Showing posts from category: Comparative politics

The Marshal Tito Collection of Big Luxury Toys and Residential Properties

Posted by Sloane Snodgrasse on August 28, 2021

Tags: “Yugo-nostalgia”, Belgrade “White Palace”, Blue Train, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brijuni Islands, Castle Brdo, Cold War, Croatia, Douglas DC-6B, Elizabeth II, Galeb Yacht, House of Flowers, JAT Airways, Josip Broz Tito, Karadordević residences, Montenegro, Non-Aligned Movement, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Tito’s cars, Vila Bled, Vila Dunavka, Vila Galeb, Vila Mir, Winston Churchill

The former authoritarian ruler of Yugoslavia and the glue that kept the multi-national “South Slav” state together for such a long period in the postwar, (Josip Broz) Tito, had a penchant for collecting things while he ruled the roost in that erstwhile country. While some people might content themselves with collecting stamps or coins or even 17th century antique French clocks, the president’s passion for accumulating was on a much larger and lavish scale. The perks for Tito that came with the job would be the envy of any ambitious 21st century CEO.

Balkan “head honcho” with 34 addresses Marshal Tito’s possessions in the Yugoslav property market ensured that he was never short of a bed to sleep in for the night. At one stage the Predsednik had an estimated 34 villas scattered all over the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslav. Some were residences—official and otherwise—some were holiday homes, some he lived in substantially, some he occupied only fleetingly and some he never go round to living in. There was hunting lodges galore and a castle or three, grand and opulent living was a common denominator with the Tito properties.

Tito’s happy hunting grounds There were several Tito villas in Belgrade alone, the Vila Mir (the “Oval House”), the Presidential Palace and the most famous of all, used for a different kind of hunting, “diplomatic hunts”, Beli dvor (”the White Palace”), the former Karadordević royal family residence seized by the communist government♝. Within Bosnia and Herzegovina Marshal Tito had several hunting lodges in the mountains where he apparently was very partial to hunting bears, one was close to the regional hub Sarajevo. Tito also presumably liked to be close to his roots as one residence was in Tito’s childhood village, Kumrovec in Croatia. Croatia was good for hunting grounds too. Then there was Vila Dunavka, a very spacious 100-acre estate with room for a vineyard, wine cellars, a forest and of course hunting grounds, all part of the president’s fiefdom (Tito’s Legacy: Surveying the Yugoslav Leader’s Real Estate’, Milica Stojanovic, Samir Kajosevic, Anja Vladisavljevic and Malden Lakic, Balkan Insight, 28-Jun-2019, www.balkaninsight.com).

Tito’s island getaway Tito even had his own private island retreats in the Brijuni Islands, a small archipelago on the northern Adriatic. The Brijunis have been described as Tito’s ‘Xanadu’, as evidenced by his spending on average four to six months a year at the two residences—the “White Villa” on the main island Veli Brijuni and another villa on Vanga Island—which served as both his playground and his office. The 3,000 square metre Bejila vila was Tito’s principal summer palace where he held business dealings and diplomacy with world leaders and hosted other members of the glitterati of the day (Sophia Loren was a regular visitor). When Bejila vila became too public and open, Tito had Vanga Villa built which served as “a secluded hideaway” with two purposes, to conduct “sensitive political dealings”, and for private entertainment of VIPs (Haile Selassie, Elizabeth II, etc) and celebrities (Orson Welles, Sophia Loren, Taylor and Burton, etc) (Niebyl).

Other Tito villas were located in Split, Dubrovnik, Zagreb and in Serbia (including in Karadordević which functioned as a sort of Winter Palace for Marshal Tito), Slovenia (a villa on picturesque Lake Bled and a 16th century mansion Castle Brdo), Montenegro (including the Galeb ‘Seagull’ Villa) and North Macedonia. Since the collapse of Yugoslavia some of the myriad of residences have fallen in a state of disrepair and some have become museums (pulling in the “Yugo-nostalgic” tourists), ‘Yugo-Nostalgia Thrives at Tito Memorials’, Marisa Ristic, Balkan Insight, 25-Jun-2013, www.balkaninsight.com).

Presidential palace on wheels In addition to the real estate there were the large moveable objects, Take Tito’s famed Blue Train (Plavi voz). The luxury train was “built as a peripatetic presidential palace to impress (visiting) international heads of state”, dictators and democratic leaders alike♗. The train had sleeper cars for over 90 people, elegant wood paneling, plush banquet rooms, conference rooms (all tastefully decorated), restaurant, bar, etc, even a specific train car to transport the president’s personal (bulletproof) Mercedes. After Tito’s demise the Blue Train wasted away in a Belgrade hangar for yonks, however in the past decade it has been resurrected and well-heeled tourists can traverse the 476-kilometre journey from Belgrade to Bar (Montenegro) on what some Yugoslavs use to call the “Blue Miracle” (‘The Return of Tito’s Train: From Serbia To Montenegro – A Track To The Past’, Michael Williams, Independent, 13-Jul-2013, www.independent.co.uk; ‘All Aboard! Explore the legendary and luxurious private train of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito’, Donald Niebyl, Spomenik Database, Upd. 13-Apr-2020, www.spomenikdatabase.org).

Air Tito Similarly, when travelling by air, Tito made sure he didn’t skimp on comfort and luxury. In 1958 he took possession of two specially built Douglas DC-6B planes, one for use by JAT Airways (the national carrier) and the other, his private jet. The luxury aircraft was used by Tito for diplomatic missions and state business trips…the first official mission took him to India, Africa and the Middle East to connect with potential fellow NAM leaders. When the DC-6B started to age the Yugoslav strongman traded it in for a new Soviet Ilyushin Il-14 and continued to upgrade his personal carrier, French Süd Aviation SE 210 Caravelle followed by a Boeing 727♚ (‘From Red Star to Red Bull: The History of Tito’s Douglas DC-6B’, Donald Niebyl, Spomenik Database, Upd. 16-Feb-2020, www.spomenikdatabase.org).

Have yacht, will visit Galeb (‘Seagull’), Tito’s Italian constructed luxury yacht, rounds out the trifecta of luxurious presidential transporters. As with the personal train and aircraft, Tito used it to entertain his A-list of international political associates and celebrities on voyages. Originally acquired as as a training ship, Tito sailed it to London in 1953 for talks with British PM Churchill, a watershed meeting heralding Yugoslavia’s opening to the West, following Tito’s split with Stalin and the Eastern Bloc (‘Galeb Ship’, Muzej Grada Rijeka, www.muzej-Rijeka.hr).

Tito’s “lux-cars” Another of Tito’s prized possessions was his 5.6m-long Cadillac Eldorado Convertible, located on Veli Brijuni, which he used to take guests (actors, artists, diplomats, politicians) on tours of the island’s national park and safari park/zoo between 1953 and 1979 (‘Tito’s Cadillac’, np-Brijuni.hr). The “Caddy limo” was just one of Marshal Tito’s 13 luxury cars including a 1960 Rolls-Royce Phantom and the Merc mentioned above (‘Ex-President Tito’s Caddy Convertible? Oh, Yes’, Eugene S. Robinson, Ozy, 03-Jun-2014, www.ozy.com).

