The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism

239 Pages·2013·2.02 MB·English

by  Julia Eichenberg, John Paul Newman (eds.)

The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism
Also by Julia Eichenberg
Aftershocks: Violence in Dissolving Empires after the First World War. Journal of
Contemporary European History, Volume 19, Special Issue 3, August 2010 (guest
editor together with John Paul Newman).
Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge. Polnische Veteranen des Ersten Weltkriegs
und ihre internationalen Kontakte, 1918–1939 (Studien zur Internationalen
Geschichte, Bd. 27) München: Oldenbourg 2011.
Also by John Paul Newman
Aftershocks: Violence in Dissolving Empires after the First World War. Journal of
Contemporary European History, Volume 19, Special Issue 3, August 2010 (guest
editor together with Julia Eichenberg).
The Great War
and Veterans’
Internationalism
Edited by
Julia Eichenberg
Lecturer (Wiss. Mitarbeiterin) in Modern European History, Humboldt Universität zu
Berlin, Germany
and
John Paul Newman
Lecturer in Twentieth-Century European History, National University of Ireland,
Maynooth, Ireland
Editorial matter, selection and introduction © Julia Eichenberg and
John Paul Newman 2013
Remaining chapters © Respective authors 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-28161-6
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2013 by
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations xi
1 Introduction: The Great War and Veterans’
Internationalism 1
Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman
Part I Cultures of Victory
2 René Cassin and the Victory of French Citizen-Soldiers 19
Antoine Prost
3 ‘The Legion that Sailed but Never Went’. The British
Legion and the Munich Crisis of 1938 32
Niall Barr
4 Well-Armed Internationalism: American Veteran
Organizations and the Crafting of an ‘Associated’ Veterans’
Internationalism, 1919–1939 53
Stephen R. Ortiz
Part II Aspirational Allies
5 Polish Eagles and Peace Doves: Polish Veterans between
Nationalism and Internationalism 77
Julia Eichenberg
6 Allied Yugoslavia: Serbian Great War Veterans and their
Internationalist Ties 97
John Paul Newman
7 Social Benefits and the Rhetoric of Peace in Czechoslovak
Veteran Organizations 118
Natali Stegmann
v
vi Contents
Part III The Revisionist Challenge
8 German Veterans’ Associations and the Culture of Peace:
The Case of the Reichsbanner 139
William Mulligan
9 The Italian Associazione Nazionale Mutilati e Invalidi
di Guerra and Its International Liaisons in the Post
Great War Era 162
Martina Salvante
Part IV The International Dimension
10 International Veterans’ Organizations and the Promotion
of Disarmament between the Two World Wars 187
Thomas Richard Davies
11 Beyond Cultures of Victory and Cultures of Defeat?
Inter-war Veterans’ Internationalism 207
John Horne
Annex: Meetings of the International Veterans’ Movement 223
Suggestions for Further Reading 224
Index 227
List of Illustrations
1 Munich Crisis. From the left: Gauleiter Adolf Wagner,
Joachim von Ribbentrop, Neville Chamberlain,
Neville Henderson,inspecting an SS-formation before
Chamberlain’s departure from Oberwiesenfeld,
September 30th 1938. 41
2 Forty delegates from European countries passing through
Washington, DC on their way to attend the American
Legion Convention at New Orleans are entertained at
the White House by President Harding. 61
3 A CIAMAC delegation in Warsaw, on their way to lay a
wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, 31 August 1931. 86
4 The Monument to the Defenders of Belgrade at the New
Cemetery in Belgrade. 106
5 Soldiers arriving in the new Czechoslovak state at the
end of the war. 125
6 German veterans on parade in front of the Brandenburg
Gate, 1929; Die grosse Verfassungsfeier am 11. August
in Berlin! Ruderabordnungen des Reichsbanners beim
Einzug durch das Brandenburger Tor in Berlin, Berlin,
11th August 1929. 148
7 Disarmament Conference, Delegation of disabled
veterans received by Arthur Henderson (Great Britain). 195
vii
Acknowledgements
Every book is the result of a long process of discussion and collabora-
tion, and this volume especially so. The first step along the way was
a workshop on ‘Veteran Internationalism and the Cultures of Victory
and Peace (1919–1933)’ in October 2009. This workshop was enabled
by generous funding from the European network EurHistXX and from
the Centre for War Studies at Trinity College Dublin, as well as from
the School of History and Archives, University College Dublin. The
editors would like to thank the participants and commentators of said
workshop, who contributed to lively discussions and provided the foun-
dation for this volume. Eventually, we decided to explore the topic fur-
ther and to expand into a more transnational, global dimension for the
book, focusing on the Fédération Interalliée des Anciens Combattants
(FIDAC) and Conférence Internationale des Associations de Mutilés et
Anciens Combattants (CIAMAC) and the veterans’ associations taking
part in them. The following process was enabled by the Dublin frame-
work of the project ‘The Limits of Demobilization. Paramilitary Violence
after the First World War’, funded by the Irish Research Council for
the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS), then by the European
Research Council (ERC). The project owes much to all contributors, as
well as to discussions with our colleagues at the Centres for War Studies
in Dublin at Trinity and UCD. The editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan
were very supportive and helpful throughout the production of this
volume. In particular, the editors would like to thank Jenny McCall for
her initial support for the project, Laurie and Alec McAulay for help-
ing produce the text, and Clare Mence for her patience and guidance
throughout the book’s journey into print, as well as the anonymous
reader for his detailed and insightful comments. The editors would par-
ticularly like to thank Robert Gerwarth and John Horne for the inspir-
ing atmosphere they created in Dublin discussing war, peace and the
process of military and moral demobilizations.
viii
Notes on Contributors
Niall Barr is Reader in Military History at the Defence Studies Department,
based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College. He is the author
of The Lion and the Poppy, a major work on the British veterans’ move-
ment. His current research project concerns Anglo-American military
co-operation during the Second World War.
Tom Davies is Lecturer in International Politics at City University London.
His main research interests are transnational non-governmental politics
and the contemporary history of international relations. His first book,
The Possibilities of Transnational Activism, was published in 2007. Dr Davies
is currently working on the evolution of international non-governmental
organizations.
Julia Eichenberg is a lecturer (Wiss. Mitarbeiterin) in the Department
of History, Humboldt University, Berlin. She is the author of a book and
several articles on Polish veterans and their international contacts, as
well as on paramilitary violence in the aftermath of the Great War in
Poland and Ireland. Her current project, called ‘The London Moment’,
deals with the transnational collaboration of European exile govern-
ments in London, 1940–1945.
John Horne holds the Chair for Modern European History at the Trinity
College Dublin. He has published widely on war crimes and atrocities,
especially during the First World War, as on cultural mobilization and
demobilization. He is currently writing a history of the French experi-
ence of the First World War.
William Mulligan is Lecturer in Modern European History at University
College Dublin. He is the author of The Creation of the Modern German
Army (2005) and The Origins of the First World War (2010). He has research
interests in international and military history in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, with particular reference to Germany and Britain.
John Paul Newman lectures in Twentieth-Century European History at
NUI Maynooth; he was previously a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre
for War Studies, University College Dublin. He has published on para-
military violence and the legacy of war in the Balkans, and is the author
of Yugoslavia in the Shadow of the First World War: War Veterans and the
ix