet Union for guidance, Hitler proposed developing a German socialist state with German interests at heart. In the lead-up to the election, the Nazis had targeted leftists with a leaflet boldly titled "Communists!”. He begins by preaching isolationism. "You trust Russia. You have been fighting for your idea for years. What has happened? You have 3/4 of a million fewer votes than in September 1930. Despite the need, despite the misery! Do you really believe that your cause can lead us to better times, that your wavering, aimless leadership that has been wrong so often in the past can actually win? Do you believe that Russia will help?” Later, the Nazi party attempts to bolster its socialist credentials by employing the language of the revolution: "He who has something to eat shares it with him who has nothing. He who has a spare bed gives it to him who has none. That is why we have become so strong. The election shows what we can do. Everyone helps! Everyone sacrifices! The unemployed give up their wedding rings. Everyone gives, even if it is but a penny. Many small gifts become a large one. Ten million 10 pfennig coins are a million marks. We don’t need any capitalists, the lie that you are always told. We do it ourselves, and are proud of it."
Hitler saw the value of the collectivism and unity that were so central to the communist doctrine. Despite his historical hatred of this ideology, Hitler, ever the consummate politician, put aside past conflict for present political expediency. To appeal to the communists, he chose the colour of socialist revolution for the backdrop of the Nazi flag. It is no mistake that the most notable symbol of hatred in the twentieth century sits on a crimson backdrop. This is the colour of collectivism, and socialism. Its bold appeal was irresistible.
Finally, at the centre of his flag, Hitler placed the Swastika. This was the symbol of the Third Reich, or the thousand-year Reich. Corrupted from Buddhism, the swastika is an auspicious symbol of renewal. Hitler’s political product was unique in ambition and popularity. He was appealing to the extremists on both sides of the spectrum, extremists who had a recent history of bitter conflict. The fact that he managed to unify these natural enemies is a testament to both the power of his personality and the hopeless situation of German politics. It was not long until Hitler tightened his grip on German politics, achieving a stunning unity in a society that had previously been defined by disagreement and misfortune. As if the wheels of fate were turning under him, the previously crippled economy of Germany suddenly became resurgent. He began to re-arm. Western leaders watched on warily.
Hitler reimagines the Imperial War Flag with the banner of Nazi Germany's navy. Note the red backdrop for socialism, the iron cross for nationalism, and Hitler's iconic perversion of the Swastika.
The rest, as they say, is history. The story of the Holocaust is often presented as that of the greatest crime in human history. Commentators leap to describe this situation as beyond the realm of human reason. Often, they are quick to attribute it to some theological evil, be it within or without. But, one must ask; why did this happen? Is evil a sufficient explanation for the events of the holocaust and the seduction of the German people by the most famous example of extreme ideology in recent history? Or was the radicalisation of the German people the predictable product of desperate people in desperate circumstances? This is a question that should be investigated. Resorting to moral categories is supremely unhelpful when attempting to decode the decisions that created the insanity.
As a history teacher, this is a story that i have told many times. When i introduce the topic to my students, i like to frame the most important questions that we will try and answer with our investigation into the period. Hitler is the main character in this story, but this story is not about him. Hitler was evil, yes. His message was equal parts poisonous and seductive. But it is not his life that we must interrogate. The real thing we must understand is how the German people got to a point where they were willing to listen to somebody like Hitler. I remind them that had Hitler been born today, he would have been nobody. Reasonable, safe people do not subscribe to extreme ideologies. Had circumstances in Germany played out differently, the people of that country probably would have ignored him. The story of Hitler is not the story of some inherent evil in the German character. Instead, it is a story of a country and a people slaughtered, bullied, starved and isolated until the only option available to them was an extreme one. This story, like every story of extremism, begins with desperate people in desperate times.
The problems Germany faced after the First World War were considerable, and almost all of them were the product of an external circumstances. In November of 1918, the major belligerents of the first world war signed an armistice and the grinding brutality of the western front was brought to a merciful end. Germany was defeated and surrounded. The citizens of the Allied countries celebrated their victory in the streets. This was a remarkable reversal of fortune; at the beginning of 1918, Germany was fully expected to emerge victorious from the conflict. With Russia having withdrawn from the fighting to deal with the revolution at home, the Germans were in a position to push the French and British back and finally break the horrifying stalemate that had defined the conflict in western France. To this end, they launched the ambitious Michael Offensive. This operation, while initially successful, ultimately failed under a masterfully planned counter-attack. With their final push defeated and hundreds of thousands of American troops finally landing in Europe, Germany suddenly realised it was unable to win the war. There were two options: to surrender immediately, or to face an invasion. To avoid a humanitarian catastrophe, the Germans chose to surrender.
