The Rise of the Oiligarchy

I. Oil and Gas in the United States

A. Oil and Gas in the Midwest

1. Quaker State--the discovery of oil created a great industrial boom in western Pennsylvania


a) Titusville--the first successful oil well was drilled near Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859. Population grew over night from a 250 people to more that 10,000. The new industry created jobs not only for oil drillers, put also machinists, teamsters, and eventually railroad workers to transport the oil from the wells to refineries and then to customers.

b) Oil used for a variety of purposes; lubricate the machines that were becoming more common, but also for oil lamps (replacing whale blubber), for “medicinal” purposes (petroleum jelly), and in the growing chemical industry.


c) Sun Oil Company (SUN Oil COmpany--Sunoco) was established in Pittsburgh in 1866, and became one of the first companies to move into the new oil fields being opened in Pennsylvania and Ohio (the Sun Oil Company of Ohio was headquartered in Toledo). Sun was among the early companies to move into the huge Spindletop oil field in eastern Texas, as well.

d) Ohio Oil Company--founded in Lima by a Pennsylvania oil industry veteran named Samuel M. Jones. The Ohio Oil Company was bought out by John D. Rockefeller in the early 1890s; Jones took his profits and moved to Toledo to establish an oil field supply firm called the Acme Sucker Rod Company.

2. Midwest gas boom--the Midwest did produce some oil wells, but the boon to manufacturing in the region came largely because of the discovery of natural gas deposits, which allowed towns and cities in the region to attract companies in need of cheap fossil fuels


a) Glass industry--Toledo, Fostoria, Findlay, and Tiffin all attract glass manufacturers on the promise of cheap natural gas.


B. John D. Rockefeller--the prototypical late 19th and early 20th century industrialist.

1. Standard Oil Company--was originally a partnership with his brother William, Henry Flagler, chemist Samuel Andrews, and silent partner Stephen V. Harkness, and started in 1870. By the time Rockefeller “retired” in 1897, he was the richest man in the world--maybe the richest ever.


a) Cleveland, where Rockefeller was living when he started the company, became one of the early oil refining centers (in the Flats, then an industrial center), along with Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York--as well as numerous small refineries in northwest Pennsylvania. Rockefeller’s company became such a high volume customer of railroads that he was able to negotiate “rebates”--or kickbacks--from the railroad companies. These secret rebates gave Rockefeller’s company a competitive advantage over other refiners. When this secret leaked out, the competitors also demanded rebates--but Rockefeller was able to parlay the money he made into the acquisition of other companies, and allowed his company to become “vertically integrated”--that is to say, the company acquired oil fields, machine shops, oil tank cars, and other refineries, so Rockefeller’s company controlled the entire process until the oil product was delivered to the customer.

b) Rockefeller used his control of the market for oil to limit his competitors--he would offer to buy them out, or simply cut prices on his product until the targeted competitor was ruined, and then buy them for pennies on the dollar.

c) Ida Tarbell--one of the businesses that Rockefeller bought belonged to the father of early “muckraker” Ida Tarbell, who exposed Rockefeller’s business practices. This publicity eventually led to the anti-trust action against Standard, and the break-up of the holding company into numerous component parts (including Standard Oil of Ohio--SOHIO--and Samuel M. Jones’ old company, which became Marathon Oil.


C. Spindletop--the discovery of the Spindletop Oil Field in eastern Texas completely changed the oil industry. The daily production of Spindletop by 1902 matched the entire production of the rest of the world’s daily production. This made oil tremendously cheap (eventually driving many other fields in other parts of the country out of production), and it began slowly replacing coal as the fossil fuel of choice: automobiles (one of the reasons that gasoline engines begin predominating); diesel engines replaced steam engines in railroads (and diesel-powered trucks nearly replaced railroads entirely for parts of the 20th century); fuel oil and natural gas replaced coal for heating homes.

1. Gulf Oil Company

2. Texas Oil Company Texaco)

II. Rise of the Oiligarchy

A. British Petroleum--founded in 1901 by William Knox D’arcy, who obtained a concession from the Shah of Iran to explore the country for oil.


