The World at War (XXIV): The Bomb, February - September 1945

Still in the trenches

When Franco was at last victorious in 1939, Pope Pious XII broadcast to the Spanish people, praising Spain because it had "once again given to prophets of materialist atheism a noble proof of its indestructible Catholic faith". Pious XI's attempt to differentiate between Hitler and Mussolini was forgotten. No protests went up from the Vatican when Hitler invaded the helpless remnant of Czechoslovakia and for a while the Catholic church in Germany benefited accordingly. At least the Church did not advocate for the restoration of the Spanish Inquisition alongside the continuing existence of the Holy Office in Rome; but it was hardly needed to in the police state which was the Spain of the Caudillo Franco (Caudillo means what Führer means in Germany). Franco's regime reasserted the Spain of the 1492 expulsion, against all that had happened in the Peninsula over the last hundred years: Spain was conceived of as racially pure, deferential to paternalistic authority, corporatist, uniformly Catholic. The dictatorship was to last with only tactical modifications of its icy authoritarism until the Caudillo's death in 1975, by which time developments in the Catholic Church made him an  increasingly embarrassing relic of the past.

A History of Christianity, Diarmaid MacCulloch.

A veces la biografía personal y la gran historia se cruzan de manera impredecible y sorprendente. El hecho es que tras enfrascarme en la interesantísima historia de la Reforma del XVI escrita por Diarmaid MacCulloch, me sumergía en la no menos fascinantes historia del cristianismo escrita por el mismo autor - obras cuyo mayor reparo es que muchos de los temas que tocan quedan en estado de esbozo, incompletos y semiocultos - justo cuando se anunció la abdicación del Papa.

It's up to us

The World at War (XXIII): Pacific, February 1942-July 1945

Economic Planning for Destruction (y II)

On 22nd June, the Third Reich launched not only the most massive campaign in military history, it also unleashed an equally unprecedented campaign of genocidal violence. The concentrated focus on the destruction of the Jewish population has come to be seen as the truly defining aspect of this campaign. However, in Eastern Europe, the epicentre of the Holocaust, the Judaeocide was not an isolated act of murder. The German invasion of the Soviet Union is far better understood as the last great land-grab in the long and bloody history of European colonialism. Destroying the Jewish population was the first step towards rooting out the Bolshevik state. What was to follow was a gigantic campaign of land clearance and colonization, which also involved the "clearance" of the vast majority of the Slav population and the settlement of millions of hectares of Eastern Lebensraum with German colonists. Complementing this long-term programme of demographic engineering was a short-term strategy of exploitation, motivated by the "practical"  need to secure the food balance of the German Grossraum. The attainment of this entirely "pragmatic" objective required nothing less than the murder, by organized famine, of the entire urban population of the western Soviet Union.

The Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze

En la entrada anterior había señalado como el enfoque que económico que Tooze aplica al nazismo y a la segunda guerra mundial sirve no sólo para ver los hechos conocidos de una manera fresca y reveladora, sino especialmente para demoler muchos de los mitos y justificaciones que los historiadores revisionistas, siempre con un ideario político más que específico, hacen pasar como hechos ciertos y comprobados.

Economic Planning for Destruction(y I)

Precisely because involved such concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a "one-shot affair". If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, Whermacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gambling paid off. But contrary to appearances, the German had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European power in a matter of weeks was not a repeatable outcome. In fact, when we appreciate the huge risks involved in Manstein's plan, the attack on France appears more similar to the Wehrmacht's other great gamble, the attack on the Soviet Union on June 1941, than is commonly supposed. On both occasions, the Wehrmacht had no significant forces in reserve. In both campaigns, the Germans gambled everything on achieving decisive success in the opening phase of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster. The very different outcomes are fully explicable in terms of conventional military logic. Against an opponent with a greater margin of material superiority, with better leadership and with more space in which to manoeuvre, the basic Napoleonic criterion for military success - superior force at the decisive point - would be far harder, if not impossible to achieve. Inspired soldiering could only do so much.

The Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze

El libro de Adam Tooze citado arriba es una rara avis dentro de las muchas historias de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Su punto de vista es fundamentalmente económico, examinando en detalle como el sistema nazi administró - y en la mayoría de los casos malgastó - los recursos primero de Alemana y luego del resto de países Europeos que conquistó en el curso de la guerra. Debido a este enfoque, este libro presupone que su lector está familiarizado - o al menos es capaz de comprender - los conceptos básicos de la teoría económica, lo que lo convierte en árido y frío frente a aquellos lectores que buscan la anécdota irrelevante, para así sentirse en medio del fragor de la batalla, como sería el caso de los libros escritos por Anthony Beevor o Max Hastings - o series un tanto fraudulentas como Band of Brothers -. Sin embargo, esta abstracción. propia de un libro de texto, no hace menos imprescindible la obra de Tooze, aunque no acabe de compartir alguna de sus conclusiones.

A parallel history (y II)

The World at War (XXII): Japan, 1942-1945

Back to the past

Lygia Clark

En el MNCARS madrileño (Sofidú para lo amigos) coinciden en estas fechas dos exposiciones dedicadas al arte contemporáneo en America Latina, ese otro continente que los españoles nos empeñamos en ignorar a pesar de todas nuestras de orgullo por la supuesta comunidad de lenguas entre ambos lados del Atlántico. Solo por el hecho de hacernos reparar en la existencia de esos otros nosotros, especialmente como productores de un arte tan válido como el de la vieja Europa y sus herederos de Norteamérica, ambas exposiciones ya merecerían la pena, pero en mi caso tienen el valor añadido de constituir una vuelta al pasado.

A parallel history (y I)

A world made only for men

The World at War (XXI): Némesis, Germany February - May 1945

A time capsule

Apolo de la Casa del Citaredo

La exposición sobre Pompeya que se puede visitar en la Fundación Canal de Isabel II madrileña puede fácilmente ser calificada como esquizofrénica, al constituir una extraña amalgama de muestra ejemplar yuxtapuesta a una continuación cuyo entusiasmo la torna mentirosa.