The bulk of Tito’s possessions were not owned by the president but by the state—or so the courts say—as his relatives have now ruefully discovered. The ruling by a Serbian court in 2016 put paid to the hopes of the late president’s heirs who had pursued inheritance cases for over 30 years. Some 70,000 of Marshal Tito’s belongings have been stored in Belgrade’s Museum of Yugoslav History♔ (‘Court leaves family of Yugoslav leader Tito empty-handed’, The Daily Star (Lebanon), 25-Jan-2016, www.dailystar.lb).

~~⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝~~

♝ Tito’s current ‘residence’ is also in Belgrade, his final resting place, the House of Flowers, the presidential mausoleum ♗ among the dignitaries to enjoy the extravagant palatial interiors were Gaddafi, Yaser Arafat and Mitterrand ♚ these days Tito’s personal DC-6B is owned by the Red Bull company ♔ including some moon rocks, a gift of US President Nixon from the Apollo missions

The Far-Right in the Balkans Between the Wars: Yugoslavia and Croatia’s Ustaše Movement

Posted by Sloane Snodgrasse on August 17, 2021

Tags: ‘Aryan-Nordic-Dinaric’ classification, ’New Man’ myth, Alexander I of Yugoslavia, Ante Pavelić, Arrow Cross Party, Centralism v federalism, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Croatian Catholicism, Croatian Peasants Party, Croatian Revolutionary Movement, Croats and Slovenes, Fascist Italy and Mussolini, Frankovci, Genocide, German “Rat line”, Iron Guard Movement, Kingdom of Serbs, Mystic Christianity, Nazi Germany and Hitler, NDH – Independent State of Croatia, Palingenetic ultranationalism, Party of Rights, Poglavnik, Roger Griffin, Romania, Royal dictatorship, Tito and the Communist Party, Ultranationalism, Ustaśe, Vatican passports to Argentina, Vine of Ustaše Women, Women in Ustaše Croatia, Yugoslavia

Having delved recently into the historic fascist groups in Hungary and Romania between the wars—“Arrow Cross and Iron Guard: The Native Fascist Movements in Interwar Hungary and Romania”, blog 10-Aug-2021)—I thought it’d be interesting to take a comparative look at their contemporary counterpart in Yugoslavia. The most conspicuous fascist organisation active in post-WWI Yugoslavia shared many of the features of other European far-right movements while exhibiting some characteristics that departed from the standard typology of European fascism.

⇑ Alexander I, the “Royal Dictator”

Fear of a Pan-Serbia Like all European fascist groups in the interwar period the “home-grown” fascist movement embodied in the Croatian Revolutionary Movement, known as Ustaše🆚 (or anglicised as ‘Ustasha’) evolved out of discontent with the new national arrangements following the conclusion of hostilities. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia (originally the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes), came into existence from a ”polyglot mosaic of little states“. From the start there was a built-in tension between the centralism of the unitary Yugoslav state and Serbia and the federalist impulses of the other nationalities. Feeding and intensifying Croatian nationalism was Serbian control over the new state – the head of state, the king, was a Serb and the Yugoslav army was essentially Serbian. What wrangled most Croats was that “the new Yugoslavia was not a state of narodno jedinstvo (national unity) (as promised) but a greater Serbia in all but name“ (Judah). In the early years of the kingdom, the political voice of Croatian disapproval of the lop-sided state of affairs came from the moderately rightist Croatian Peasants Party (CPP), who advocated for land reform to alleviate the conditions of Croatian peasantry (75% of the kingdom’s population was agrarian-based). The assassination of the CPP leader in parliament was followed by a coup by King Alexander who installed a “personal dictatorship” and a political crackdown. In response to the crisis Ante Pavelić a former CPP member formed the extremist Ustaše Party🅾️.

Ustasé ideology The Ustaše movement’s ideological framework contained many of the traits typically found in other European far-right groups—ultranationalism❎ (stridently advocating the uniqueness of the Croatian nation); rabidly racist (though it’s antisemitism seems to have become more visible later after prompting from the Nazis); the significance of religion (Catholicism in its case) and patriarchal life; anti-communist (rejecting Marxism for it’s interference with family life); anti-capitalist and also anti-democratic, believing that the mechanism of parliamentary democracy was corrupt; adopting the personality cult common to most fascist organisations (Pavelić under the influence of the big dictators Mussolini and Hitler styled himself Poglavnik, broadly analogous to Il Duce and Führer, and following the cult’s blueprint demanding unswerving submission to the will of the leader.

Constructing a separate racial theory The Ustaše view of the racial origins of the Croatian people was a complicated one, but one that suited their national aspirations, to create “a completely independent, ethnically homogeneous nation-state”…this requited separating ’pure’ Croats from the melange of ethnic and religious minorities in Croatia, especially from the more numerous Serbs. Ustaše party ideologues set about trying to minimise the Croats’ Slavic roots while developing the idea that the Croats‘ hybrid stock comprised a kind of “Ayran-Nordic-Dinaric” amalgam, which they contrasted with the alleged “Balkan-Vlach” identity of the Serbs. The Ustaše identified the Croats as descending from the Goths and therefore of Germanic stock, a contrivance by Pavelić by which he hoped “to curry favour with the Nazis”Ⓜ (Bartulin, ‘Ideology of Nation and Race’). The Ustaše aped other aspects of Nazi racial vilification, applying the derogatory term Untermensch (“sub-human) to its scapegoats, Serbs, Jews, etc.

⇑ “A slave never!” (Source: Pinterest.ca)

National regeneration: Forward to the past As we saw with the Iron Guard Movement’s Omol nou in Romania, Ustaše theory extolled the concept of Novi čovjek, the “New Man”. The movement’s mission as it saw it was to ‘reawaken’ the racially authentic (ie, ‘Aryan’) Croat—the koljenović—who had been corrupted and debased by centuries of foreign rule. The Ustaše Novi čovjek aligns with a core element of generic fascism, formulated by political theorist Roger Griffin called “palingenetic ultranationalism”, which combines “a myth of rebirth or regeneration” with a nationalism that is populist and “radically anti-liberal”, ie, ultranationalism. In the world according to Ustaše, the regenerated Croat warrior, heroic and uber-masculine, is the conduit for a new order to replace the old “decadent and decaying” one.

Ustaše and Iron Guard Commonalities between the Ustaše movement and Romania’s Iron Guard fascists were many, both were deeply mystical organisations, preoccupied with a death cult and notions of violence and martyrdom (though the Ustašhe didnt express the same degree of intense religious ritualism as Iron Guard). Both Ustaše and Iron Cross members tended to see the world in extreme Manichean terms, regularly evoking the imagery of the ”overtly apocalyptic and chiliastic” (Yeomans).

⇑ Ustaše: anti-Jewish propaganda (Source: www.vostokian.com)

Ustaše militias unleashed an unrestrained violent onslaught to deal with the perceived enemies of Croatia, terrorist targeting of political foes, assassinations, shootings, knifings, bombings, etc. The pattern of party violence culminated in attempts at outright genocide when Pavelić’s fascists gained power in Yugoslavia during World War One. Ustaše ‘reprisals’ were concentrated against the Serbs, Jews and Roma who came under their area of control – estimations of atrocities committed the Ustaše and the authorities vary, somewhere between 320,000 and 340,000 ethnic Serbian civilians were slaughtered in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in just one year of an out-of-control, manic bloodlust. Another Ustaše strategy supposedly to purify the NDH or the “Independent State of Croatia”—accomplished with the collaboration of Croatian Catholic clergy—was the forcible conversion of somewhere in the vicinity of 250,000 Orthodox Serbs and Jews⛎. In a further emulation of Nazi extermination methods Ustaše built a notorious concentration camp in Slavonia, Jasenovac, where upward of 100,000 Serbs, Roma and Jews were barbarically killed during the war (consequently Jasenovac is known as the “Auschwitz of the Balkans”).