1. Dry holes--George Bernard Reynolds, a self-taught geologist who had successfully drilled oil wells in Sumatra for the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, was given the charge of duplicating this success in Iran. Inhospitable conditions and other difficulties led to a prolonged period with no operating wells; eventually, D’arcy brings in other partners to bring more capital to the project--the Concession Sindicate, Ltd.


2. Majid Sulaiman--in May of 1908 the first oil well was successfully drilled in the Middle East, and the second near the same location in Iran just weeks later. Since that discovery, Majid Sulaiman has provided more than 1 billion barrels of oil; more than 7,000 barrels of oil every day are still pumped out of the ground there of sweet light crude. With the refining process, much of that oil has provided the gasoline that powered--and still powers--American automobiles.

3. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC)--was formed after this discovery. Most of the profits from the sale of this oil went into the pockets of the British oil executives, with a much smaller share being skimmed off for the Shah and his associates; the people of Iran saw very little benefit from this enterprise.

B. Royal Dutch Shell

1. Royal Dutch Petroleum Company--formed to drill for oil in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia)

2. Shell Company--originally formed to import exotic shell for collectors in London by brothers Marcus Samuel and his brother Samuel Samuel; Marcus saw the need to develop a transportation system to get oil from the fields to consumers in Europe (and eventually around the world). His company commissioned the earliest oil tankers to transport oil from the Caspian Sea back to England.

3. Merger--the two companies merged in 1907 in order to compete on a global scale with Standard Oil.

III. Fall of the Oiligarchy--There Will Be Blood

A. The Post-Colonial World--much of the control the industrialized nations--in particular Great Britain and France--exercised over natural resources in other countries was a result of the colonial control they had acquired; this explains in part their desire to retain this colonial control


1. Iran--Prime Minister Ali Razmara in 1950 negotiated a highly unfavorable contract with the AIOC, which had less favorable terms then the Venezuelan government negotiated with Standard Oil, or that the Saudi Arabian government had just concluded with the Arabian-American Oil Company, This was the reason that the AIOC had negotiated with the Shah to place Razmara in this position; this lopsided deal was so disliked, however, that Razmara was assassinated in 1951.

a) The Shah sees the handwriting on the wall, and decides to skip the country to avoid a similar fate.


b) Assassin of Razmara was a member of the Popular Front, which sought to nationalize the oil assets of Iran. Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh was the secular leader of the party (which had a strong Muslim fundamentalist element, as well). Mossadegh and the Popular Front moved to nationalize the petroleum industry in the country, but the CIA and the British M5 (the British equivalent to the CIA) bribed Iranian officials, and armed dissident factions in the Iranian army, to stage a coup d’etat that resulted in the murder of Mossadegh, and the re-establishment of the Shah to the throne in Iran until the events of 1979.


B. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)--is a cartel of twelve countries made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Indonesia withdrew its membership in OPEC in 2008 after it became a net importer of oil, but stated it would likely return if it became a net exporter again.

1. Establishment--in 1960, in reaction to US policy that placed duties on Venezuelan and Arab oil in favor of Mexico and Canada, for “national security” purposes.


2. 1973 Oil Embargo--in reaction to the US backing Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, OPEC nations voted to not sell oil to the US. This resulted in supplies drying up, and people not being able to buy gasoline because gas stations had none to sell--even at double the price (from $.25/gal. to $.50/gal).

a) When the embargo ended, the price charged dropped only slightly--and there came a much greater demand for small, fuel-efficient automobiles in the United States that domestic manufacturers were ill-prepared to meet.

b) US economy tumbled as a result, Keynesian economic policy failed, and the re-emergence of the “free market” philosophy re-emerged


3. 1979 Iranian Revolution

a) Fall of the Shah--Shah’s support for oil embargo weakened US support for his government, resulting in tacit support for the return of his clerical opponent, the Ayatollah Khomeini; Shah flees Iran again.

b) Sick with cancer, Shah pleads to enter US for medical treatment; Carter grants this request. Iranian Revolutionary Guard storms American embassy, hold Americans working there hostage until January 20, 1980--when Ronald Reagan took office.


4. Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)--in the time-honored policy that the enemy of the enemy is my friend, US backed Saddam Hussein in his war for Persian Gulf dominance over Iran. This policy was continued under Ronald Reagan. War ended in a costly stalemate, with great loss of life on both sides.


5. Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait--Saddam Hussein assumed he had implicit US permission, Saddam invaded neighboring Kuwait in order to gain control over greater share of oil assets in the Gulf, resulting in the First Gulf War in late 1991-1992.

The Anti-Colonial Century

I. India


A. Indian National Conference (INC)--the political organization in India that advocated for independence--and which is still in existence today. Its most famous member were Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

1. Mohandas Gandhi--Oxford-trained Indian lawyer. His own experience with racial discrimination in England, South Africa, and India led him to embrace Hindi religious and dietary practices--although he rejected the subjugation of women in society, and fought against the worst of caste practices, seeking equality for all Indians--and independence for the country. Gandhi was western educated, but learned in his time away from India that many British--or, most specifically, the British government--saw him as inferior because of his ethnic background; he spent much of his adult life fighting against that, and fighting for independence for his country.


a) Homespun--Gandhi was a proponent of domestic industry. He insisted on wearing traditional clothing--including a loincloth--from Indian grown cotton. This cotton he himself worked to turn into thread, which he then wove into cloth. This rejection of Western methods endeared him to a large part of India that could not afford western goods--he made their poverty a virtue. Gandhi consciously rejected westernization, and in this way made himself popular among the masses.


b) Salt March--in 1922, to protest the British imposition of a tax on salt, Gandhi and a growing number of followers march 239 miles to the sea to make their own salt, rather than pay the British for their imported salt.

c) “Non-cooperation” movement--after the success of the Salt March, Gandhi encouraged Indians to engage in a non-cooperation movement, where they would refuse to use the British governmental system--especially the courts--and to avoid the purchase of British goods

d) “Quit India” movement--signaled a renewed effort to persuade the British to grant India independence. Indian dissatisfaction with British rule grew throughout the 1930s, as more Indians became impoverished while the British government continued the practices that enriched the metropole in London.



B. Non-violent Civil Disobedience--Gandhi practiced pacifism; in fact, he was the lone figure in the INC to vote against conditional support for the fight against fascism. So this practice he undertook as a matter of principle, rather than for tactical reasons--and his followers often times were not as principled as he was. Non-violent civil disobedience is most effective when it provokes a disproportionately violent response.


1. Quit India--campaign sparked by the fact that the Viceroy of India (and Englishman appointed by the British government) declared war on Germany without consulting any Indians. In response, some breakaway factions of the INC sought out the Japanese. Most, however, followed Gandhi’s call to begin a massive program of civil disobedience. The British responded by sending a representative to negotiate a settlement with INC representatives; when those negotiations broke down, Gandhi renewed his call for civil disobedience to begin.

a) Arrest of INC leadership--the British responded to this movement by arresting the entire national leadership of the INC, which effectively killed the national movement--but spurred the development of secondary leaders in the provinces of the country. The leadership was arrested in 1942, and were to be held for the duration of the war. Gandhi was released in 1943, due to failing health. After his release, he went on a hunger strike in an attempt to win the release of the rest of the leadership.

C. Independence--it was apparent to many political leaders in Great Britain that the cost of maintaining India as a colony after the war would be more than the impoverished country could bear, and the decision was made to "grant" India independence.


1. Partition--the religious tensions between Muslims and Hindus, which the British had done much to foster (the ancient "divide and conquer" principle), impelled them to partition India at the time of independence, in order to attempt to diminish the likelihood of civil war--which happened anyway.


a. British arrogance--the British civil servant charged with drawing the boundaries for the two nations knew next to nothing about India, so the boundaries had nothing to with the majority population resident there. In addition, the two religions had co-existed in India so long that to make such a distinction was ludicrous, anyway.

b. Effect on India--since partition, politics in India has become more chauvinistic, with following the stricture of the Hindi religion becoming the defining characteristic of Indian nationalism--which leaves out all other religions.

c. Effect on Pakistan--with only Islam as a unifying principle (and even that being divisive, with the struggle between Sunni and Sha'ria for dominance), and with hundreds of miles dividing Pakistan from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), the military is the dominant institution--and democracy has suffered as a result.

