Challenging the German Empire: Strategic nationalism in Alsace-Lorraine in the First World War

This article introduces the concept of ‘strategic nationalism’ to explain the shift of national allegiance of most Alsatians and Lorrainers from Germany to France during the First World War. Combining the historiographical concept of ‘national indifference’ with rational-choice theories of nationalism, the article examines why a growing number of local citizens came to defy the authorities' relentless demand of national loyalty. Contrary to previous studies that emphasize the dictatorial character of the regime and the passivity of local citizens, the article argues that national attitudes were shaped by strategic interests and highly responsive to shifts in state policy, regional circumstances and the course of the war. From mid-1918, it was less escalating state repression or dormant Francophile sympathies, but half-hearted liberalization of policy, the authorities' unfaltering insistence on national loyalty and imminent military and economic collapse that prompted people to see France as an attractive alternative to German rule

A Stress Test for German Nationalism:Protective Custody in Alsace-Lorraine during the First World War

When the First World War broke out, the French government declared the return of Alsace-Lorraine its only public war aim, arguing that the population was ‘French in spirit’. In an age rife with claims of national self-determination, trapped in a protracted war of attrition and facing a nationally ambivalent population, the German state soon came under enormous pressure to ensure the loyalty and patriotism of the inhabitants of its western borderland. This article examines why Imperial Germany failed to meet this ‘stress test’. It focuses on the crucial but hitherto neglected issue of protective custody (Schutzhaft), whereby police and military authorities were able to arrest and detain ‘suspect’ civilians without charge or trial. The article finds that protective custody, an emergency measure under martial law, played a central role in the failure of German policy in Alsace-Lorraine: it undermined the rule of law, shifted the focus onto national dissent and gave rise to an atmosphere of suspicion and fear. The article also demonstrates that the Reichstag successfully put limits on protective custody in the second half of the war. Yet leaving the authoritarian doctrine of enforcing national loyalty in place, the more lenient administrative approach had a disintegrative rather than a stabilizing effect, preparing the ground for widespread disaffection with German rule months before the war ended

‘We have to tread warily’:East Pakistan, India and the pitfalls of foreign intervention in the Cold War

This article examines the East Pakistan crisis of 1971 as a watershed moment in Cold War humanitarian politics. It argues that the absence of an effective international framework of multilateral foreign intervention or peacekeeping forced the key external actors to resort to covert forms of intervention, while publicly pledging adherence to non-interference in the domestic affairs of Pakistan. The article demonstrates that covert intervention by India, the United States and the United Nations not only undermined the credibility of the Cold War international system, but also fuelled the drift to the Indo-Pakistani war that ultimately ended the crisis

The Paris System in Western Europe:Minorities, Self-Determination, and the Management of Difference in the “Civilized West”

In most accounts of peacemaking after World War I, “flawed” decisions at “Versailles” caused the ethnically mixed states of Central and Eastern Europe to descend into violent ethnic clashes, while the allegedly more homogenous Western European states faced few issues with minorities. This article challenges this simplistic view by examining the treatment of German-speaking minorities in the borderlands of Alsace-Lorraine, South Tyrol, and Eupen-Malmedy between 1918 and 1923 in the immediate post-war and the early interwar period. Building on an innovative comparative framework of five key variables, we find that, in all three cases, post-war borders generated incentives for the respective governments to suppress their new minorities, and that states used ethnic markers to target them. The strength of state institutions and liberal principles account for a reversal (Alsace-Lorraine), moderation (Eupen-Malmedy), or hardening (South Tyrol) of measures. International commitment to defend the new borders and the absence of a tradition of ethnic conflict also had a significant impact

International concepts and practices of borders : experts, ethnicity, and the Paris system in the early interwar period

Defence date: 13 June 2013Examining Board: Professor Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, EUI (Supervisor) Professor A. Dirk Moses, EUI (Second Reader) Doctor Bernhard Struck, University of St Andrews (External Examiner) Professor Donald Bloxham, University of Edinburgh (External Examiner).The interwar period is key to the course international history took in the twentieth century. This thesis examines the conditions under which the new international order instituted after World War One led to violent local reactions. It traces American, British, and French expertise and policies from the peace planning processes begun just before the end of the First World War right up to the Paris peace talks in 1919. Furthermore, it addresses attempts by the League of Nations to stabilise the peace architecture in the 1920s and 1930s. The level of international politics is linked to two prominent 'Western' and 'Eastern' European case studies: the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France in 1918-19 and the Greco- Turkish conflict between 1919 and 1923. In both cases, border changes caused ethnic violence, albeit with very diverse outcomes. While France managed to contain the onset of ethnic cleansing, the Greek-Turkish conflict degenerated, resulting in a fully-fledged war that ended in the forced exchange of roughly 1.6 million civilians across the Aegean Sea. The study demonstrates that the use of ethnicity, as a concept and a political instrument, significantly shaped the course that conflict-prone local settings took. As a shorthand form of national self-determination, ethnicity informed expertise and political decisions on where to alter territorial borders. As a political instrument, it was a powerful tool for nationalist mobilisation. The dissertation concludes that one of the primary structural factors that contributed to the breakdown of the international order in the 1930s was the failure of the international community to provide an alternative to or to successfully contain ethnic and state-sponsored violence as the most effective means to 'correct' the perceived shortcomings of the Paris peace treaties

Review of The Weimar Century: German Émigrés and the Ideological Foundations of the Cold War

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