Footnote: Women in the Ustaše world Just as the Ustaše envisaged a new type of Croatian man reinvigorated with the lost values of valour and struggle, it wanted to return Croatian women to a previous, less pluralist life. The Ustaše railed against the sexual status quo, against an encroaching feminism which had liberated women from the home, becoming, in Ustaše eyes, “cafe dolls without children”, sacrificing family for their careers. The movement wanted to revive the cult of motherhood, making Croatian women submissive and dutiful home bodies again, procreating a new generation of Croats. At the same time the Ustaše hierarchy organised women into their own separate body called the “Vine of Ustaše Women”, their main task was to act as social workers of sorts, circulating among the peasant women in Croatia to bring about improvements in their lives. Interestingly, as Rory Yeomans outlined, the leadership received pushback from militant young female members of the movement who wanted the same opportunity as Ustaše men to become warriors and immerse themselves in the revolutionary activities of the cause. In any event, the drain on Croatian manpower during the war necessitated a re-expansion of female roles to fill the gaps left by men in offices and factories and even in the military ranks (Yeomans).

“Greater Croatia” ⇑

Postscript: The Ustaše fascists failed to establish a mass base of support as a precondition for its revolutionary movement that Arrow Cross and Iron Guard movements achieved in their respective countries. And in the battle for the hearts and minds of the Croatian peasantry, Ustaše never matched the appeal of CPP. Added to this, Ustaše’s growing chauvinistic stance in pursuing a “Greater Croatia” ensured it made no headway in trying to appeal to any other national group in the country. Ustaše as a consequence was forced to draw on Croatian students, right wing intellectuals and the lower clergy for its core support. An additional brake on Ustaše power was the effectiveness of opposition from the left in Yugoslavia—in stark contrast to the situation in Romania and Hungary—from the well-organised communist party (brilliantly led by Tito).

⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫

🆚 = ‘Insurgents’

🅾️ the spiritual antecedent to Ustaše was probably the right wing nationalist Party of Rights (including the Frankovci cell)

❎ Ustaše‘s brand of fascism was ultranationalistic, see ’National regeneration: Forward to the past‘

Ⓜ for his part, Hitler was at best lukewarm toward Pavelić’s movement, considering them too violently aggressive, preferring a stable and neutral Yugoslavian regime to allow Germany to continue to access it’s raw materials during the war. The Nazis only reluctantly turned to the Ustaše as a “puppet government’ after civil war broke out in Yugoslavia

⛎ assistance given by the Catholic Church to Ustaše reached the highest pinnacle. At war’s end, when things turned dire for Pavelić and his cronies, the Vatican facilitated their escape to Argentina via the notorious German “Rat line” by issuing them clerical passports (Stockton)

♠ ♣ ♠ ♣

Texts and articles consulted:

‘Staging the Nation’s Rebirth: The Politics and Aesthetics of Performance in the Context of Fascist Studies’, Roger Griffin, Library of Social Science’, www.libraryofsocialscience.com

‘Ideology of Nation and Race: The Croatian Ustasha Regime and its Policies Toward the Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945)’, Nevenko Bartulin, Croatian Studies Review, 5 (2008)

Rory Yeomans. “Militant Women, Warrior Men and Revolutionary Personae: The New Ustasha Man and Woman in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-1945.” The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 83, no. 4, 2005, pp. 685–732. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4214175. Accessed 12 Aug. 2021

Tim Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (3rd edition, 2009)

Nevenko Bartulin, The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia: Origins and Theory (2014)

‘Meet the Ustaše, The Brutal Nazi Allies Even Hitler Couldn’t Control’, Richard Stockton, ATI, Upd. 6-Jun-2020, www.allthatsinteresting.com

Aleksa Djilas, The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution, 1919-1953 (1991)

Arrow Cross and Iron Guard: The Native Fascist Movements in Interwar Hungary and Romania

Posted by Sloane Snodgrasse on August 10, 2021

Tags: Anti-capitalism, Anti-communism, Anti-Semitism, Arrow Cross Party, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bela Kun, Central European Jews, Central Powers/Entente Powers, Christian fascism, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Ferenc Szálasi, General Ion Antonescu, Hungary, Interwar European authoritarianism, Iron Guard Movement, Italian Fascist and Nazi prototypes, King Carol II, Liberalism and conservativism, Ottoman Empire, Pan-European fascism, Post-WWI successor states, Regent Miklós Horthy, Romania, Women under fascism, WWI

The immediate aftermath of the First World War saw a redrawing of the map of Europe. With the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires, a raft of new successor states emerged on the continental landscape. The redistribution of territory in peace-time and the establishment of new sovereign entities led to new tensions and political instability and contributed to the rise of “home-grown” authoritarian and fascist political parties in interwar Europe. The following will look at how this development played out in Hungary and Romania after 1918—focusing on the two states’ main far-right political force (Arrow Cross Party (H), Iron Guard Movement (R)—showing that the growth of fascism in the two states shared core similarities albeit with some individual differences.

Successor states Hungary and Rumania were on opposing sides during the First World War. Backing the Central Powers, Hungary was a big loser, newly landlocked, forfeiting more than two-thirds of its territory (to Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia) and five-ninths of its former population – with ramifications for future irredentism, about three-and-a-half million ethnic Hungarians outside the homeland. Conversely, Romania, ally of the Entente Powers, was the principal beneficiary of Hungary’s reversals. As a consequence, for the new state of Hungary, the seeds of a ready-made grievance for revisionist vengeance against its eastern neighbour was well and truly sown.

🚹 Arrow Cross (top) & Iron Guard flags

Agrarian-based societies Romania and Hungary were predominately peasant-dominated populations between the wars…in Romania they comprised 78% of the population, in more urbanised Hungary they were less dominant but still a very significant 55% of the population. Because of lingering serfdom-like conditions and the abject failure to implement effective land reform, the bulk of peasants remained impoverished. The onset of the Depression in the 1930s exacerbated their plight, in such a time of crisis many of the peasantry found fringe groups like Arrow Cross (Nyilasok pártja)⧆ and the Iron Guard Movement (the Legion) offering a panacea for their woes with more appeal than the promises of the mainstream parties❂. The increasingly xenophobic pronouncements of the Legion’s ultra-nationalists struck a receptive chord among the Romanian peasantry, who Corneliu Zelea Codreanu identified as the mass base required for his planned revolutionary seizure of power…the Iron Guard leader exploited the peasantry’s distrust of communism and outsiders, making an appeal to “the custodian of the national historic mission” (of the peasantry) to conquer the towns (supposedly controlled by Ukrainian Jews and other ‘foreigners’)(Constantin Iordachi, ‘Ultranationalist utopias and the realities of reconciliation (part one)’, New Eastern Europe, 25-Feb-2021, www.neweasterneurope.eu).

