The Ottoman State and its Non-Muslim Populations

The Ottoman State and its Non-Muslim Populations by Tanar Akçam (2006) ● “The Ottoman state was a despotic regime, and the communities under its control were not citizens but subjects of the Sultan” (19) ● “The Ottoman state specifically oppressed and discriminated against non-Muslims … assumptions of Muslim superiority evolved into the legal and cultural attitudes that created the backround for genocide” (20) ● No binding system of religion or politics binded the entire Ottoman Empire together ● “Their [Armenains and non-Muslims] presence is not contested so long as they accept the authority and superiority of Muslims and the Islamic Order” (22) ○ The 29th verse of the Quran allows for this, and even some “fighting” against those who do not believe in Allah or the Last Day ○ Those who were not muslim were allowed to practice their religion, but with no disturbance to the muslims, church bells or the construction of churches were forbidden ● Different religious groups were forced to wear lesser quality clothing than the muslims and distinguish themselves with their shoes/headwear: ○ Armenians wore red ○ Greeks wore black ○ Jewish People wore turquoise ■ Their homes were also painted these colours ● “Sick man of Europe” since the 1830s ● Ottoman rulers were continuously changed by other foreign powers in Europe ● Imperial Rescript of 1839 ○ Reluctantly accepted by Ottomans to keep the empire together by introducing some Western notions ■ “ … the leaders were often in advance of popular opinion and could only proceed with caution.” (29) ○ “[Imperial Rescript] promised that steps would be taken to ensure that the physical security, proprty, honor, and well-being of the empire’s Christian and Muslim populations would be protected without consideration of religion … all subjects were to be declared equal by the law” (29) ○ “Tanzimat duality” (29) ● The reforms and rescript were supposed to bring the two religions closer together in the region, but only drove them further apart ○ Unacceptable to the general Muslim population which had been dominant for over 600 years in the Ottoman Empire ■ “ … no less great an effort of reunification than is required of those Westerners who are now called upon to forego the satisfactions or racial superiority”, Bernard Lewis (32) ● Arguably, the Turkish christian was in a better place than the average peasant, the christians at least have backings from others in Europe, where peasants were looked down upon by an society ● Sultan Abdul Hamid II and the “Armenian Question” (1876-1908): ○ Petitions from Amernians from Anatolia in 1872 presented to the Ottomans ■ Asking for equal rights to muslims in the empire’s eyes ● “Summarized twenty years of grievances, 73 offences during tax collection, 154 cases of abuse of power by government officials, and 249 ccases of kidnapping, robbery, and illegally preventing religious functionaries from performing their duties.” (36) ○ The Ottoman government agreed that those named in the report would be punished and that moving forward they would monitor and work away from these issues ○ Revolt in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1875) and Serbian uprisings that followed were turning points in the Armenian genocide ○ Paris Treaty (1856) gave European powers “ … the right to protect the empire’s Christian population also implied the right to intervene” (36) ■ In an attempt to block conflicts the empire declared themself as a constitutional monarchy ● Results in the London Protocol of 1877 ○ 9th article → “granted the foreign signatories the authority to under-take joint action if they were disappointed with proposed Ottoman reforms” (36) ○ After the Russo-Ottoman War, the Armenians look towards Russia ■ Russia gave the Ottoman Empire an ultimatum, they would only give back their lands taken in the conflict if the empire recognized Armenians into government service/military roles ● Russia was to stay in the territory until these rights were upheld, this put Britain on edge ○ Britain sends naval forces into Bosphorous ■ Britain worked with the Ottomans to do this ○ Britain said they would not recognize the Russian Treaty of San Stefano to be binding and called for a new treaty to be written ■ 13 June 1878, The Congress of Berlin ● Armenians stressed that they did not want to complete independence from the Ottomans, but their rights recognized and autonomy in leadership ■ The treaty that was created was a victory for the Armenians, but the retreat of Russian soldiers and failed leadership autonomy were seen as losses in relation to what the San Stefano Treaty would have granted ○ “The empire of Abdul Hamid II came to see the remaining Christian communities as a lost cause and directed its efforts toward binding its Muslim subjects more closely to the throne.” (40) ○ During November 1890, the Kurdish cavalry force the Hamidiye regiments were put into place ■ “ … although the official histories depict these unites as having been established to redress a shortfall in military man-power and provide security on the