II. Vietnam


A. French colonialism--began in 1858, when the French army and navy invaded to “protect” Roman Catholics in Vietnam who were being “persecuted.”

1. Collaborators--this labeled most Catholics in Vietnam as collaborators with the foreign enemy, which would have repercussions in the mid-20th century.

a) Dr. Tom Dooley, an American Catholic, and his accounts of communist treatment of Roman Catholics did much during the late 1950s (he was cited as an example of volunteerism by John F. Kennedy while the latter was establishing the Peace Corps). Dooley was cultivated by CIA agent Edward Lansdale, and probably gathered intelligence for the CIA while in southeast Asia.

2. French colonists--confined their activities largely to the lucrative rubber plantations, while allowing the elite in Vietnam (or, as the French preferred to say, Indochina or Cochin China; the French, in fact, forbade the use of the term Vietnam to refer to the country) to acquire most of the land and wealth they cared to not acquire for themselves, while peasants in the countryside were impoverished.


B. Ho Chi Minh--like Gandhi, Ho became the focal point for the independence movement in his country. Also like Gandhi, Ho was western educated--although his family was vehemently nationalist. His father was a minor mandarin, but refused to learn French because he claimed it would “spoil” his Vietnamese. Ho, like Gandhi, spent much of this public life dressed like a peasant, by choice, abandoning trappings of the office he attained.

1. Ho the Communist--Ho’s involvement with international communism dated from 1919 (even before Mao tse-Tung); he was one of the original members of the French Communist Party, and served for a number of years with the Comintern in Moscow as the expert on colonialism.

2. Ho the Nationalist--Ho petitioned the Versailles Conference to grant Vietnam independence, but was ignored. Ho collaborated with the United States Army Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA) to defeat the Japanese, and then petitioned US president Harry Truman to support independence for the country, and was ignored. Ho forced emperor Bao Dai to abdicate, but was forced to accept the French re-establishing control; he immediately set about creating a resistance movement, however.


3. Dien Bien Phu--a contingent of French paratroopers were defeated at this battle and force to surrender, the French then signed the Geneva Accords. The country was divided “temporarily” into two sections at the insistence of the United States; France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam agreed that reunification elections would be held in 1956, but the United States and Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) did not sign the accord, and felt no compunction to follow its edicts--particularly because the government in the south never had much popular support.


4. The American War in Vietnam--the most obvious instance of the United States fighting a proxy war against the Soviet Union, when the war was essentially fought by the opposing side to throw off the cloak of colonialism and become an independent country

III. Palestine/Israel


A. Muslim resistance--as Jews began moving to Palestine in larger numbers, establishing kibbutzes and moving in numbers into cities, Palestinians began attempting to discourage Jewish settlement, including physical violence.

1. 1929 Riot--dispute over “permanent” structures built by Jews at the Wailing Wall, which Muslim clerics demanded by removed in keeping with an Ottoman edict restricting such structures from being built. Resulted in the deaths of 133 Jews, and 116 Palestinians.

2. 1939 White Paper--proposal by Great Britain to resolve growing dispute over Palestine; centered on restricting immigration of Jews until an election was held in 1949, when Arabs and Jews would be seated in a government in proportion to their populations that year--but guaranteeing that Arabs would remain in the majority. In the end, the White Paper pleased no one--the Jews saw it as a death warrant for thousands (the Nazi pogrom was just getting underway), as well as stiemying their nationalist aspirations, while the Arabs saw it as not restrictive enough, because it would allow the Jews to undermine the postwar government

B. Jewish response--the response of Zionists varied across a wide spectrum, from tit-for-tat retaliation to organized terror campaigns.