With their enemy surrounded, the victorious powers met in Paris and then Versailles to decide the fate of Germany. This was the first gesture of true international diplomacy. The leaders of every country that had participated in the war were present. Most notable were the British Prime Minister Lloyd George, France’s Georges Clemenceau and the idealistic American president Woodrow Wilson. Just getting these three men in the same room was an achievement in itself; while international diplomacy has become a consistent part of the modern world, the meeting at Versailles was the first step in a process that eventually lead to the formation of the United Nations. While the nature of the meeting was constructive, its outcome was incredibly damaging.
Recounting every diplomatic manoeuvre of the conference is unnecessary. Hindsight tells us that there were two major options available to the allied powers at Versailles. The first was the remarkably ambitious agenda that Woodrow Wilson brought to the table. While it would be fair to argue that American foreign policy has caused more harm than good in the last century, Wilson’s Fourteen-point plan should be recognised for its humanitarian vision. Before departing to France, Wilson had gathered the foremost experts on European politics and history to help him draft a plan for lasting peace in Europe. Wilson was a man wise enough to realise his own ignorance. The confounding tangle of alliances and grudges that had produced the First World War had not been separated by the subsequent violence. Wilson realised that it would take a relatively impartial arbitrator for there to be any chance of future peace. The Americans had reluctantly entered the war at a late stage. At this time, a popular principle underpinning American foreign policy was isolationism. More than anything, Wilson was hoping for a future where he did not have to deploy hundreds of thousands of American troops to the trenches of Europe again.
The fourteen-point plan was firmly based on enlightenment principles. Free trade, transparent and regular diplomacy, democratic governments and the right to self-determination were all central goals. To this end, fourteen achievable targets were set out. None would represent a disproportionate blow to any particular party, and it could be argued that all could potentially provide for a more functional future in Europe. Perhaps Wilson’s fourteen-point plan was ambitious, but it was based on sound principles. Some have argued that Wilson wanted to prop up the German state so it would present a meaningful barrier to the communism that was spreading west from Russia at the time. While this may be true, there is little to criticise in the fourteen-point plan. Had it been followed, the future may have been very different.
The second option was that presented by Georges Clemenceau, and to a lesser extent, Lloyd George. The French agenda was as vengeful as the Fourteen-Point plan was enlightened. Clemenceau realised that his voters demanded revenge, and had no compunction in satisfying their desire. Here was a man who had summarised his political perspective thus: "My home policy: I wage war; my foreign policy: I wage war. All the time I wage war.” Clemenceau’s bitterness was unsurprising, as the majority of the most brutal fighting had taken place on French and Belgian soil. This thirst for vengeance was also incredibly damaging to diplomatic efforts at the time. Despite the fact that the American intervention had brought a victorious end to the war, Clemenceau is said to have remarked of Wilson’s fourteen points that “The good lord only had ten.” In the face of centuries of pride and arrogance, perhaps the most concrete ideals of the enlightenment never stood a chance of being put into practice.
The French demanded revenge. First, they insisted that Germany take full responsibility for the First World War. One does not need to look to far into the causes of the conflict to realise that this was a grotesque perversion of the truth. Seondly, as a consequence of their responsibility, the Germans must re-pay the Allied powers all of the money they had invested in defeating them. The idea of forcing a defeated enemy to re-pay you for all the money you had spent destroying them was not a new one. Thousands of years earlier, the Romans had done something similar to the defeated Carthaginians after the first Punic war. In that case, the result was a festering resentment that eventually beat a bloody path back to the gates of Rome in the form of Hannibal’s armies. Perhaps this point of historical comparison was lost on Clemenceau, because initially the Allied powers demanded the sum of 226 billion gold marks. This was a sum large enough to be fanciful. Germany countered with an equally crippling offer of 30 Billion. Third, the Germans would be prevented from every forming a meaningful military. There would be no Navy, and their army would be drastically limited. Finally, in an act that reeks of greed, the French organised the carving up of the motherland. Over thirteen percent of the country was arbitrarily confiscated, including a bisection of the north-east of the country that led to a split and crippled German state.
In the end, the French got what they wanted. It was not really much of a fight. While Wilson’s plan was recognised as both admirable and constructive, it had no hope in the face of the French desire for revenge and dominance. Clemenceau left the conference victorious, at least in the short term. Even at the time, people could see that the stage was set for another conflict. At the end of 1919, French General Ferdinand Foch remarked of the situation that “this is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years.” His prediction was eerily accurate; on the first of September 1939, the Germans invaded Poland and the second world war began.
In the period between the wars, Germany was defined by suffering. Here was a nation that had seen victory on the horizon only to taste the bitterest defeat it had ever known shortly afterwards. The economy was crippled. To repay the obscenely bloated bill that the Allies demanded, the Germans began to print currency. The result was predictable; hyperinflation began to scour the value of the German Mark until people were burning bricks of cash to stay warm in winter. By 1923, the currency had become so devalued as a consequence of these reparations that the price of a loaf of bread was listed as 230 billion marks- a number almost equal to the original sum that had been demanded in the treaty. One cannot help but be struck by the tragic irony of the economics. Germany itself was physically crippled, robbed of her most valuable provinces and bisected in the north by the Polish confiscation of upper Silesia. Perhaps the bitterest blow was an ideological one. The German people were forced to admit guilt for starting the First World War. At home and abroad this was recognised as the most grotesque of French innovations, an attempt to undermine German unity with a ridiculous perversion of history.