Russian border, a good number of Turkish sources claim that their real target was the Armenians.” (40) ○ Revolt in the Cilician Village of Sasun (1894) over Armenian villagers being forced to pay taxes to Kurdish tribes over and above those paid to the federal Ottoman government ■ Military was sent to the village, “ … Turkish sources relate that these units behaved savagely toward the Armenian villagers, and a good number were slaughtered.” (41) ■ Great Britain, Russia, and France prepared a memo based on the principles that were determined during the Congress of Berlin ● Outlined a reform plan for Ottoman territory with Armenians ○ Submitted on 11 May 1895 ■ Sultan supposedly said, “This business will end in blood.” (41) ■ Led to a revolt in Istanbul (September 1895) a massacre of the capital’s Armenian population was organized ● Fell through ○ During this time Anatolia was ruled by conflict ○ 26 August 1896, Amernian revolutionary Federation raided the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul, a large number of Armenians died ■ Kaiser Wilhem II claims some 80,000 Armenians had been killed leading up to (20 December 1895) ○ Again, more European pressure to reform was placed on the Ottomans ■ These treaties and memos had no real lasting effects, and “played a signicigant role in both the killings of 1894-96 and the Armenian genocide of 1915.” (43) ● “The massacres directed at Christian minorities throughout the 19th century were mostly either in response to provincial revolts calling for social change, or they were the result of reactions to national independence and seperatist movements. In a great many cases, the clashes were quickly transformed into interreligious or intercommunal clashes between Muslims and Christians.” (43) ● “ … attacks, mainly against the Armenians, had the nature of pogroms” (44) ● “The Austrian ambassador to the Porte reported that Muslims were being armed and set into action against Christins, calling this policy a ‘Muslim Crusdae’” (44) ○ For some Muslims, it was not only a territorial issue, but a religious one ■ “The belief that Muslims were carrying out a religious duty by killing Armenians might not have been a motive at the decision-making level, but was an important factor for those participating in the genocide of 1915 and influenced the aftermath.” (46) Young Turks and Plans for Ethnic Homogenization of Anatolia by Tanar Akçam (2006) ● “Two different ‘borders’ are critical to forge a definition that clearly solves the questions of what and who constitute a nation. First, how is cultural identity to be defined? Second, how are the boundaries of the nation state to be drawn? The thesis that there must somehow be a relation between the borders of cultural identity and the state emerges as something new in the 19th century. Nationalisms argue that both identities are somehow identical and this is the reason ‘the people’ have to establish their own state within supposedly natural borders.” (259) ● In 1919, only 5% of the original Ottoman Empire is controlled by Turley ● CUP Population and Resettlement Policy: ○ Committee of Union and Progress, started with the Young Turk rebellions in 1908 and continued to grow in the region ○ Plan to “free themselves of non-Turkish elements in the Aegean region” (260) ■ The policies to ethnically cleanse Anatolia were put in place in 1913 ○ Between 1913-1918, one third of Anatolia’s population was displaced or annihilated ○ 14 March 1916, government establishes The General Directorate of Tribal and immigrant Settlement ■ Every 3 months the central government received reports with births, deaths, and migrations of Armenians ○ Two lists of the Christian population to determine their wealth and property in the region ○ These informational tracts show that the Ottoman Empire was gathering information not only on Christians, but all minorities ■ “It is clear that these orders from the central government were indeed followed in the various provinces, and that the requested reports were prepared and sent to Istanbul.” (264) ○ Problem of where Turkish Muslims and non-Turkish muslims would settle post WWI ○ The government sought to ensure that the Kurdish population in new places of settlement would be no more than 5-10% of the total population ■ Also put in place for Armenians ○ “ … the central government had decided that Armenians should compromise no more than 10% of the district’s population. The consul added that ‘It would be necessary to annihilate those who were left over’.” (268) ○ Second wave of Armenian massacres in Syria in 1916, resulting in 200,000 deaths, a reason for this may have been that the area was exceeding the 5-10% ratio determined by the Ottoman government ○ In 1918, Murat Bardakçi claimed that the Armenian population in Anatolia was 1,256,403 ■ According to the same document he references, the official survival count was only 284,157 post-genocide ● The number of Armenians killed around 900,000 ○ “The question that cannot be anwsered - or perhaps can be, but only indirectly - is how 1.2 million Armenians were to be made into only 10% of