Characteristics of the movements

Political outliers The Iron Guard Movement (IGM) and Arrow Cross (ACP), as self-described revolutionary movements, laid out radical platforms and pursued electoral strategies which placed them clearly outside the political mainstream…a deliberate repudiation of not just ideologies on the left, communism and social democracy but of the establishment right, the capitalist system, conservatism and bourgeois liberalism as well.

Nationalism Both native fascist parties were fiercely nationalistic in outlook. The nationalism of Romania’s Iron Guard Movement is considered to have been an unusual “variety of fascism” (Eugen Weber, Varieties of Fascism (1964)). The movement was also infused with a strong Christian Orthodoxy, befitting it’s alternate name, Legion of the Archangel Michael. The party’s leader Codreanu enveloped the movement’s ideology in an odd form of chiliastic mystical religiosity with “spiritual and transcendental aims”, mixing a ‘morbid’ element of Christian martyrdom and ritualism together with a violent nationalism (‘An Unique Death Cult’, Stanley G. Payne, Slate, 22-Feb-2017, www.slate.com). Codreanu and Iron Cross formed a political strategy called by Weber “murder as method”, their plan being to launch “a murder campaign to clear the country…of the Jews and their corrupt protectors”. However the ring-leaders including Codreanu were arrested before they could enact it.

A plan for Hungarian regional hegemony The ultra-nationalism espoused by ACP was a component of a peculiar ideology concocted by founder Szálasi…the party’s idiosyncratic nationalism was mixed in with ample doses of anti-communism, anti-capitalism, the promotion of agriculture and Szálasi’s own notion of anti-semitism, which he called “a-semitism” (by which he meant that Jews were not compatible to live in Europe with other ‘races’ and should be removed from Central Europe)§. Szálasi’s multifaceted program which was known as Hungarism was strongly revisionist with the Vezető pledging to restore the ”historic’ Hungary, uniting all of the Carpathian-Danube peoples under a Magyar-dominated empire, extending Hungary’s boundaries as far as the Black Sea.

Anti-semitism and racialist policy in the Legion IGM matched the virulence of ACP’s militant anti-semitism. Legionnaire ideologues harboured a fear that the heterogeneity of the Jews in Romania “might spoil the national unity required by the creation of a powerful state capable of fostering a strong culture that would propel Romania into History” (Marin). Ideas of purity and racial superiority were deeply embedded in the IGM ideological firmament◘ (“The Iron Guard and the ‘Modern State’. Iron Guard Leaders Vasile Marin and Ion I. Mota, and the ‘New European Order'”, Mircea Platon, Brill, 01-Jan-2012, www.brill.com). In the early 1940s when IGM was briefly in a power-share arrangement with military strongman General Ion Antonescu (National Legionary State), thousands of Jews, Slavs and Roma (Gypsies) were liquidated by its paramilitary arm. In the late stage of WWII ACP militiamen executed thousands of Hungarian Jews on the Danube riverbank, the location marked today in Budapest by a memorial to the victims (“Shoes on the Danube Promenade”).

Anti-capitalism The anti-capitalist plank of fascist nationalism was a distinctive feature of both Hungarian and Romanian fascist movements✮. IGM philosophy rejected both the class antagonisms of Marxism and the materialistic excesses of bourgeois capitalism – a transparently populist appeal by Codreanu to the anti-capitalist sentiments of the large, powerless Romanian peasantry. Instead Codreanu proposed a “spiritual third force”, the Legion’s own unique cocktail of targeted terror and mystical authoritarianism as salvation for the masses (G.L. Mosse, International Fascism (1979)).

Anti-communism Both ACP and IGM exploited the masses’ distrust of the spectre of communism. In Hungary this was made easier with Hungarians having already in 1919 tasted “the disillusioning experience of the Bolsheviks”, the brief and unpopular Hungarian Soviet regime led by Béla Kun (Deák, I. (1992). ‘Hungary’.The American Historical Review, (4), 1041-1063. doi:10.2307/2165492).

Cult of the leader Both ACP and the Legion forged personality cult leadership structures in their respective movements, based around the charismatic and youthful figures of Szálasi and Codreanu – strong, magnetic leaders whose authority could not be questioned. Arrow Cross and Szálasi repeatedly suffered harassment and persecution at the hands of the conservative Horthy nationalist regime, creating in ACP a sense of martyrdom which the movement transformed paradoxically “into a process via which the leader gained charisma, instead of losing it” (‘The Arrow Cross. The Ideology of Hungarian Fascism – A conceptual approach by Áron Szele (Central European University), Budapest 2015),www.etd.ceu.hu). In Romania the Legion’s propaganda projected Codreanu as the new messiah guiding his devoted, bordering on the fanatic followers, on a millennialist mission to purify Romania by punishing the enemies of the Tara (fatherland), communists, Jews, ‘foreigners’ (Constantin Iordachi, in Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of Twentieth–Century Southeastern Europe, Edited by John Lampe and Mark Mazower (2004)). Codreanu and Szálasi’s integrity and legitimacy was enhanced by the leaders’ decision to pursue power by constitutional means⇹.

Handcuffing the left Fringe right parties like ACP and IGM had their path to power facilitated by the neutralisation of the left. In Hungary and Romania conservative governments outlawed the communist party, shackled trade unions and kept social democratic parties in check. In addition to this, the law treated fascist terrorists more leniently…eg, Codreanu’s “death squad” Legionnaires were acquited of having assassinated Romanian premier Duca in 1933.

A right Royal millstone The deteriorating state of internal politics in Romania in the Thirties was a boost to IGM’s fortunes. The extreme avarice and corruption of the egregious Romanian king, Carol II, a drift towards political stagnation, all combined with “the immiseration of the peasantry” to steer support towards the Legion (‘The Little Dictators’, Richard J Edwards (30-Nov-2006), www.gresham.ac.uk).

🚹 Szálasi and Hitler (Photo: Hitler-archive.com)

End-notes: (i) National regeneration Both Szálasi and Codreanu had unwavering faith in the power of their wills, believing that they were destined to lead their movements in the revival of their respective nations, to lift them out of the morass of economic crisis, national trauma and social dislocation.

Arrow Cross militia

(ii) A fascist brotherhood under the Swastika Like many alt-right groups in interwar Europe, ACP and IGM looked to the “first rank” far-right, totalitarian states, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, for inspiration and ideas. As Anthony Polonsky remarked, “fascism seemed to many the philosophy of the future – an efficient and orderly means of modernizing a backward country” (Evans). Widely regarded as puppets of Nazi Germany, Szálasi and Codreanu saw themselves as part of an emerging new order, a larger pan-European movement of fascist states, one in practice however securely under the control of Hitler and the Nazis.