1. Irgun--a secret Jewish armed group, which carried out a campaign of terror (bombings and attempted assassinations) against British government and military officials, mainly


a) King David Hotel bombing--Irgun operatives carried out this terrorist attack that resulted in the deaths of 91 people, including 17 Jews. Irgun leaders said they regretted the Jewish deaths and would pray for their souls, but did not regret the British deaths, because Great Britain had never expressed regret over the Jewish deaths during the Holocaust. No mention was made of the deaths of the largest group of death--Arabs.


b) Menachem Begin--led Irgun during this time period, and was the man who gave the order for the hotel to be blown up. After Israeli statehood, Begin became leader of the Likud Party, and by the late 1970s prime minister of Israel. In a bit of karmic irony, his autobiography, The Revolt, is must reading for Hamas and Hezbollah.


c) Lohamei Herut Israel--LEHI or the Stern Gang, a splinter group that broke off from Irgun, targeted Arab populations in a terror car-bombing campaign. Best known outside of Israel as the first organization to be labeled a “terrorist group” by the United Nations. Inside Israel, they are recognized as devoted patriots to the Zionist cause.


IV. The Battle for Algiers



A. The Front de Libération Nationale (FLN)--the FLN was the Algerian national liberation group that fought an eight year guerilla war against France (1954-1962) to gain independence. The FLN, an Arab-socialist political party, is still in control of the government in Algiers, although lately their leadership is being challenged by an Islamist political party.

1. Social/Cultural/Political movement--the FLN was not a Marxist party, but construed socialism broadly--mainly as a way of identifying oppressors and the oppressed.

a) Attempted to ferret out what they defined as destructive behaviors (consumption of alcohol and prostitution in particular).

b) Reform of these behaviors was seen as key to developing sense of national pride, since native Algerians were lowest on the totem pole in colonial Algerian society, below French and the pied noirs (literally, “black feet”), Algerian-born of European descent.


2. The “dirty war” French occupying forces did not hesitate to use what the Bush Administration would term “enhanced interrogation techniques” (what sane people recognize as torture).

3. FLN response--to use plastique in bombing raids against both French establishments and the French military.


a) Cafe wars in France--the struggle for control by elements of the FLN for the government-in-exile led to a series of assassination attempts on Algerian ex-pats in France, called the cafe wars.

4. Evian Accords--granted independence to Algeria (in quick stages)--but led more than a million pied noir to emigrate to France. In the mother country, however, these pied noir felt that the native French population blamed them for the war--but also felt estranged from their native Algeria.



a) Algeria and the fall of the Fourth Republic--the cost of the war in Algeria--and the way the “dirty war” was carried out by French forces, led to the French parliament granting President Charles de Gaulle near-dictatorial powers--and also led to the fall of the Fourth Republic.

The Cold War

II. Hegemonic War Strategy


A. Uneasy Allies--while the war was ostensibly fought to keep the “free world” from the iron fist of Nazi domination, it was also fought--perhaps largely fought--to ensure that the “great powers” maintained control of strategic locations. The “Three Great Powers” were very suspicious of one another, and each hoped to enhance their position in the postwar world.

1. Soviet Union--made several treaties with Nazi Germany before 1941 to gain territory on its western border (particularly the Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty, where the two countries divided Poland between them). These deals left the Soviet Union vulnerable to attack, however, because Stalin misjudged Hitler’s ultimate intent--and ill-prepared for the Nazi attack when it came in 1941. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war from 1941 to 1944, when Allied forces launched the D-Day attack.



a) German SS forces were particularly savage, murdering Polish and Soviet political leaders in German-controlled territories; the Red Army paid back this debt in full in its 1944-1945 counterattack.




2. Great Britain --from the debacle at Dunkirk, Churchill concentrated most British efforts on maintaining control of the Mediterranean--and the Suez Canal, its link to the crown jewel of Britain’s colonial possessions.

a) Battle for North Africa (with US assistance)

b) “The Soft Underbelly of Europe”--Churchill insisted that before a second front was opened in western Europe that what he called the “soft underbelly”of the continent--though mountinous Italy, then attempt to attack Germany through the Alps--be exploited. This strategy had the effect of prolonging the conflict in Europe, I would argue. This campaign was undertaken despite pleas from the allied Soviet Union, which had been promised that the western front campaign would begin in early 1943.