a Muslim population of just under 1.7 million?” (270) ○ 5 Main Reasons for for the movement of populations in the region: ■ 1.) the groups determined by the Ottoman empire to be a threat were to be forcibily migrated for the Muslim population (Greeks, etc.) ■ 2.) Christian citizens of the empire were forcibly displaced ■ 3.) the forcible deportation and resettlement actions were the result of political concerns ■ 4.) the forcible resettling of Muslim populations fleeing the conflict zones in the Anatolian interior was not planned in advance ■ 5.) deportation that were carried out by the local authorities without either consultation or notification of the central government ● “ … the breakup of an empire into nation states involves much more than geographic realignments or simple re-drawings of borders. It also signals the emergence of an exclustionvist national identity that stands in tension with the social dynamics of an empire that transcends national identities.” (273) Murder in Sarajevo by Christpher Clark (2012) ● 28 June 1914, assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand ○ For Serbain-ultra nationalists, this day in 1389 was when ottoman forces had destroyed a Serbian army on the Field of Blackbirds (Kosovo) and was a sore subject for these groups and the Black Hand ○ Despite warnings of the two terrorist cells with bombs and firearms, the Archduke still deemed it fine to ride an open car along a crowded and unpredictable route ● Gavrilo Princip, a young Bosnian-Serb, assassin ● Passed by two different explosives with no serious incident, second blew underneath the car ○ Instead of leaving the danger-zone immediately, Ferdinand saw to the treatment of the wounded and then continued to the Town Hall so that him and his wife could visit the wounded in the hospital ● They passed by 3 different members of the terror group, but none of them did anything, believed to be nervous, some were put off by the site of his wife ● The car reached the Sarajevo Town Hall with no other incidents ○ Ferdinand still delivered his speech ■ Somewhat cracked during it, “I come here as your guest and you people greet me with bombs!” (373) ○ Ferdinand’s speech copy was covered in blood from the victims of 3rd car ● After the speech the couple separated, Ferdinand was apparently starting to feel the shocks of the morning’s events ○ Sophie spoke of missing their children, also hers and Ferdinand’s anniversary ● Ferdinand still wanted to visit those wounded in the incident, who were recovering in the garrison hospital on the estern outskirts of the city ○ Wife comes with him ● Motorcade rolled back out into the city, nobody had updated the drivers on the change of route plans driving into the bazaar district instead of Appel Quay ○ The engine on the car was disengaged (the car had no reverse gear) and pushed slowly back to the main thoroughfare ● Gavrilo Princip knew this was his chance, unable to remove the bombs off of his waist quickly enough, he drew his revolver and fired twice ○ At first, it seemed that the couple had not been hit because they hadn’t moved, in reality: ■ The first bullet had passed through the door of the car into the duchess’s abdomen, severing the stomach artery ■ The second bullet hit Ferdinand in the neck, tearing his jugular vein ○ Wasn’t realized still for sometime that they were dying, Sophie’s head fell and they assumed she fainted as they drove away, it wasn’t until Ferdinand had blood coming out of his mouth that they knew something was amiss ○ “Sophie, Sophie, don’t die, stay alive for our children!” (375) ● The crod closed in around Gavrilo, the reolver was knocked from his hands as he tried to commit suicide, so was the packet of cyanide ○ Was punched, kicked, and beaten by the mob ■ Police were able to pull him away into custody ● By the time the care reached Konak palace, Sophie was dead and Ferdinand coma The Armenians and Greeks of Anatolia by Norman Naimark (2002) ● “ … the Turkish empire’s passing released forces of extreme nationalism and errant statebuilding whose aftershocks remain with us even today.” (17) ● “Islamic law discouraged Muslims from participating in commerce and banking, Armenians, Jews, and Greeks increasingly dominated the developing economic and industrial life of the country.” (19) ● Midhat Pasha (1876) ○ Sought to shift the balance of power in the Otoman empire from the Sultan and his group to the government and its secular ministries ● “In Abdul Hamid’s view, the Armenians had gotten rich from the sweat of simple and devout Muslim laborers and the naive support of government procurment officials.” (22) ● The bloody pogroms of 1894-1896 were more deadly than the Jewish pogroms in Imperial Russia, though they did share many characteristics: ○ Riots/violence was fed by: ■ Intercommunal tensions ■ Class resentments ■ Religious antagonisms ■ Economic issues ○ Death/casualty estimate of 200,000 Armenians ● “Von Trotha makes the relevant point in the case of the Armenians that massacres often entail the dehumanization of victims rather than the other way around, as is usually