🚹 Arrow Cross women (Photo: CEU Gender Studies)

Postscript: Arrow Cross women The fascism practiced by ACP and the Legion, it has been noted, was not without a degree of plasticity. Both fascist parties perhaps surprisingly included a focus on the position of women. IGM was more predictably traditional in reinforcing the domestic role of women, but ACP made a concerted appeal to Hungarian women, attracting female members from those women marginalised, politically or professionally. ACP was the first political organisation to acknowledge and propose a plan to protect women from sexual harassment in the workplace (‘Lessons for Today: Women in the Hungarian Arrow Cross Movement’, Andrea Petö, Central European University, 01-Aug-2019, www.ceu.edu)

⧆ Arrow Cross was just the most prominent of several small “fascist-wannabe” political groups that surfaced in Hungary after WWI

❂ just as the German masses found Hitler’s message fresh and appealing cf. the tired, failing efforts of the Weimar politicians

§ Szálasi’s “a-semitism” was also directed at Arabs

◘ Szálasi’s Hungarism subscribed to a similar view of “master race” status for the Magyar people

✮ significantly though the fascists never moved beyond rhetoric to actually threaten the entrenched position of private property

⇹ ACP’s electoral zenith was in 1939 when it won 25% of the vote in Hungary, becoming the country’s most important opposition party

A Divided Cyprus: Sixty Years and No Resolution on the Horizon, Part II

Posted by Sloane Snodgrasse on May 16, 2021

Tags: 'Enosis', ‘Cyprus Mail’, Aegean oil and gas reserves, Annan Plan, Archbishop Makarios, Cyprus Issue, EOKA–B, EU, Famagusta, Five + UN Geneva Summit on Cyprus, Greek Colonels' Cyprus coup d'etat, Greek Cypriots v Turkish Cypriots', Hellenic State of Cyprus, Kofi Annan, Northern Ireland civic assemblies, Rodger Paul Davies, TRNC, Turkish 1974 invasion of Cyprus, Turkish settlement in Northern Cyprus, UN, UN Convention of the Sea, UN secretary-generals, Varosha "ghost town"

See also the preceding blog: ‘A Divided Cyprus: Sixty Years and No Resolution on the Horizon, Part I’

After the UN negotiated a cease-fire in Cyprus in 1974, following the Turkish army’s military incursion, the ‘Green Line’ from 1964 was reestablished…a new buffer zone cut right through Nicosia, separating the northern and southern sections of the city. The divided island was left in a highly militarised state – UN estimates put the Turkey presence in the north at around 30,000 soldiers whereas the Republic of Cyprus maintains a force of 12,000 plus up to 2,000 troops from Greece. The fallout from what the Turkish regime called Kibris Baris Harekâti (“Cyprus Peace Operation”) left 200,000 Greek Cypriots and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots displaced (A Borowiec, Cyprus: A Troubled Island (2000); A Smit, The Property Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Beyond Restitution (2012)).

Since the Turkish invasion and the subsequent unilateral declaration of an autonomous Turkish Cypriot entity (in 1983 consolidated into the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”), there have many attempts to settle the Cyprus impasse, all of which have floundered. Among the would-be fixers have been a succession of UN secretary-generals including Perez de Cueller, Boutros-Boutros Ghali and Kofi Annan, all advancing plans in a vain attempt to end the decades-long stalemate.

Annan Plan Kofi Annan’s plan proposed a restructure of the island into a federation comprising two states – the “United Republic of Cyprus”. Put to a referendum in 2004 it was supported by 65% of Turkish Cypriots but overwhelmingly rejected by 76% of Greek Cypriots, a disparity which demonstrates how far apart the two sides are and how difficult getting a consensus on the issue will be. The context of the Greek Cypriots’ hardline stance—adopting a view that acceptance of the plan would in fact “legalise the island’s de facto partition”—should be viewed in light of the fact that Cyprus had already been guaranteed membership of the European Union (EU) (‘The Peace Processes: 2004 Annan Plan’, Michael Theodoulou, Cyprus Mail, 29-Dec-2016, www. cyprus-mail.com).

Changing the paradigm: Reunification The international community as a whole, the UN, the EU, tend to favour a unification resolution of the island country. Barriers to reunification however are myriad – including where to draw the boundaries between the two communities; the issue of demilitarisation of the island⊗; the question of displaced Cypriots which opens the can of worms of property rights; the repatriation of Turkish settlers from North☮ (Chan).

Putting Cyprus first An additional underlying factor is the future role of the three guarantor powers, Turkey, Greece and Britain. A future unified Cyprus needs security against new interventions by Turkey and Greece (‘Cyprus Stalemate’, (Fiona Mullen), Late Night Live, ABC Radio National, broadcast 05-May-2021). Added to the destabilisation, the two hostile Aegean littoral states have continually interfered with Cyprus’ internal politics for their own political advantage. The outside meddling complicates the island’s dilemma, forming a barrier to serious negotiation between the Greek and Turkish communities. When the government in Athens or Ankara is in domestic difficulties they have a habit of reverting to a hardline on the Cyprus issue to deflect attention from their woes at home (Kaloudis, George. “CYPRUS: THE ENDURING CONFLICT.” International Journal on World Peace, vol. 16, no. 1, 1999, pp. 3–18. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20753188. Accessed 10 May 2021).

A deficit of patriotism Such is the polarised nature of life in divided Cyprus that both the Turkish and the Greek communities are more loyal to the “mother country” than they are to their own country. This diminished or even absent sense of patriotism by Cypriots works against the misson of securing a solution for Cyprus (Kaloudis).

Mistrust and baggage

The simple fact that Greece and Turkey are weighed down by so much historical baggage intensifies the difficulty of finding a viable solution for Cyprus. Ancient rivalries, colonial relationships and wars, have contributed to an atmosphere of mutual distrust which extends to contemporary Cyprus. Greek mistrust of more powerful neighbour Turkey fuels hawkish Greek Cypriot perspectives, seeing in the Turkish Cypriots’ two-state solution a Turkish hidden agenda – the first step by Ankara in securing control over the entire country (‘Cyprus: Turkey is heading for a two-state solution’, Costas Venizelos, Greek City Times, Dec 2020, www.greekcitytimes.com). Conversely, the Turkish community (18% of population) fear domination by the numerically much greater Greek community (78%), add to this differences in ethnicity, language and religion, doesn’t make finding common ground between the two communities any easier to accomplish (Kaloudis).

If tensions rise between Turkey and Greece, there is the chance of a knock-on effect on the Cyprus situation. When is more likely the reality as new sources of potential Greek-Turkey conflict abound – control of air space in the Aegean Sea, Greece’s desire to fortify its islands in the eastern Mediterranean, claims on each others’ continental shelf, etc.

Oil catalyst The dispute over continental shelves is linked to the most worrying Aegean issue, Turkey’s recent oil and natural gas ventures, exploring and drilling in territorial waters contested by Greece and Cyprus§. The UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) backs Greek territorial claims in the region, however with Turkey not a signatory of UNCLOS, it’s probable that Ankara will not feel itself bound by its law and thus raising the prospect of an escalation of conflict (‘Greece calls on Turkey to stop renewed gas exploration activities in East Med’, Diego Cupolo, Al-Monitor, 10-Aug-2020, www.al-monitor.com).

Famagusta ghost town Another simmering trigger-point for Greek-Turkey tensions over Cyprus is the “no-go” Famagusta province in the island’s north. Deserted by Greek Cypriot residents in 1974, it was seized by the Turkish military and fenced off with barbed wire. Famagusta’s holiday beach resort of Varosha, has come to attention recently because the TRNC are in the process of reopening this “ghost town” to commercial activity and human habitation…this has prompted protests from the republic of Cyprus who declared the move illegal (‘Cyprus asks UN to step in as beach in north is opened after 46 years’, Helena Smith, The Guardian, 09-Oct-2020, www.theguardian.com).

