Between the Wars - The Secular Elite and the Church of the State

 

Following the conclusion of WWI the US populace had generally had enough of foreign military adventures and in a broader sense, progressivism. The US had “only” lost about 115,000 lives in the brief intervention in a war that devastated Europe and Russia leaving it in a dominant position relative to the rest of the western world. Yet as a result of America’s involvement in the war the stage was set for the next war and this wasn’t unforeseeable at the time.

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The economies of Europe were devastated not just in terms of industrial capacity but also in terms of a labor force.  England lost app. 900,000 people dead and many more incapacitated.  Likewise France lost just under 1.4M dead and over 4M wounded (1). They were also effectively broke and were debtor nations to the US. Germany was devastated and facing massive reparations to the victorious allies and Russia, after having been beaten by Japan in a war that the US played a role in initiating, fighting for nearly the full duration of WWI, was entering into a Civil War and Bolshevik rule. Yet both Germany and Russia were able to build back massive military machines in a decade and a half following the Treaty of Versailles both with significant support from western financing and some level of technical support. Meanwhile England would start on a gradual path to de-industrialization and financialization in their economy. A viable case can be made that England’s intent in the war was to ensure that Germany would lose and that Russia wouldn’t’ win and in this, they would have been successful but they placed themselves in a position where they would be dependent going forward on an Anglo-American alliance to retain their position in the world.  This in turn would raise the question of whether England’s long range view was to re-colonize the United States through political and economic entanglement. Unlike the path taken after WWII, the US would de-mobilize going back to a peacetime military and economy.

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US politics during this period was strongly influenced by a financial struggle between two financial industrial groupings; those being the House of Morgan and an alliance of Rockefeller (Oil), Harriman (Railroad), and Kuhn / Loeb (Investment Banking). The Morgan’s, who were associated with the Rothschild’s and tended to represent British interests, originated in investment banking and branched out into railroads, investment banking, and manufacturing. The Rockefeller, Harriman, and Loeb alliance originated in their respective spheres and then expanded into commercial banking (2 pp. 263-65). Going back to the time of Theodore Roosevelt, he was always closely tied to the Morgan’s and his “trust busting” policies were highly targeted at the other group. Taft, who was aligned with the Rockefeller’s would attack the Morgan trusts like International Harvester and US Steel.  The Harding administration was somewhat aligned with the Rockefeller faction but the Coolidge and then the Hoover administration were increasingly tied to the Morgan’s (2).  In some respects these two blocks could be aligned in advancing cartel policies with the Federal Reserve being the biggest example of a mutually beneficial project.

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For those who lived through this era most enduring memories center around the depression which broadly impacted the entire population and frequently caused adaptation in family dynamics like having multiple generations or extended family living together.  Yet there was some positive news during this time in terms of working wages. When limits were put on mass immigration during the 1920’s this gradually but steadily improved the relative living conditions of workers and this continued until the 1960’s when immigration was again ramped up. The distribution of wealth as opposed to becoming biased towards the top of the population started to flatten.

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As the world slid into the 2nd world war, there were three competing but in many ways, similar ideologies that struggled for supremacy.  Communism was defined as a rigid and deeply flawed economic system that tried to separate itself from privately held capital controlled by large financial institutions.  It wasn’t ethnic or racial but it was strongly opposed to religion which was very important in how it would be perceived and developed. While its architects were overwhelmingly European and disproportionally Jewish, its first laboratory was Russia which had already been invaded by European powers multiple times. As Fascisms took form in Europe it was characterized by a blending together of government and all forms of industry that would cooperate with the government but is otherwise more difficult to clearly define. A key differentiating factor however is that Fascism was and remains nationalist and arguably racial.  The racial element will take different forms in different places but it tended to be Aryan or Anglo-Saxon and had adherents well beyond Germany and Italy.  It was far more accepted across Europe extending into the Ukraine than is generally acknowledged today. This led the Russians to view the War and the international tensions that have followed and extend through to current times as yet another European invasion of the Russian motherland.

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The third ideology that developed out of the reformation and “enlightenment” was western liberalism which was to evolve into neo-liberalism and incorporate postmodernism.  During the era between the wars it wasn’t nearly as defined and visible as it has become in recent years and was gradually developing taking features from both fascism and Marxism. Amongst the American left from this era there was a good deal of interest in and support of Soviet Communism along with an increasing willingness to use the force of the state to manage society and control political opposition. Coming out of the war Western liberalism came to be defined largely by what it opposed as its competitors collapsed but as the geo-political situation developed in the 1930’s there were more similarities than differences especially economically (3 pp. 10-15).

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Coming out of WWII the historical treatment of this massive event showed a fair amount of diversity and fluidity but gradually in the West there emerged a more or less common narrative that emphasized philosophical arguments over economic factors and would support the concept of continual military mobilization. Specifically after Stalin emerged victorious over Trotsky in the mid 1920’s Russia is believed to have adopted a policy of “one country communism”.  When Hitler and the Nazi Party took over Germany and started to expand across regional borders they now are seen as having a goal of total world domination.  After the defeat of Germany and Japan, Russia that had previously been defined as not being a threat then adopted a new policy which was again focused on world domination.  There is little evidence to support either intent or capability for these narratives yet they were to become central to how the US, England, and other western satellite nations view the rest of the world both for the policy making elite and the general populace. The principal lesson learned from the events leading to the war applied to political debate in the west is that allowing Germany to initially advance in eastern France was the event the stated to ignite the war.[1]  This in turn is applied to any conflict where a country that is not aligned with the west is portrayed as acting in a threatening manner to a western aligned nation anywhere in the world. Meanwhile those of us living in the western world have come to see ourselves as the savior of the world bringing prosperity and democracy; an image that is not shared by other regions of the world.

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How people see the present and future is shaped by how the past is perceived and WWII has largely defined the perception of the world that emerged after the war. If that perception is largely wrong, the beliefs, actions, and ultimately the culture that flows from it will be like poison fruit from a poison tree. While domestic and foreign affairs in the U.S. were deeply inter-related especially economically we will look first at internal changes in the American economy, politics, and culture.

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Footnotes

[1] At the time Germany moved into the Rhineland Britian didn’t have the military or economic capability to react to this.  France possibly could have but the case is arguable and lacked the political will to do so.

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Bibliography

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1. Royde-Smith, John Graham. Britannica. [Online] 2010. https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Killed-wounded-and-missing.

2. Rothbard, Murray N. A History of Money and Banking in the United States. Auburn Alabama : Misses Institute, 2002.

3. Schivelbush, Wolfang. The Three New Deals. New York, New York : Picador Publishing, 2006.