propounded in theories of genocide.” (23) ○ “Slaughtered like sheep.” (23) ● 1909 massacre in Adana led to the death of 15,000-20,000 Armenians ● The Young Turk Movement: ○ “From their point of view, there was no ‘Armenian question’ in the Ottoman Empire; ‘general reforms in Turkey’ would settle all nationality issues.” (25) ● The Armenian Catastrophe: ○ “Virtually the entire Christian population of the Balkans had opposed Ottoman rule, and this fact aggravated the nationalis inclinations of the Ittihadists and thoroughly discredited in their minds the ideas of multinational Ottomanism.” (27) ○ “The genocide was planned within this dangerous vortex of Ittihadist nationalism, resentment against the Armenians, and mobilization for war.” (28) ○ 24 April 1915 is the date now used to commemorate the genocide ○ The general pattern of deportations suggested a centrally directed plan: ■ First, the campaign to disarm the Armenian population took place and the imprisonment of leading community members ■ After weeks of torture and persecution the Armenians were bound together and driven into exile guarded by the Secret Organization ● “ … seldom got very far before they were shot or hacked to death.” (30) ○ “Kurdish tribes were also invited to do the deed [murder Armenians] in exchange for the victims’ clothes and remaing valuables.” (30) ■ Women and children remaining after the exile/deaths of men were given little time to prepare for their forced “flee” ● Some of the younger women and children offered themselves as wives or concubines to the local Muslims ○ Some in order to avoid this or being forced into the harems marked and charcoled their faces, cut their hair, and wore a hijab to seem a Muslim girl ■ Many camped out in open fields in horrible conditions during the journey to their designated Anatolia ● Some went by rail, the wealthy, and were considered the lucky ones, they avoided the hot/deadly march led by the S.O. ○ “Stragglers too weak to go on were simply shot off left by the side of the road to die.” (32) ■ Described as “starving animals” (32) ■ “Even in their miserable state, the Armenian women were exploited, brutalized, and raped by their guards. They were left prety to Kurdish bandits, who abducted many of the heartist.” (33) ■ “Some mothers were forced to leave dead and dying infants by the side of the road. Older children would have to leave suck mothers behind the desert.” (34) ■ “By the time the survivors reached the Euphrates, many mothers were so overcome by hunger and desperation that they tossed their children into the river to drown. Sometimes they jumped in themselves, bound to their children. In other cases, the guards tied their charges together and threw them in.” (34) ● The Question of Genocide ○ Some Armenians converted to Islam in order to escape persecution ○ Estimated roughly 250,000-300,000 Armenians successfully made it across the Russian lines to the Armenian territory, though many died there due to ■ Starvation ■ Disease ■ Exposure ● “As a historical event, the Armenian genocide did not have a discrete ending.” (38) ● “The Precise death toll in the Armenian genocide is less important than the fact the Itthadists acheived their nefarious goals of eliminating the Armenians as a serious factor in Anatolian politics and society.” (41) ● “Islamic Turks and Kurds attacked Christian Armenians because, in their view, the Armenians represented an inferior religious community which had been arrogant and unloyal. They had ostentatiously accumulated wealth and made unjustified appeals to foreign powers.” (41) ● “A double white-wash” (41) The Making of a Modern Refugee By Peter Gatrell (2013) ● “The new refugees were persecuted not because of what they had done or thought, but because of what they unchangeably were; born into the wrong kind of race of the wrong kind of class.” - Hannah Arendt (52) ● “The aftershock of the first world war had momentous implications for displaced people; demobilized soldiers, returning prisoners of war and civilian refugees.” (52) ● Population displacement in the former Russian Empire: ○ Russian revolution led to conflict/disagreements between those who supported the Bolsheviks and those who did not ○ Russia tried to disperse their own responsibility for refugees ○ Nansen ○ By 1925 over 1.26 million Polish citizens were refugees (58) ● Armenia’s reconstruction and resettlement: ○ “Around 800,000 Armenians were thought likely to resettle in a ‘national home’ to include Eastern Anatolia.” (59) ○ Most refugees preferred to settle in Syria, Cyprus, Palestine, and Lebanon ○ Trouble/avoidance of ‘assimilation’ for Armenians in other nations ● Unmixing the “Balkans” ○ “Between 1912 and 1926, a quarter of a million ethnic Bulgarian refugees fled to Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire, Romanina, and Greece to form the new state of Yugoslavia.” (62) ○ Greece and Turkey were structurally damaged by the war ■ 1.22 million Greeks were obliged to leave Asia Minor (64) ○ “Economic opportunities could not disguise the negative image of the newcomers whose cultural differences were regularly