3. United States--drawn into the conflict by the “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the US left much of the campaign planning in Europe to Great Britain, while it carried on against the Japanese in the Pacific.

a) US partially controlled Great Britain through supplying the country through the Lend-Lease Act, providing Great Britain with war material, food, and other provisions in exchange for naval bases and easy terms for other considerations

b) US also supplied Soviet Union with material through the Lend-Lease program, but not in the quantities or the favorable terms granted Great Britain.



B. Hegemonic Peace: Dividing the World--first at Tehran, and confirmed at Yalta and Potsdam, much of the world was divided into “spheres of influence,” where either the Soviet Union, Great Britain, or the United States would dominate. The “hot war” devolved in the postwar era into a “cold war” that each side tried to undermine through economic power and proxy wars.

1. Soviet Union--Stalin’s main objective was to create a “sphere of influence”--buffer states that would bear the brunt of any conventional attack on the Soviet Union from the West.

2. Great Britain--worked to maintain the antebellum status quo--but the two World Wars in the 20th century changed the financial landscape, shifting the balance of power from London to the United States. Great Britain never recovered from the destruction of the war--despite the Marshall Plan--and has largely served since the end of the war as a junior partner to the ambitions of the United States.

3. United States--the US emerged from the war as the dominant financial and industrial power in the world, with the ability to use this prowess (as well as its military might) to bend other to its will.


a) Marshall Plan--offered to countries of Europe to help them rebuild and recover from the war, introduced in1948; by 1952, every country that was a member of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation except had a GDP higher than its pre-war level except for Germany.

4. Big Three Conferences

a) Tehran (November 1943)--Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met to discuss war strategy and postwar Europe. Stalin pressed his demand for a western front; Churchill and Roosevelt claimed casualties would be prohibitive, but promised an offensive by spring 1944.


b) Yalta (February 1945)--clear that Germany would shortly be defeated, as the Red Army was rolling westward. It was agreed that Germany would be divided among the Allies; but the Big Three leaders were also aware that the country that took control of Germany would be in the strongest position.


c) Potsdam (July 1945)--Roosevelt died in April 1945, and Churchill was turned out as prime minister after Germany’s defeat in May. Truman distrusted--and disliked--Stalin; when Truman received word of the successful Trinity test, he became more determined to keep the Soviet Union out of Asia.



C. Dropping the Bomb--numerous factors went into Truman’s decision to attack Japan with nuclear bombs

1. Revenge

a) Pearl Harbor “sneak attack”

b) Bataan and other wartime atrocities committed against prisoners of war.

2. Spare American lives that would be lost in attacking Japan

3. Racist feelings against Japan, exacerbated by the revenge factor

4. Keep Soviet Union out of Asia--and demonstrate the fate of the Soviet Union should it come into conflict with the US.

III. The Super Power Struggle

A. The Lone Super Power--as long as the US maintained sole possession of nuclear weapon technology, the US saw world relations in balance, because the “Soviet threat” could remain “contained.”


B. Soviet Union as a Nuclear Power--the US only remained the sole nuclear power until 1949, when the combination of independent work by Soviet scientists and espionage, the Soviets developed an atomic bomb of their own--resulting in near-panic in the US, and touching off a second Red Scare and marginalization of the left (again)



C. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)--the ability of the Soviet Union to create a nuclear weapon--and the reaction of the United States to that event--touched off the arms race, where each country attempted to manufacture enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the other if every attacked. This eventually led to a sort of stabilization of the situation, called Mutually Assured Destruction.


D. The Proxy Wars--while reaching this stabilized point, both the Soviet Union and the United States attempted to undermine the other by encouraging proxy battles involving client states.

1. China (1949)

2. Korea (1950)

3. Vietnam (1947-1975)

4. Poland (1953/1983)

a) Radio Free Europe


b) Solidarity

5. Hungary (1956)

6. Cuba (1960-1989)

7. Czechoslavakia (1968)

8. Afghanistan (1979-1983)

E. Cold War Blinders--because the two antagonists saw other conflicts as proxy wars, they tended to overlook the internal or anti-colonial caused that really lay behind these disputes

The Hot War

I. Stalinism v. Nazism

A. Atrocities--murder is murder, and to the dead it makes little difference to discern the reasons behind their death. It is also true that Stalinism and Nazism were not the same thing, and one of the distinguishing characteristics has to do with the reasons they killed people.