One of the core stumbling blocks to productive negotiation on the Cyprus stalemate is the fundamental question of who owns Cyprus? A large element of the Greek Cypriot community in particular take a partisan view of the question – insisting that its population majority on the island justifies overall ownership, whereas the Turkish community just as avowedly insists on its right to an “equal partnership” (Mullen).

Failure of political leadership The Cypriot politicians fronting up to the merry-go-round of fruitless negotiations have abjectly failed in their task to find a resolution…their own entrenched interests and a disinclination to compromise means they come up empty every time. As the progressive-thinking Cyprus Mail summed up the parlous state of Cypriot leadership currently being dished up: “We have returned to the good old days of the Cyprus problem, when every statement issued by one side had to be answered by the other and the blame game was never switched off” (‘Our View: ‘Anastasiades has led the Cyprob to a dead end’ Cyprus Mail 09-May-2021).

With the appointed leaders being part of the problem, some believe it’s time to dump the barren leader-led process and try a markedly new approach to negotiation. One pathway worth pursuing might be to devolve the responsibility to the civic assemblies level, as has been tried with success in Ireland (Mullen).

There’s a perception by some observers that the Greek side doesn’t especially want to reach a settlement. The periodical summits and meetings come round and they go through the motions, paying lip service to the process. This view of a political lack of will has been articulated even among Greek Cypriots, the person in the street (‘Rationality and the Cyprus Issue’, Hugh Pope, International Crisis Group, 08-Mar-2011, www.internationalcrisisgroup.org). In contrast to the hypocritical politicians on both sides, a December 2010 Interpeace poll revealed that two-thirds of Greek and Turkish Cypriots wanted a resolution (Cyprus Mail).

Behind such cynicism is a complacency on the Greek Cypriot side, many of the politicians may be happy with the status quo…Greek Cypriots in the south are comparatively wealthy cf. the economically weak northern entity. The south has all the privileges of EU membership denied to the north. This diminishes some of the impetus, at least domestically, to seek change. All this doesn’t absolve the motives of Turkish politicians from scrutiny. The North Turkey regime is dependent on Turkey for protection, the situation suits Ankara, also giving it a location to offload surplus population. Turkey is in a position to use Cyprus as a bargaining chip in the Mediterranean (‘Opinion: The never-ending Cyprus conflict’, Spiro Moskovou, DW, 22-Nov-2016, www.dw.com). Ankara seems reasonably comfortable with the state of things too, as long as it has a military presence in control of the north.

TRNC president’s pitch The Northern Cyprus leader Ersin Tatar used the April summit in Geneva to push his two-state solution (2SS)… its merits in the TRNC president’s eyes were that it represented a fairer proposal than the Greek Cypriot one, allowing for what he calls “political equality” between the two communities, adding that 2SS would make possible an opening up of the economy in the north.

Turkish Cypriots justify the establishment of TRNC as a right of self-determination, but it’s hold on Northern Cyprus has been rejected by the international community as an illegal occupation of an EU member state (the Republic of Cyprus). As a result the body of EU law has been suspended in the northern section of the island (Mullen).

The seemingly insurmountable hurdle remains the yawning gulf between what each communities wants. A 2009 survey found that 78% of Greek Cypriots supported a unitary state solution, while 71% of Turkish Cypriots backed the two-state solution (‘Analyzing the proposed solutions to the Cyprus Dispute’, Oliver Hegglin, Human Security Centre, 13-Mar-2021, www.hscentre.org). While both sides with blinkered vision cling to such an absolute position, its hard to envision any breakthrough to one of the world’s most Intractable regional conflicts happening in the foreseeable future.

Footnote: The Enosis question The Greek Cypriot quest for Enosis (‘Unioned’) with Greece received a boost from the activism of ultra-right paramilitary organisation EOKA-B in the early Seventies. EOKA-B was involved in plots to assassinate Cypriot leader Makarios III (unsuccessful)—when he turned against the goal of Enosis—and in the assassination of US ambassador to Cyprus Rodger Paul Davies (successful), a protest against Washington’s failure to take action on Turkey’s 1974 invasion✼. The Greek Colonels, behind the 1974 coup which unseated Archbishop Makarios, also espoused Union with Greece in its efforts to created a “Hellenic State of Cyprus’. This was perhaps the high-water mark for Enosis in Cyprus. Polls in recent years have indicated that support for union with the ‘motherland’ has dissipated (‘Cyprus: Why One of the World’s Most Intractable Conflicts Continues’, Sewell Chan, New York Times, 07-Nov-2016, www.nytimes.com).

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

✼ notwithstanding the US supported the Greek Colonels’ overthrow of the Greek government and monarchy in 1967

⊗ Turkey and Greece’s heavy military commitment in Cyprus imposes a massive burden on the economies of Greece and Turkey, a resolution would free up finances which are much needed elsewhere in their countries

☮ Ankara embarked on a expansive settlement program after invasion – by 1980 between 35 and 40 thousand Turkish settlers had migrated to Turkish-controlled areas (Helge Jensehaugen (2017) ‘Filling the void’: Turkish settlement in Northern Cyprus, 1974–1980, Settler Colonial Studies, 7:3, 354-371, DOI: 10.1080/2201473X.2016.1196031)

§ over the last decade the (Turkish) ‘Barbaros’ research vessel has repeatedly infiltrated Cyprus’ EEZ, a clear violation of UNCLOS

A Divided Cyprus: Sixty Years and No Resolution on the Horizon, Part I

Posted by Sloane Snodgrasse on May 11, 2021

Tags: 'Enosis', 'Taksim', 1960 Republic of Cyprus, Aegean geopolitics, AKEL, António Guterres, Archbishop Makarios, Britain & colonisation, Cold War in the Aegean/Mediterranean, Cypriot Civil War 1963-64, Cyprus Emergency 1955-59, Cyprus Issue, EOKA, Ersin Tatar, General Grivas, Greek Colonels’ Coup 1967, Green Line, Hellenic State of Cyprus, Informal 5+1 meeting Geneva 2021, Megali Idea, Ottoman vassal state tribute system, Recep Erdoğan, Soviet Union, Turko-Greek tensions, UN

Image: www.aljezeera.com

Last month in Geneva the UN brokered an informal 5+1 meeting between the representatives of the Greek and Turkish communities of Cyprus in yet another fruitless attempt to find a resolution to the island’s “Intractable, identity-based conflict (RJ Fisher, Journal of Peace Research 2001). Also in attendance were the foreign ministers from Cyprus’s three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey and Britain. For ordinary citizens of the country and foreign observers alike, this amounted to a “Groundhog Day” experience. The disputing parties came (with their own agendas), they talked (at each other) while remaining firmly anchored to their core list of non-negotiables. The disputants returned to their bunkers.

No compromise, no progress…the stalemate and the status quo continues. Even the usually “glass half-full” UN head is not sanguine about future prospects…UN secretary-general Guterres emerged from the three-day summit with a ‘realistic’ rather than a hopeful sense of the situation, stating that there was “not enough common ground to resume negotiations” and that new talks were months away (‘Cyprus settlement talks found little common ground: UN chief’, Aljazeera, 29-Apr-2021, www.aljazeera.com).