emphasized.” (67) ○ “The consequences for socio-economic and political life in Turkey were equally troubling.” (69) ● Refugees and the Spanish cockpit: ○ Refugee crisis from the Spanish Civil War ○ Refugees were looked after by many older NGOs: ■ Save the Children, Quakers, and Menonites (72) ○ As early as June 1936 over 60,000 refugees fled Spain ■ Solviet Union’s rescue missions ● Took over 5,000 refugee orphans from Spain ○ “Displacement ultimately helped forge a sense of common identity as a refugee nation-in-exile that symbolized the ‘real Spain’ in contrast to the land that had been appropriated by Fascists, under whose iron heel millions of ordinary Spaniards were condemned to suffer and whose propaganda insisted that Franco was the guardian of Spanish ‘tradition’. The mass exodus was constructed as survival against difficult odds and a means of forging solidarity.” (76) ● The coming of war: ○ Refugees and human rights concerns had been partly offset by the development of international aid and solidarity (77) ○ “Internally displaced civilians drew on memories of WWI.” (78) ● Conclusions: ○ “Political upheaval in post-1918 Europe created a huge refugee population that led the new league of Nations and NGOs to devise programmes of assistance.” (78) ○ “The sense of loss felt by Greek refugees from Asia Minor translated into political radicalism: not an irredentist politics but a legtist politics …” (79) ○ “Class was an important variable.” (80) ○ “Refugees' experiences were frequently appropriate by non-refugees. That is to say, their experience was not ‘innocent’ or unmediated, but was instead framed by the views and tactics of politicians, for whom refugees embodied an ideological viewpoint, by humanitarians and diplomats …” (80) From Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations, and Civilizing Missions By Eric Weitz (2008) ● (highlighted on the pdf document) ● The 20th century was very violent, however, it was the era in which human rights, the term of genocide, and international conduct was established ● Move from the Vienna system to the Paris system ○ “Vienna centered on dynastic legitimacy and state sovereignty within clearly defined borders.” (1314) ○ “Paris focused on populations and an ideal of state sovereignty rooted in national homogeneity.” (1314) ■ “The move from one to the other marks the shift from traditional diplomacy to population politics, from mere territorial adjustments to the handling of entire population groups categorized by ethnicity, nationality, or race, or some combination thereof.” (1314) ● The Paris system came to be because of two main factors: ○ “The liberal principles that had risen to domination over the course of the 19th century, and European imperialism, both formal and informal.” (1314) ○ “The Paris system emerged not as some kind of natural unfolding of liberalism, but as the consequence, at least in part, of popular challenges to imperial rule both in Eastern Europe and in Africa, and of the excessive ambitions of particular states.” (1315) ● “... the origins of human rights standards are not so pristine and pure, nor so completely and clearly the result of international political action.” (1316) ● “In the two decades before WWI, colonial violence intensified as Europeans repressed numerous revolts.” (1323) ● The phrase of ‘self-determination’ came out of the Versailles Treaty in late 1918 ○ Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Henrich Jacobi ● Especially in the American delegation, some Jewish individuals had some influence on the drafting of the Paris treaties ○ Built on pre-war issues, the Jewish leaders advocated for the protection of the population in Romania and received a “sympathetic” (1330) hearing from Wilson ● The Lausanne Treaty of 1923 → the final peace settlement of WWI ○ “Most significantly, Lausanne took the meaning of the five Paris treaties to their logical conclusion by legitimizing and making compulsory the deportations of more than 1 million Christians from Anatolia to Greece and around 350,000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey.” (1334) ● Two key terms were derived from Lausanne ○ “Population exchange” ○ “Population un-mixing” ■ “Both phallid phrases, they masked the sheer misery and desperation of the Muslims and Christians who were being forced out of their ancestral homes …” (1337) The “Minority Problem” and National Classification in the French and Czechoslovak Borderlands by Tara Zhara (2008) ● (highlighted on the pdf document) ● 1922 → a Lithuanian delegate to the League of Nations suggested to the assembly that the league should consider adopting universal standards of minority protections (137) ○ “His proposal was quickly derided and dismissed by the great powers.” (137) ■ France dismissed because of a lack of any minority populations ● “The so-called ‘minority problem’ loomed large in Europe at the end of the WWI.” (138) ○ Oscar Janowsky’s → “war-breeding zone” ● “Minority problems” were not unique to only Eastern Europe ● “Across Europe, the end of WWI brought revolution, the collapse of empires, changing