B. Genocide--has a very specific meaning, although that meaning is often in contention. As coined by the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, genocide was “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”


C. Internment Camps--both the Soviet Union under Stalin and Germany under Hitler forcibly transported large numbers of people to internment camps because, they argued, these groups posed a threat to the well-being of the nation.

1. Concentration camps--location where a significant population of undesirable or “enemy” populations are forced to live, under guard and confinement, because of the perceived danger these people were believed to pose to the well-being of the state.


a) United States--while both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany ran concentration camps, it is often overlooked that the United States ran concentration camps, as well, where Japanese on the West Coast were sent after the bombing of Peal Harbor. This included both Issei (immigrant Japanese) and Nissei (second generation Japanese-Americans who were citizens of the United States--something the Chinese could not aspire to until 1943, when the United States rescinded the article in the Chinese Exclusion Act that prohibited Chinese from becoming citizens.

2. Labor camps--most concentration camps were run as labor camps. Workers were forced to labor for no compensation--they served, in fact, as slave labor


a) Soviet Union--”enemies of the state” were sent out to these labor camps--later known by their Russian acronym Gulag--for a variety of crimes against the state: being late for work too many times, too many unexcused absences, complaining about the government (and real crimes, as well). Many of these camps were located in inhospitable climates (Siberia), and many inmates died (perhaps millions, certainly hundreds of thousands) because of harsh working conditions and/or inadequate diets.


b) Nazi--Nazi labor camps were first inhabited by communists and socialists, along with Jehovah Witnesses, Roma people, the mentally ill, and other “social deviants.” Some of these people may have been Jew (except the Jehovah Witnesses and Roma, of course), but they were not rounded up because they were Jewish.


This changed after Anschluss in Austria, and Kristalnacht in December 1938, when Jewish adult males were arrested and sent to these “concentration camps.” After 1938, Jews were identified (fairly easy to do, since in many places in Europe Jews had to live within restricted neighborhoods known as ghettos), and many of them began to be transported to labor camps--where many died because of the working conditions they had to endure and inadequate diets. Oskar Schindler, of Shindler’s List fame, was a member of the Nazi Party, and the Jews who worked for him were assigned to a work camp and treated as slaves--although Schindler treated his group better than most employers.


3. Death Camps--also known as extermination camps. Several labor camps were converted to death camps, and other death camps were established, where inmates were systematically murdered.

a) Soviet Union--Stalin, despite his numerous faults did not establish any death camps--although many thousands died in their labor camps.

b) Nazi Germany--in 1943, several work camps were converted to death camps, and several other death camps were established in Nazi-held Poland and Czechoslovakia. Jew and Roma (Gypsies) were transported to these new death camps, where showers had been converted into gas chambers, and ovens built to cremate the remains--after dental gold and other valuables were recovered. Industrial efficiency was applied to the systematic murder of human beings.


4. Genocidal intent


a) Soviet Union--evidence is lacking for reaching a conclusion about whether Stalin intended to commit acts of genocide; Stalin simply had a callous disregard for human life in general. There was no systematic attempt to exterminate a particular ethnic group.

b) Nazi Germany--the intent of the Final Solution was to exterminate Jews and Roma and other “enemy” populations. In fact, assets were devoted to this task even while causing defeats on the fronts the war was fought on.


II. War and Xenophobia


A. Definition of Xenophobia--An unreasonable fear, distrust, or contempt of strangers, foreigners, or anything perceived as foreign or strange.


1. Racism--a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races [itself a fallacy, since there is only one race of humans in existence today--gm]. Racism often grows from xenophobia.

B. Racializing “the Other”--as Harman argues in his book, Hitler capitalized on xenophobia and racism to get Germans to go along with (or actively support) his Final Solution.


1. Aryans as the “superior” race--Hitler’s government actively sought to promote his ideas about the racial superiority of “aryans”--by which he meant blue eyed blond white people, and the government provided monetary awards for these kinds of people to have greater numbers of children.

2. Untermenschen--German for “sub-humans,” used to characterize Poles, Russians, and other Slavic peoples--the reason given for German domination (and extermination) of these peoples; Jews were considered even lower than the untermenschen.

