The Culture of Defeat
On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A fascinating look at history's losers-the myths they create to cope with defeat and the steps they take never to be vanquished again
History may be written by the victors, Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues in his brilliant and provocative book, but the losers often have the final word. Focusing on three seminal cases of modern warfare-the South after the Civil War, France in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany following World War I-Schivelbusch reveals the complex psychological and cultural reactions of vanquished nations to the experience of military defeat.
Drawing on responses from every level of society, Schivelbusch shows how conquered societies question the foundations of their identities and strive to emulate the victors: the South to become a "better North," the French to militarize their schools on the Prussian model, the Germans to adopt all things American. He charts the losers' paradoxical equation of military failure with cultural superiority as they generate myths to glorify their pasts and explain their losses: the nostalgic "plantation legend" after the fall of the Confederacy; the cult of Joan of Arc in vanquished France; the fiction of the stab in the back by "foreign" elements in postwar Germany. From cathartic epidemics of "dance madness" to the revolutions that so often follow battlefield humiliation, Schivelbusch finds remarkable similarities across cultures.
Eloquently and vibrantly told, The Culture of Defeat is a tour de force that opens new territory for historical inquiry.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This unusual study compares societies that lost major wars and survived, as opposed to being dismantled by their conquerors. Schivelbusch (Disenchanted Night, etc.) addresses the question of how the American South after 1865, France after 1871 and Germany after 1918 came to terms with what happened to them. He describes a two-level coping process, in each case directed by pre-war elites that successfully manipulated postwar mentalities in order to retain power. The first level involved creating myths that mitigated the psychological impact of defeat: the former Confederacy carefully tended the "Lost Cause"; France scapegoated the empire of Napoleon III; Germany turned to legends of an army undefeated at the front but betrayed by domestic weakness. A second structure of myths focused on regeneration and recovery. In America that involved industry and a restoration of white supremacy (eventually, Schivelbusch finds, acknowledged as appropriate by the North); for France, Republican government, military renovation and imperialism; Germany turned heavily to "modern" fashions (jazz and movies) and dreams of altering what was regularly described as the "disgraceful" Versailles peace settlement. Such dreams, Schivelbusch finds, were more passive speculation than active preparation for revenge: even after Hitler's accession to power, ordinary Germans were reluctant to consider treaty revision if the price would be war. For all three societies discussed here, the best revenge for defeat was seen not as payback but as living well and moving into a positive future. That the eventual results-the murderous lynchings of the Jim Crow South, the horrific scale of death in Nazi Germany-were far from "positive" is well-understood by Schivelbusch, but beyond the scope of this book.