borders, and radical new practices of identity ascription and classification.” (138) ● Carte classifications in Alsace-Lorraine France (1919) (p.138-139): ○ Carte A: reserved for Alsatians who were born in Alsace and whose parents/grandparents carried French citizenship ■ org. granted to 1,082,650 people ○ Carte B: “mixed heritage”, those with one parent/grandparent who had carried French citizenship in the past ■ org. granted to 183,500 people ○ Carte C: issued to foreigners from allied states of France ■ org. granted to 513,800 people ○ Carte D: resided in the area who no relations to those in allied states ■ org. granted to 28% of the region’s population ● Those who were assigned the classifications of B and D often faced punitive measures; ○ “ … they exchanged currency at a lower rate, were restricted in their freedom of movement, and were sometimes fired from their jobs or expelled from universities.” (139) ● Segregation in the Bohemian Lands, Moravia (1918) (p.139) ○ German children were required to attend only German schools, and vice versa for Czech children in Czech schools ○ When the first census was held in Czechoslovakia (15 February 1921) they were strictly required to “report their nationality based strictly on objective traits” (140) ■ If the census takers were deemed to have lied “they [Germans/census] are empowered to conduct an investigation and interrogate witnesses in order to reclassify that person within fourteen days.” (140) ● “In the aftermath of war and revolution, national classification represented one strategy through which the government sought to re-establish order, distinguishing citizens and foreigners, majorities, and minorities.” (140) ● “The problem in Silesia, as in Alsace-Lorraine and Czechoslovakia's bilingual regions, was that neither nationality nor language abilities were transparent facts.” (141) ○ p.142 ● The ‘minority problem’ and the invention of the homogenous west ○ “Across Europe, the ‘Wilsonian’ ideals of 1918 linked democracy and the nationstate.” (144) ■ “True freedom, true emancipation, and true population sovereignty could be obtained only with full national emancipation, the people without their own national government were deprived of human rights.” (144) ○ “Pre-existing degrees of linguistic or cultural diversity did not predestine eastern Europe to become a ‘war-breeding zone’ comparatively.” (145) ○ “Before written history began, Eastern and Western Europe had already begun to go down different roads.” (C.A. Macartney in 1934) (147) ○ “The great powers’ refusal to endorse universal minority protections ultimately crippled the minority protection treaties, as the new east European successor states resented them as an unwarranted infringement of their national sovereignty.” (148) ● ‘Sniffing out the Teutons’ in Alsace-Lorraine ○ “Whenever the presence of Germans seems pernicious to the public tranquility, you should not hesitate to remove this danger.” (149) ○ Before WWI, approximately 300,000 individuals labeled as German resided in the region out of 1,874,014 (1919) so 16% of the total population ■ “French propagandists, journalists, and rumour-mongers widely invoked real and imagined tales of the German occupation to illustrate the barbaric nature of Germans, including, infamously, the claim that German soldiers cut off the hands of French and Belgian children.” (150) ● the irony of telling this to Belgian children → King Leopold II ○ Beginning in 1914, the Alastians, Lorrainers, Germans, and Austrians in what the French officially called concentration camps ■ French military commission visited these camps in 1914-1915 and sort Alastinians into three distinct categories (150): ● Tricolour ID: ○ “The good ones … designed to encourage kindness on the part of the authorities and the population.” ● White ID: ○ “The dubious Alsatians who were detained in the camps … the suspects interened.” ● Awaiting an ID: ○ “The suspects who were interned in the camps.” ○ “In Alsace, church-state relations were still regulated by the concordat of 1801. Whereas a 1905 law in France had established a firm separation between church and state, banishing religion from public schools, many Alstitaisn were deeply attached to their system of confessional education.” (151) ■ p.152 ○ “We sniff out the Teurton like a hunting dog sniffs its prey … because the odour is so particular and strong” (152): ■ “The metaphor of smell was significant, as it reflected the contemporary racialisation of German-French difference. French nationalists repeatedly attempted to prove that Alsace was French not simply by choice, but by blood or race.” (152) ○ “The occupation of northern France provoked widespread fears of blood ‘contamination’ through unions between German soldiers and French women in occupied regions. These so-called ‘children of barbarians’ were often depicted as a moral and biological threat to the French race.” (153) ● ‘Report on nationality questions’ by Alfred Zeil in 1915 ○ Addressed the fate of the German minority in Alsace-Lorraine ■ “While Ziel affirmed that ‘there is no difference of race or