The opinion that the French government were directly responsible for the Second World War is not one that is often heard. Earlier, i considered who Hitler might have been if he were born in our time. The answer they usually come to is nothing- at best, he would have been another imbecile spewing hatred on some internet message-board. The truth is that nobody would listen to him. A logical continuance to this game of what-if is imagining what might have happened if Hitler occupied a world where Wilson’s fourteen-point plan was instituted. A world where Germany had not been forced to shoulder unfair responsibility and repay a bill that crippled their economy and left children starving in the streets. A world where there was no national catastrophe to blame on the Jews of Europe. What might have been is not the natural habitat of a historian, but it is a useful contemplation when you look at the causes of extremism.
In June of 1940, the French government surrendered under a terrifying German assault. As the blitzkrieg machine rolled over Europe, the final result of the treaty of Versailles could be felt. After orchestrating the conditions for another catastrophe, the French government quickly surrendered in the face of what it had created. As the Nazis finally took their revenge, the people of France understood that their only choice was between capitulating or perishing. Finally, the French government cooperated with the machinery of the Holocaust. The French police cut a deal with the Nazis, agreeing to hand over the custody of any Jews in the country that were not French citizens. Foreign Jews were hunted through France and deported on cattle trains that would terminate their journeys at Auschwitz and Birkenrau. France had generated the suffering and dysfunction that lead to the rise of Hitler, and now France was directly participating in the horrifying programme of that regime. Confucius taught that before embarking on a journey of revenge, we should dig two graves. The great tragedy of this story is that the French might have dug three. One for their country, destined to be destroyed by another brutal war. Another for the Germany, who would eventually pay the price for their genocide. The third grave might have been reserved for the Jews of Europe, whose only crime was to be a convenient scapegoat for the consequences of their implacable desire for retribution.
One thing we can take away from this story is the culpability of the French government and its supporters. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that they were directly responsible for the rise of Hitler and the Second World War. The fact is that they had a choice- a choice between the progress represented by the fourteen point plan and the revenge represented by Clemenceau’s dogmatic agenda to punish the German people. The allied powers chose revenge over progress, and the predictable result was another catastrophe for Europe and a crime on an unimaginable scale. This story is one that is often buried beneath the good-and-evil rhetoric that characterises most commentary on Hitler and the Second World War. But this is a story that cannot afford to be forgotten. There was no confounding inevitability behind the gutting of the defeated German state. This was a choice, a choice with a rational alternative that would have cost France little in the long term. Clemenceau did not draft the Nazi programme, nor was he the architect of the death camps. But when he chose to pursue revenge, he chose a future that would be defined by conflict and hatred.
The Choice Between Revenge and Progress
Berlin, 1923. A German soldier crippled by the First World War begs. Note his deportment; the pressed uniform, the polished shoe, the expression somewhere between pride and shame. A fitting symbol of post-war Germany.
I said earlier that the story of extreme ideologies was one of desperate people in desperate times. The purpose of this article was to investigate the causes of that desperation. Now that three examples have been investigated in detail, it is time to look for patterns. At the heart of each catastrophe is a decision by an external agent. These decisions were misguided and motivated by our basest desires. They were also decisions that were made by people who appear not to have understood their implications. When you examine the consequences of these choices, that is the only conclusion you can arrive at if you have any faith in the benevolence of our leaders.
In Washington, a Sunday-morning meeting lead to an indiscriminate bombing campaign that provided the perfect climate for the spread of the nihilistic Khmer Rouge agenda. In Iraq, Rumsfled’s decision to purge an entire section of the country from a supposedly ‘representative’ system lead to the emergence of the Islamic state as a viable alternative. In Versailles, Clemenceau’s clear-headed decision to pursue revenge over progress contributed to the rise of Hitler and the catastrophe of the Second World War. Three decisions with three sets of consequences. It’s easy to wag your finger at black-and-white photographs and cast blame in hindsight. It’s also tempting to imagine that if those men had understood the consequences of their actions, they might not have made those choices. But the lessons of history are available to us all. If there is to be any positive legacy of Clemenceau’s small-minded vengefulness or Wolfowitz’s ignorance, then it should be a healthy grasp of the weight of those decisions. Chosing revenge over progress is likely to produce extremism. Revenge is a natural human urge, but history teaches that it is not an inevitability. Walking away from retribution often comes at the cost of leaving real crimes un-prosecuted. I would invite those who consider the choice between the right way and the popular way to examine the consequences of similar choices in the past. When faced with decisions like these, our leaders must decide what they are willing to pay for justice. It is only by looking at history that we can understand how high the cost may be.