Étiquette : WWI

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What is Totalitarianism ?

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What is totalitarianism ?

The first thing to do when we have to deal with the question of totaliatrianism is, as prealable, to  put aside all those received ideas, clicjés,  stereotypes and schèmes established and widespreaded in the aftermath of the Second Wordl War, by the paid and sposored CIA « authors of totaliatrianism » according to whom, totaliatrianism began with the nazi germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union  the first mistake committed by those paid   « the authors of totaliatrianism » is to spread the common schèmes of Democracy versus totaliatrianism and to oppose democratic governments to authoritarian and dictatorial governments.

In order to well understand the real meaning and the real nature of totaliatrianism, it is necessary to start with the term which was at the origin of the cocnept of totaliatrianism, the term of « total war » a term coined in teh 1920s and 1930s.

 

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European totalitarianism (2)

European totalitarianism (2) 

In the aftermath of the First World War, the main concern of the victorious powers was less the peace in itself that of how dealing with this new and dangerous threat which was the Bolshevism. Indeed, Versailles’s peace-settlement imposed by the major victors (USA, Britain, France, Italy) was dominated by  two main considerations  : First how the surviving dictatorial regimes in Europe and in the USA  would deal with  the new revolutionary regime in Russia and second how to avoid its spread and its contamination of West European countries, the old and new ones,  by an alternative revolutionary regime, that of Bolshevism.  In short, the main preoccupation of the Victor powers during Versailles negotiations was how making the world safe from Bolshevism  and how re-mapping Europe domestic politics either within the Victor countries as well within the new states in eastern Europe those which had been built on the overthrow of the Russian and Habsurg empires. The  priority for the Allied was  to thwart Bolchevism through direct intervention into Russian territory or by setting up a mercenary and proxy troops, the « Whites » in order to stamp out the new revolutionary Bolshevik regime. The second thing was to redraw the map of Europe by creating proxies regimes and proxies states around dedicated to isolate it behind a « quarantine belt » (cordon sanitaire), in the contemporary language of diplomacy) of  anti-communist states built both on the spoils of the formerly Russian lands and on those of Austro-Hungary empire. This « quarantaine belt » went from north to South : from Finland an autonomous region allowed by lenin to secede; three new little Baltic republics(Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) proxies states created ex-nihilo having any historical precedent ; Poland restored to independent statehood after 120 years and an enormously enlarged Rumania in size doubled by accessions from the Hungarian and Austrian lands of the Habsburg empire and ex-Russian Bessarabia. The attempt to form proxies states into the Caucasus failed because of the support brought by an anti-communist but  revolutionary Turkey to revolutionary Bolshevik Russia. The attempt to create proxies states such as Armenian and Georgian proxies states setting up after Brest Litowosk and attempts under the British to detach oïl-rich Azerbaijan, had failed after the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War of 1918-1920 and the Soviet-Turkish treaty of 1921;  Other proxies states had been created out of nothing like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia combinations.

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European totalitarianism (1)

Bonapartism

European totalitarianism (1) 

 

 European totalitarianism can be traced back first to the « total war » waged by the French armies during the Revolution, to Bonaparte dictatorship and to his nineteenth century’s offshoot the Bonapartism embodied by Napoleon III and Bismarck and then to the First World War which played a key role in the passage from Bonapartism and dictatorship with strong executive and strong government to totalitarianism properly so called.    Indeed, after the outbreak of the First World War, western totalitarianism has been progressively set up step by step when European governments transformed their civil societies into militarized societies. Henceforth European governments played not only a role in the management and the direction of military operations but actively intervened in all domains of social and material, by controlling economic production, nationalizing factories determining production targets, allocating manpower and resources During the Fist World War, European governments arrogate to themselves the right of life and death on their own citizens by imposing conscription introduced to strengthen military forces. All civil liberties and the privileges of the habeas corpus had been put aside by implementing press censorship and imposing strict punishments in order to silence any dissident voice. In order to control public opinion and to mobilize the masses for war, European government waged a huge psychological war and made extensive use of propaganda inventing a new device and new techniques in the mental manipulation.

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American totalitarianism (1)

American totalitarianism (1)

Making a pretext of sinking of eight American vessels and of revealing of a « plot » to involve the United States in a war with Mexico and Japan, President Wilson appeared on April 2 1917 before the Congress and asked for a declaration of a state of war and on friday April 6, 1917, the United States went to war. Wilson’s slogan « force, force to the uttermost, force without stint or limit » was a declaration for a « total war and marked the passage from American dictatorship to American totalitarianism. At this juncture, the austere and stern scholar turned, under the circumstances of the war, into one of the greatest of war Presidents controlling every aspect of the war effort maintaining morale at home and abroad, mobilizing the nation for war and fight. The government became dictator over industry labor and agriculture ; it took over the railroads and the telegraph lines, farm production was increased  by one fourth and fuel and coal production was raised by two fifths, a colossal shipbuilding program, with more than three million tons in a single year was launched  Conscription had been voted putting Under arms some twenty-five million men; Wilson made use of propaganda at home and abroad. From the beginning of the war Wilson waged a wide and aggressive psychological warfare against Germany; He tried to sow dissension in Germany by insisting that the United States was not fighting against the German people but against his tyrannous and autocratic government. The hunt against dissent and “disloyalty” had been implemented and the First World revealed a constant continuity and a logical development between Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790s and the Sedition and espionage Acts of Wilson’s presidency during the first World War or lately the Smith Act of 1940.

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