Photo: www.greekcitytimes.com

The rationales Both sides restated their entrenched positions…the Greek Cypriots and Greece wouldn’t budge from their Greek Cypriot-majority bi-zonal federation model as the precondition to reunification, a formula ensuring the Greek community would still be dominant in the Federation. Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar insisted that to go forward the standing UN resolutions that sanction this approach should be sidestepped in favour of the alternate Turkish Cypriot proposal for a two-state solution, a formula backed by the Turkish government in Ankara and its controversial president Recep Erdogan.

The British connexion and the Cyprus Emergency The self-interest of Greece and Turkey is transparent, but some may wonder why the UK was one of the participating players in the Cyprus stalemate talks. The British nexus has its genesis in 1878 when expansionist Britain took advantage of the ailing Ottoman Empire to establish a protectorate over Cyprus and add the Eastern Aegean island to its imperial possessions⌖.

EOKA Emergency (Photo: www.iwm.org.uk)

Lead up to the 1960 compromise and beyond Fast forward to 1955, overseas colonies around the globe were increasingly asserting a postwar yearning for independence from their European masters. Anyone familiar with Britain’s colonial policy in the 20th century (eg, Balfour Declaration on Palestine, Aden, British Raj in India, etc), will be aware of its track record on disengagement with its colonies is far from spotless. The Cyprus situation in the years 1955-60 continued this pattern. British policy towards the colony was shortsighted and misguided. By rigidly denying the Greek and Turkish Cypriots a right to self-determination in an increasingly heavy-handed way, the colonial power inadvertently fostered Greek and Turkish Cypriot nationalist sentiments¤. The struggle of Greek Cypriots to free themselves of British rule was taken up by a guerrilla group called Ethniki Organised Kyprion Agoniston (EOKA). EOKA’s aims were not for independence but for union (Enosis) with Greece. Turkish Cypriots on the other hand, perceiving that the 1960 power share perpetuated their inferior place in the republic developed the idea of Taksim (‘partition’) in opposition to the Greeks’ Enosis✪. EOKA’s campaign of violence targetted the police (Greek and Turkish Cypriot as well as British) and basically anyone who opposed Enosis. Britain’s tactless use of Turkish police to quell the revolt of Greek Cypriots further inflamed and created new ethnic divisions and hostilities between the communities.

Archbishop Makarios III (Photo: www.pastdaily.com)

Although the British military eventually reined in most of the EOKA activists, the island’s slid towards war prompted Britain and the US to bring some kind of resolution to the conflict. Talks in 1959 led to the establishment of a republic in 1960 with a shared power arrangement—Greek Cypriot president, Turkish Cypriot vice president, etc—leadership of the republic thus fell to Archbishop Makarios (“Cyprus: Why One of the World’s Most Intractable Conflicts Continues’, Sewell Chan, New York Times, 07-Nov-2016, www.nytimes.com).

EOKA guerrillas including leader General Grivas

Cold War considerations Geostrategic considerations of the Cold War played a part in both Britain’s and the US’ involvement in the Cyprus imbroglio. Cyprus was non-aligned and the western powers were fearful that the USSR could take advantage of the island”s instability with a view to establishing a base there, giving it a much sought-after influence in the Eastern Mediterranean. The activism and appeal of AKEL, the Cyprus communist party, augmented those fears (‘The Soviet Union, Turkey and the Cyprus Problem, 1967-1974’, John Sakkas & Nataliya Zhukova, Les Cahiers Rice, 2013/1 (n°10), www.cairn.info). Washington’s later support for the Greek colonels’ dictatorship as a buffer against communism proved disastrous for Cyprus’s long-term stability.

Cyprus in crisis Trouble in the bi-communal unitary state surfaced in 1963 when Makarios proposed constitutional changes to limit Turkish Cypriot political influence. A civil war broke out between the two communities (inter communal violence, casualties on both sides, arson, displacement of villagers, intervention by UN Peacekeeping Force – which became permanent). The Turkish Cypriot-controlled area was reduced to a few enclaves and Nicosia, the capital, was divided by a cease-fire line called the “Green Line”.

Turkish invasion 1974 (Source: www.greekreporter.com)

Greek colonels coup and Turkish counter-strike 1974 was the most momentous year of the Cyprus conflict. Athens’ military junta operating through a paramilitary group overthrew the Cyprus government of Makarios and installed a ‘marionette’ government headed by an ex-EOKA leader and convicted murderer. The schemers’ purpose of the coup was to bring about the desired union with Greece. For Ankara though, it provided the opportunity (and pretext) it was waiting for…five days after the coup the Turkish military invaded Cyprus (Operation Atilla), the Greek coup collapsed and the Turkish invaders captured nearly 40% of the island. A cease-fire was negotiated but not before thousands of casualties and expulsions, particularly of Greek Cypriots from the north. Turkey set up a de facto Turkish entity in North Cyprus, which in 1983 was proclaimed to be the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC). TRNC was recognised as a sovereign state only by the regime in Ankara, not by any other country.

Footnote: Megali idea Enosis grew out the Megali Idea (“Great Idea”), an aspirational irredentist concept that posits that all lost Greek territories will be liberated and united with Greece in the future. The Greek colonels launching their 1974 coup d’etat against the Makarios government echoed the concept in their declaration of “the Hellenic State of Cyprus”.

See also the follow-up blog: ‘A Divided Cyprus: Sixty Years and No Resolution on the Horizon, Part II’

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⌖ formal annexation didn’t occur to 1914. In 1925 Cyprus was made a British crown colony

¤ an underlying grievance of Greek Cypriots in British Cyprus was what was effectively a system of double taxation. In addition to the standard taxation on many items, the communities had to contribute to Britain’s tribute payments to the Ottoman Empire in return for ‘leasing’ the island

✪ under British rule the two communities had been allowed to self- segregate, this led to an aggregation of “nationalistic fervour”, resulting in the development of Enosis and Taksim (‘Analyzing the proposed solutions to the Cyprus Dispute’, Oliver Hegglin, Human Security Centre, 13-Mar-2021, www.hscentre.org). See also Footnote above.

Labelled ‘Degenerate’: Nazi Germany’s War on Modern Art

Posted by E Curb Nottus on March 25, 2021

Tags: Abstract and non-representational art, Adolf Hitler, Adolf Ziegler, Cultural Bolshevism, Degenerative Art Exhibit 1933 (Dresden), Degenerative Art Exhibition 1937 (Munich), Die Brucke, Ernst Kirchner, George Grosz, German Expressionism, Germania, Joseph Goebbels, Max Beckmann, Max Nordau, Nazi architecture, Nazi eugenics, New Objectivity ("Neue Sachlichkeit"), Oscar Dix, Oscar Kokoschka, Propaganda politics, The Third Reich, Übermensch, Weimar Republic

In 1937 the Nazi regime organised two art exhibitions in Munich concurrently, separated only by a park and a few hundred metres. One was intended to hammer home to the German volk the inequity of the type of art that the führer Adolf Hitler found abhorrent, ie, anything in art that even hinted of modernity. The other representing all that Hitler found good in art was the complete antithesis of this – a paean to traditional, realistic painting and sculpture and art that conformed to classical themes and forms.

