Intro and Conclusion from my most bad-ass book review

Introduction

"A percentage! Nice little words they have, really: so reassuring, so scientific. A certain percentage, they say, meaning there's nothing to worry about. Now, if it was some other word . . . well, then maybe it would be more worrisome."

The quotation above was taken from a book published in 1866 in Russia, by an observer who, witnessing the growing hegemony of scientific knowledge and precision over all other ways of knowing the human condition, penned this portent of the pitfalls of over-calculation. It is a warning that echoes through time to the present, in which it seems particularly resonant given the tragic effects of social Darwinism and positivism run amok in the twentieth century. In studying the pinnacles of tragedy produced by such mentalities, historians would be advised to take care not to echo the coldness that attending singularly to the statistics generated by an event can perpetuate in the historical record. Joseph Stalin is said to have remarked that “a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” Stalin was no stranger to millions of deaths; if he indeed articulated this method of obscuring the visceral reality of violence, we should pay attention not to repeat his calculation.

The European “short twentieth-century” has been variously conceptualized into a coherent period as an age of ideology, a century of the nation-state for better or worse (and often for worse), and an unfortunate blip in the radar of nineteenth-century ideals. Another lens through which to understand it has been advanced by Jay Winter, who proposes the twentieth century as one of historical memory, in that historical memory became a chief characteristic of the self-understanding of societies. Winter writes of two generations of memory, corresponding to each of the World Wars. The first, spanning the 1890s to the 1920s, engaged memory to shape personal and national identity. The second came in the 1960s in response to the Second World War and the Holocaust, which introduced more subjective memories of witness and survivor to the field of remembrances as moral symbols.

All of the afore-mentioned approaches agree that the Second World War has been key to shaping the contours of post-war Europe, but Winter’s emphasis on legacy is critical. Whatever else we can say, each nation that emerged from the war crafted a narrative of it, defining themselves in the process—de Gaulle famously spoke of France as “a nation of resisters,” while the West conceptualized the conflict as a war for democracy, conveniently minimizing the role played by the USSR in enabling that success. German historians developed a Führer-centric interpretation of the Third Reich, thus mitigating whatever responsibility its citizens played in the most grisly elements of the war. Stalin made certain that the war was remembered as the great patriotic war, in which the sacrifices it demanded would be redeemed by the utopian vision offered by communism; a vision that was subsequently and magnanimously extended from the Soviet Union to Eastern Europe. The history of the Second World War has been a nation-building story, a factor which makes the historian’s imperative to remain as true to the record as possible all the more acute and difficult.

In processing the meaning of this period, numbers matter more than they used to—so much of what happened between 1933-45 seems to defy rational explanation, and in confronting the prospect of being unable to explain the most dramatic event of the century, some historians cling to what they can know for certain. Historical events can be made intelligible through the statistics they produce—and can sometimes become eclipsed by them. The scale of the war is often invoked in these terms--72 million dead. $288 Billion (in 1940s dollars) spent. While these factors are defining characteristics of the conflict, how much do they tell us about the war’s legacy, and of the way people then made their decisions? To what extent can a quantitative look at history tease out the qualitative significance of events?

The following review will demonstrate that the materialist and mathematic approach to big historical questions are critical—that cannot be emphasized enough—to establish the parameters of what was possible at a given time. Economic factors and indeed any statistical measurement available relating to the catastrophe of the Second World War (indeed, for any conflict) are absolutely necessary to any grounded historical understanding of a time. Yet, when relied upon exclusively to answer larger questions—why did the Allies win the war? How pervasive was the French Résistance? Who were the victims of this catastrophe?—this strictly quantifiable approach to history crumbles in the face of the untidiness of human affairs. Intangible factors—complicity or resistance of citizens without official affiliations, moral purpose of troops that fought, attitudes that permitted setting aside the humanity of various peoples are important. Scientific method will not give us all the answers.

Conclusions

Total War demands a comprehensive perspective, including decisions made by masses of people, not just organizations and institutions. While empiricism is invaluable to good history, great history moves beyond it when the sources cannot measure the scope of its subject. The legacy of the Second World War was moral; its moral aspects have structured politics and policies, and new nationalisms that emerged in its wake; while hard numbers and facts remain the best way to understand the scope of the war and the material constraints against which humans made choices, the political dynamic of the conflict cannot be understood in those terms.

In each examined work, scholars are locked into a debate about how much the statistics produced by society can reveal about its nature. The conclusion I wish to draw here is an argument for synthesis, for inclusion of a broad range of factors into any analysis of the War. Admittedly, this is a tall order. Scholars that focus on victims tend to ignore structural determinants; economic historians tend to ignore the victims. In the end, the Second World War was so complex, it may well be true that as Ian Kershaw has suggested in his survey of the field, one can only hope to contribute to an explanation of the event in scholarly writing, and all contributions should be welcomed regardless of what they are unable to include. Yet, we should listen to our elders. Raskolnikov tried to live by reason alone, and wound up in Siberia as a result; the dynamics of human life continue to defy strict calculation. Any appreciation of historical change absolutely must keep this in mind.