origin’ … simultaneously asserted the need to guard vigilantly against a perceived threat of racial contamination in Alsace … their blood remains pure of any addition of German blood.” (153) ● Women would take their husband’s name and race, sometimes it worked in the families benefit, becoming a French family in society, or it could place them with the Germans ● Neighbors turned on one another to gain favour in the eyes of the government ○ Calling out “imposters” (156) Weimar and Political Worlds by Eric Weitz (2007) ● “Weimar politics were loud, contested, unruly, and strikingly democratic.” (82) ● “On the extreme right, a brand of politics emerged that idealized violence and racial antisemitism, and even the left, influenced by the Bolshevik Revolution, adopted a militaristic style.” (83) ● “The loss and debility [post WWI] of so many men in their prime working age placed a drag on the economy, disrupted family patterns, and weighed upon the support and counseling services provided by the state …” (83) ○ Throughout this time, Germany remains deeply politically divided ● Weimar’s political history can be divided into three phases: ○ “Two periods of crisis sandwiching a brief five years of relative stability” (84) ● The first phase (1918-1923) marked the character of the republic ○ Constitution establishing a highly democratic political system ■ Including equal/free suffrage, proportional voting, and basic political liberties, also called for “social rights”, formation of health clinics ○ SDP → Social Democratic Party ■ “The fighting community for democracy and socialism.” (85) ○ “The SDP’s abandonment of socialism to some distant future alienated the substantial, though circumscribed, group of radical workers and intellectuals.” (85) ○ DDP → Deutsche Demokratische Partei ■ Tried to appeal specifically to women/mothers ■ Called for close ties and protection of Germans outside the territory of the state and the same protections for minorities (mainly Jews and Polish) ○ “Many Germans viewed Germany, for good or bad, as a Protestant creation in which Catholics had to struggle to make their voices heard.” (89) ○ “Religion and Fatherland must be at the center of education and instruction.” (89) ○ CP → Center Party ■ “Through sacrifice and labor to freedom! Elect the Center Party.” (90) ○ Three times in the first phase of the Weimar Republic were communists involved in armed uprisings against the state: ● January 1919, March 1921, October 1923 ○ “The revolts and strikes demonstrated a number of key points. They showed that seething discontent reigned among a segment of the working class that joined communist revolts and strikes.” (91) ○ KPD → Communist Party of Germany ○ “ The flame of revolution was not an idea that most Germans found inspiring; instead it conjured up frears of chaos, instability, and Russians.” (92) ○ DNVP → German National People’s Party ■ “Jews represented a ‘corrosive, un-German spirit’” (95) ■ Ideologically attacked the Weimar Republic ○ DVP → German People’s Party ■ Cooperated intermittently with the Weimar Coalition parties ● But it never fully gave its support to the republic publically ■ Basic Principles of 1919 ● “The economic reconstruction of our people can succeed only if we return to those old, basic principles of loyalty, honor, impartiality, and incorruptibility in public service, trade, and commerce.” (94) ○ Right wing groups were strongly against Jewish/minority populations: ■ “ … the Jewish domination of the state, economic, and cultural realms.” (98) ○ Anti-Bolshevism was just as strong as anti-Semitism ○ Assasination of Walter Rathenu, foreign minister of the Republic of Weimar who was a prominent Jewish citizen ○ Strong inflation occurring in 1914 due to war loans from the German government ● The second phase (1924 - 1928) ○ The visions for political groups remained and were constant ○ The center had the post stable electorate ○ “In 1928, six major and eight minor parties won representation in the Reichstag; an astonishing forty-one parties had contested the election.” (104) ■ “But a certain calm reigned as well. There were no putsch attempts, no armed rebellions.” (104) ○ “In Weimar Germany, hope and progress, as well as despair and defeat, always went hand in hand with raw, deep-seated conflicts over the very nature of culture society, and politics, and these were fought out not just in elections and in the Reich and state parliaments.” (105) ○ 3 December 1926 → The Law to Protect youth from Trashy and Filthy Writings ■ Supported by teachers, clerics, social workers, etc. ■ Minded about penny-novels that were rarely sexually inappropriate but more often were: “simply heart thumping, horseback-mounting, detectiverevolver-packing romance and adventure stories.” (106) ■ The critics said: “the writing appealed to the most basic human instincts and destroyed respect for authority. They were directly responsible for the rise in criminal behaviour, promiscuity, and sexually transmitted diseases.” (106) ● The third phase (1928 - 1932 ~ Nazis seize power) ○ Economic crisis that stemmed off of the US market