Hitler’s early experiences and his perceived emotional pattern suggest a motive of personal revenge contributing to the Nazis’ fanatical war on the modern and the avant-garde in art. As a young man Hitler dreamed of a career as an artist but a double rejection by the Vienna art academy saw those aspirations dashed. His paintings were summarily dismissed as passe by the art establishment in favour of abstract and modern styles (Burns), leaving the future Reich leader with a bitter aftertaste and a grudge①.

In Mein Kampf Hitler avers that “Cubism and Dadaism are symptoms of biological degradation threatening the German people”, Werckmeister, O. K. “Hitler the Artist.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 23, no. 2, 1997, pp. 270–297. JSTOR www.jstor.org/stable/1343984. Accessed 2 March 2021.

The purging of so-called “degenerate art” The Degenerate Art Exhibition (Entartete Kunst) in 1937 was the culmination of a concerted campaign waged by the Nazis to root out all manifestations of avant-garde art in Germany. The first efforts by Hitler’s henchmen were a reaction to the preceding liberal and permissive Weimar era which had embraced the modern style in art and especially Expressionism. In 1933 the Nazis held their first art exhibit of the supposed “degenerate art” in Dresden. Allied to this, the systematic confiscation of modern artworks from museum across Germany took place. Hundreds of thousands of the plundered art pieces including works by modern masters were sold by the Third Reich (some of the proceeds were siphoned off into armament production)②. Much of the minor, less marketable art works were ultimately burnt.

The “wrong type” of art Hitler rejected the avant-garde and modernity in part for aesthetic reasons. Hitler like many of his Nazi followers had an innate conservative aesthetic taste in art. Politics and ideology also played a part, the führer associated modernism with Jews and communism, and by extension, with democracy and pacifism. Jewish influences, Hitler held, had contaminated the classical art styles so beloved by him. At the same time he denounced what he called “cultural Bolshevism” for weakening German society. Modern art, the Nazis believed was an evil plot against the German people, a “dangerous lie” which would poison German minds. In chilling words given the Nazis’ later unbridled lethal use of eugenics Hitler stated that “anyone who paints a green sky and fields blue ought to be sterilised”.

⇧ Kokoschka: ’Portrait of a Degenerate Artist’

“Sick art” and culture as a propaganda tool Hitler and the Nazis believed that art played a critical role in defining society’s values. Expressionism③ and the group Die Brücke (“The Bridge”) and artists like Oscar Kokoschka and Ernst Kirchner got singled out for extra repressive measures. The Nazis depicted avant-garde art as the lowest of the low—”impure and subversive”, it’s artists ‘diseased’ specimens corrupted by mental, physical and moral decay—conversely they elevated classical Greek and Roman art to a sublime place, the highest of cultural planes.

⇧ Hitler viewing the ‘Degenerates’

The Degenerate Art Exhibition The Nazis’ 1937 exhibition was carefully stage-managed as a propaganda vehicle to mock and deride the modern art Hitler so detested. The exhibition comprised Expressionist, Dada, Cubism, Abstract (allocated its own room designated the “Insanity Room”) and New Objectivity artworks. Paintings were hung in a careless, haphazard fashion, with graffiti scrawled on the walls which defamed the artists. Actors were hired to prowl through the gallery loudly denouncing the “Modernist madness”. Adolf Ziegler, the Reich”s top arts bureaucrat and Hitler’s favourite artist, declared the displayed works “monstrosities of insanity, insolence, incompetence and degeneration”. And to ram home the degeneracy point, the vilified artworks were juxtaposed alongside paintings by the enfeebled and the disabled, by psychotic patients and the like. According to the Nazis, degenerate art was the product of Jews and Bolsheviks, but interestingly only six of the 112 artists whose work was displayed in the exhibition were Jewish. The 650 paintings, prints and sculptures included works by Grosz, Dix, Klee, Beckmann, Nolde, Chagall, Picasso, Wandinsky, Marc and Mondrian.

⇧ Führer taking in the “good art”

Exhalting in the “pure Aryan art” To provide Germans with a favourable point of comparison, the Nazis simultaneously held the Great German Art Exhibition in the same Munich neighbourhood. This displayed ‘Ayran’ art➃, the type of art Hitler approved of. Often gargantuan in scale⑤ – statuesque blond nudes, idealised heroic and duty-bound soldiers and imagined pastorals and idyllic landscapes (reflecting Hitler’s predilection for realistic paintings of outdoor rustic settings). Characteristically the favoured Nazis’ male figures in art represented the concept of the Übermensch (an idealised ‘superman’). Hitler’s intention was that the Groß deutsche Kunstausstellung propaganda would help mobile the German people behind the Nazis’ values.

Footnote: The outcome of the dual 1937 exhibitions was not anticipated by Hitler and the Nazis: Entartete Kunst proved wildly popular, attracting more than two million visitors, whereas Groß Kunstausstellung only managed less than a third of this number. The “Degenerate Art” show was such a hit that it was toured on display throughout the German Reich after the Munich premiere closed.

☬ ☬ ☬

Postscript: German artists deemed ‘degenerate’ understandably were more at risk of persecution from the Nazis from those outside the country. Special attention was given to artists like George Grosz and Oscar Dix who were openly critical of the totalitarian regime. Grosz mocked Hitler on canvas while Dix earned the enmity of the Nazis for his excruciating depictions of the horrors of war. As one writer put it, “the Nazis labeled Dix a ‘degenerate,’ but the term is better applied to the society he depicted—cannibalizing itself and hurtling toward destruction” (Alina Cohen).

Dix’s ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ (1933)

•━ ━ ━ •━ ━ ━ •━ ━ •━ ━ ━ ━•

① Hitler’s own preference for subject matter as an artist was for painting buildings and largely unpopulated pastoral landscapes (the future “world leader” had no talent for capturing the human form) ② Hitler and the National-Socialists’ notion of modern art as being the product of entartung (degeneracy) can be traced to a Jewish Austro-Hungarian social critic Max Nordau who decried the new art and literature in 1890s Europe as being the work of diseased minds ③ the focus on Expressionism as a target for the Nazi “culture police” proved a particular problem for Joseph Goebbels. The propaganda minister had early on championed the Expressionist movement and had to backtrack swiftly on this to avoid the führer’s opprobrium ➃ Ayran art uniformly infuses a celebration of youth, optimism, power and eternal triumph ⑤ the Nazi taste for mega-scale art reached its apogee in architecture, massive structures like ‘Germania’. “Monumentality and solidity (exuding power), simplicity and timeless eternity” were the bywords of Nazi architecture

𓇬 𓇬 𓇬

Bibliography ‘Degenerate art: Why Hitler hated modernism’, (Lucy Burns), BBC News, 06-Nov-2013, www.bbc.com ‘Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937’, (Jason Farago), The Guardian, 13-Mar-2014, www.theguardian.com ‘Degenerate art’, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org ‘Nazi architecture’, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org ‘Why “Degenerate” Artist Otto Dix Was Accused of Plotting to Kill Hitler’, (Alina Cohen), Art Sy, 11-Feb-2019, www.artsy.net ‘Art as Propaganda: The Nazi Degenerate Art Exhibit’, Facing History and Ourselves, (Video, 2017) ‘Adolf Hitler’s war against modern art’, The Canvas, (Video, 2019)

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