By BARBARA BRYANT
Fritz Stern, professor of history at Columbia University,delivered an address on "Historians and the Great War: PrivateExperience and Public Explication" on April 19 at the Library.Dr. Stern's lecture was the third in the Carl Schurz LectureSeries, which is sponsored each year by the German-AmericanCultural Fund in cooperation with the Library of Congress.
A prolific author of such books as "The Politics of CulturalDespair" and "The Failure of Illiberalism," Dr. Stern iscurrently working on "Genius and the Germans: Einstein, Haber andthe Passions of Their Time."
Dr. Stern discussed many well-known historians' views of WorldWar I and the extent to which they shaped, and were shaped by,this period in history. He began by pointing out that "in ourcentury, and in ... the Western world, historians have beenwitness to an age of unprcedented violence. That age began withthe calamity of the Great War." He explained that most observershad forgotten the harsh lessons of the American Civil War and theRusso-Japanese War and thus failed to anticipate the fury of theimpending conflict. Even military experts believed that, atworst, international rivalries of the early 1900s might result ina "short war."
Throughout his lecture, Dr. Stern explored historians' reactionsto World War I. "Could they, so close to it and under theconstant pressure of patriotic propaganda, attain a differentperspective, muster some kind of historical detachment?" heasked. "Did their experience affect their work; did the war thenaffect the historians' craft; and did this in turn affectnational cultures?"
He described the power many historians have as chroniclers ofworld events by quoting C.V. Wedgwood, who observed, "History --that is, written history -- has made and unmade states, givencourage to the oppressed and undermined the oppressor; [it] hasjustified aggression and overridden law."
In describing the historians who were writing in 1914, he painteda portrait of writers and researchers whose perspective wasincreasingly "parochial and specialized." Most did not share theforebodings of many artists and writers before 1914 who realizedhow unstable and dishonest many aspects of society had become. Among German historians, these feelings were accompanied by a"longing for redemption," Dr. Stern said, quoting Herman Hesse.Hesse saluted the "moral values" of war and said, "To be torn outof a dull capitalistic peace was good for many Germans, and itseems to me that a genuine artist would find greater value in anation of men who have faced death and know the immediacy andfreshness of camp life."
Among German soldiers, the military uniform symbolized "patrioticmanliness" and affirmed their belief in discipline and hierarchy. However, Dr. Stern believes that other nations viewed World War Idifferently. To the French, the war was "a historic duty, oncemore a defense of la patrie," while British historians weredismayed by the prospect, "apprehensive about its likely horrorand uncertain of its justness."
U.S. and British soldiers were not as accustomed to the militaryoutlook and trappings, Dr. Stern argued. "Not that the martialspirit was unknown to them, but they preferred to celebrate itvicariously, as moments of the past." While the German historianschampioned German culture and militarism, Dr. Stern argued, itwas not nationalistic zeal but "fear of a victorious, arrogantGermany that made historians -- with doubts and scruples that didthem honor -- continue to believe in their cause."
One positive aspect of the war was each country's need to bringmen of different classes and regions together. Historians foughtbeside bricklayers, building relationships and gaining insightsthat would enrich their work thereafter. Many learned from thisexperience that "virtue, courage, decency were not the propertyof any class or faith." This experience helped to break downclass barriers and myths of superiority based on class.
Like many others, Sir Llewellyn Woodward reflected on theincompetence of the commanders, many of whom were brave anddisciplined but inflexible and unimaginative. They suffered, hesaid, from "a lack of "free intelligence" and "mentalilliteracy." These observers learned many other lessons as well.
French historian Mark Bloch described the constant propagation offalse, secondhand information and censorship designed tomanipulate the public.
After the war, few of the Allied historians celebrated, Dr. Sternreported. They realized that although the carnage had ended, manyof the underlying reasons for it still existed, but in a changedlandscape.
G.M. Trevelyan described the survivors as "no better than acompany of antediluvians who have survived the fire-deluge,sitting dazed among the world we knew. ... The certainty ofpermanence is gone."
Felix Gilbert echoed this sentiment in his memoirs. "Skepticalabout the values of the past, we were also skeptical about thelikelihood of stability in the future."
In the aftermath, Dr. Stern explained, German nationalism wasclouded with resentment and bitterness, an attitude that did notendear the country to the Allied nations. German academics werelargely intolerant and wary of controversy. "Many historiansretreated to monographic work, finger exercises of the historicalspirit," he said, adding that there were two lessons to belearned: that "national insularity" is costly and argues for "acomparative history transcending that narrow perspective; andthat there is danger in "studying the past in discretecompartments."
However, as a battered Germany lurched toward recovery, theAmericans -- along with their historians -- came into their own."In the aftermath of the war, American historians became equalsin the international community of scholars," Dr. Stern said.
But what followed could not be called an age of enlightenment. America's historians focused on the country's efforts to dealwith racial conflicts, a still demoralized South and the effectsof the Great Depression. He added, however, "much of post-1918work was again routine, a return to the cloistered insularity ofearlier work," which became "a comfortable shield" blotting outthorny issues such as the rise of Bolshevism and Fascism in theyears that followed.
Eventually, some German historians not only tolerated but became"quietly complicitous" with the Nazi regime. Some,like theAustrian historian Srbik "became demonstrably pro-Nazi," Dr.Stern said. As this movement grew, the West became divided overwhether to pursue appeasement or opt for rearmament. He creditsMark Bloch for writing a "magnificent reckoning of France'sdefeat, the rot that flowed from national indifference andpoisoned a country. The stupefied incompetence at the topreflected the lassitude, the conflicts, the loss of morale at thebottom."
In closing, Dr. Stern explained that the "disaster" in the early20th century left the world with an imperative to "explicate thepast for the benefit of the present." He warned against thetendency to view the past in such a way as to allow "theory withall its abstractness" to overwhelm "experience in all itsrecalcitrant complexity."
He pointed to the examples set by Bloch and others: "Historiansdo have a civic responsibility, and we do live by freedom."