in October 1929 ○ The national election in 1928 resulted in a turn back towards the center ■ German banks fell into a liquidity crisis, which sent the entire economy into a panic ■ Unemployment and other benefits to be lost ○ For this period Germany was governed by a presidential dictatorship ○ “Economic depression and political fragmentation and paralysis largely destroyed whatever faith Germans still had in the Weimar system.” (123-124) ■ (p.124) ● “Weimar politics had profound links to the past. Virtually all of the major parties were continuations of the dominant parties of imperial Germany.” (125) ● “The new parties on the extremes, the Communists and Nazis, did it better than anyone else because they were less hobbled by tradition.” (125) ● “Women’s suffrage, women’s activism , and the reforming impulse of the Weimar Coalition also added a new dimension to politics.” (126) ● “Weimar politics was not all innovation. There were also deeply etched lines of continuity with the German pst, and one of them was no doubt the powerful role of the bureaucracy and the military within the state. (128) ● “The legacy of WWI was perhaps the republic’s greatest obstacle. It hobbled developments at every turn and gave the enemies of democracy endless rounds of ammunition.” (128) Weimar and Culture/Mass Society by Eric Weitz (2007) ● “Capitalism is destroying hope and making everything mundane and objective, including the newspapers read in Turkey and the Middle East; communism is also reducing everything to an arid and sterile materialism and a fog of lies.” (251) ● “It was, in a phrase, modern times; urband, industrial society, the melange of sightsys, sound, and thoughts connected with the city, with science and technology and layers of bureaucracy, with rational modes of thinking, with complex social hierarchies, the world of the bourgeoisie and proletariat uncomfortably situated amid the old nobility and a stillsubstantial peasantry, an urban demimonde of gamblers, thieves, copes, and prostitute and an educated middle class desperately trying to maintain its stature and status. This was mass society …” (252) ● “That was Weimar culture: the relentless questioning of what it means to live in modern times …” (253) ● Developments in philosophy/modern thoughts (254): ○ Nietzche → “unruly politics” ○ Freud → “liberalism” ○ Mann → “conservative instincts” ■ Wrote “The Magic Mountain” (1925) ○ Brecht → daring opera/theatre ○ Weill → music ○ Kracuer → “The Mass Ornament” opera ○ Heidegger → “Being and Time” ■ Eventually became a Nazi ○ Hoch → female photographer/artist ■ Incredibly diverse/taboo subjects that were still popular in Weimar ● “In all of his writing, Brecht questioned surface appearances. Moral pronouncements were exposed as mere platitudes or worse, social stature as a shell that hides a devious or depraved personality, the mask of one who made his way to the top through lites and exploitation.” (267) ● “The philosophers and social theorists of the Weimar period who have had the most lasting impact are those who grappled directly with the meaning of the new, mass society on our thought processes and perceptions, of the impact of modernity and the very structures of thinking and seeing.” (269) ● “Nazi Germany destroyed the intellectural and social milieu in which they all had flourished.” (295) The Nazi Party Program by Roderick Stackelberg and Sally Winkle (2002) ● “In 1928, Hitler issued a declaration that Point 17, the call for land reform, did not represent a threat to private property but was directed only against Jewish land speculators.” (63) ● “Anti-semitism allowed the Nazis to channel anti-capitalist sentiment into conservative channels by blaming Jews for all economic distress.” (63) ● The program of the NSDAP: ○ “1: We demand the union of all Germans to form a Greater Germany on the basis of the right of self-determination enjoyed by all nations.” (64) ○ “4: None but members of the nation may be citizens of the state. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. No Jew therefore may be a member of the nation.” (64) ○ “9: All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.” (64) “The Dying Middle”: Weimar Germany and the Fragmentation of Bourgeois Politics by: Larry Jones (1972) ● Substantial sociological/political differences in the German Reichstag ● “The combination of several factors; Germany’s diminished per capita consumption, the increasing rationalization of Germany’s economic structure, the unavailability of longterm credit, and an oppressive tax structure made it impossible for the artisan and the independent businessman to recover the economic position they had enjoyed before the war.” (Jones 25) ● “Old middle class” → “new middle class” (25-26) ○ “The social and economic dislocation resulting from WWI, the runaway inflation of 1923, and the world economic crisis at the beginning of the 1930s hastened the decline of the ‘old middle class’ at the same time they threatened to reduce the ‘new middle class’ to proletarian status.” (26-27) ● Gustav Stopler → attempted to economically aid the middle class