3. Japanese--considered other Asian peoples being inferior to themselves, and therefore people who should be dominated by them. Japanese also considered Americans racially inferior to themselves, part of the decadent and soft peoples of the world.

4. United States--The United States had a whole host of racist ideologies, present from its inception--even though the reasons given for going to war against Germany was that country’s racist ideology, the United States quickly racialized its conflict with Japan--as a viewing of cartoons from the time quickly inform us. Japanese were depicted as devious--if not terribly intelligent--with wide toothy grins and round glasses. Germans, on the other had, were largely depicted as sadistic Nazis.


5. War as a Racist Enterprise--any (every?) war that lasts any appreciable length of time incorporates racist/xenophobic rhetoric, which in lend itself to justifying wartime atrocities. This is particularly true for guerilla wars, where the “enemy” is difficult to distinguish from non-combatants.

a) Gook--perhaps the longest-lasting wartime epiteth, first coined by US Marines during the Moro Rebellion in the Philippines following the War with Spain; remained in use for the next 70+ years to describe any combatant in eastern Asia (as well as in Haiti)


b) Dehumanization--by using ugly epitaths to describe people soldiers are sent to kill--Krauts, Wops, Japs, gooks, even hajis--these soldiers grant themselves the license to treat them as sub-humans, to destroy their lives and/or property even if they have not offered any resistance.


III. From Depression to War


A. State Planning of Economics--Again, American conservatives like to argue that the Great Depression would have ended much earlier if only government had stayed out of the economy--but around the world, no government, no matter what political ideology, did so. Even the Conservative (Tory) Party in Great Britain nationalized public utilities, the airlines, and coal mining rights.


1. Economics as warfare--during the Great Depression, nations used trade as a sort of proxy for warfare. Tariffs were used to make imports from other countries more expensive to purchase, while the devaluation of currency make exports from a country cheaper than many of its competitors


a) Look, for example, at the foreign trade practices in China; tariffs on imported goods make them more expensive, while economic incentives are provided to manufacturers to locate factories in the country--and keeping the Chinese yen artificially low makes Chinese exports readily available.


2. Colonies as captive markets--maintaining colonies provided developed countries with captive markets for their goods, easing the economic pain for home manufacturers. European countries without colonies (Germany and Italy) used military force to gain colonies or their equivalent

a) Germany’s push toward the Middle East (through the Balkans) threatened British control of the Suez Canal, as well as the oil fields of its creation called Iraq, This threat propelled Great Britain to back its ally France, which began preparations for war with Germany as the latter swallowed up a number of France’s erstwhile allies in Eastern Europe.


3. Government spending--to gear up for war, governments around the world borrowed money from their banking systems, and then spent it on the manufacture of war goods--trucks, planes, ships.

a) By the end of the war, at the huge airplane factory built by the US government and the Ford Motor Company at Willow Run near Ypsilanti, assembly line production eventually produced an airplane an hour.

b) In the United States, wartime spending was spread around the country to ensure continued Congressional support for the spending--resulting in the manufacturing base of the country also being spread around the country. This meant that this base was no longer centered around the Great Lakes; this has had a significant effect on the region in the postwar era.


B. Hegemonic Strategy--while the war was ostensibly fought to keep the “free world” from the iron fist of Nazi domination, it was also fought--perhaps largely fought--to ensure that the “great powers” maintained control of strategic locations.

1. “The Soft Underbelly of Europe”--Churchill insisted that before a second front was opened in western Europe that what he called the “soft underbelly”of the continent--though mountinous Italy, then attempt to attack Germany through the Alps--be exploited. This strategy had the effect of prolonging the conflict in Europe, I would argue.


C. Hegemonic Peace--first at Yalta, and confirmed at Potsdam, much of the world was divided into “spheres of influence,” where either the Soviet Union, Great Britain, or the United States would dominate. The “hot war” devolved in the postwar era into a “cold war” that each side tried to undermine through economic power and proxy wars.


1. Great Britain--never recovered from the destruction of the war--despite the Marshall Plan--and has largely served since the end of the war as a junior partner to the ambitions of the United States