War Veterans and the World after 1945: Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory 0815359713, 9780815359715

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War Veterans and the World after 1945

This book examines war veterans’ history after 1945 from a global perspective. In the Cold War era, in most countries of the world, there was a sizeable portion of population with direct war experience. This edited volume gathers contributions that show the veterans’ involvement in all the major historical processes shaping the world after the Second World War. Cold War politics, racial conflict, decolonization, state-building and the reshaping of war memory were phenomena in which former soldiers and ex-combatants were directly involved. By examining how different veterans’ groups, movements and organizations challenged or sustained the Cold War, strived to prevent or to foster decolonization and transcended or supported official memories of war, the volume characterizes veterans as largely independent and autonomous actors who interacted with societies and states in the making of our times. Spanning historical cases from the United States to Hong Kong, from Europe to Southern Africa and from Algeria to Iran, the volume situates veterans within the turbulent international context since the Second World War. Ángel Alcalde obtained his PhD from the European University Institute in 2015. He was a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich in 2016–2017. He has also been a visiting scholar at the European Institute at Columbia University (New York), the Leibniz-­ Institute for European History (Mainz) and the Center for the History of Global Development at Shanghai University. His latest book is War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Xosé M. Núñez Seixas is Full Professor of Modern History at the U ­ niversity of Santiago de Compostela and at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich (2012–2017). He obtained his PhD from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books on nationalist movements, national and regional identities, the history of migration and the cultural and social history of war in the twentieth century. His latest books are Die spanische Blaue Division an der Ostfront (1941–1945) (Aschendorff, 2016) and (ed.) Metaphors of Spain (Berghahn, 2017).

Routledge Studies in Modern History

32 The Style and Mythology of Socialism Socialist Idealism,1871–1914 Stefan Arvidsson 33 Capitalism and Religion in World History Purification and Progress Carl Mosk 34 Michael Collins and the Financing of Violent Political Struggle Nicholas Ridley 35 Censuses and Census Takers A Global History Gunnar Thorvaldsen 36 America and the Postwar World Remaking International Society, 1945–1956 David Mayers 37 Transnational Encounters between Germany and East Asia since 1900 Joanne Miyang Cho 38 The Institution of International Order From the League of Nations to the United Nations Edited by Simon Jackson and Alanna O’Malley 39 War Veterans and the World after 1945 Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory Edited by Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas www.routledge.com/history/series/MODHIST

War Veterans and the World after 1945 Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory Edited by Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-8153-5971-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-11998-6 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

Contents

List of contributors Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: A world of veterans

ix xiii 1

Á ngel A lcalde and Xosé M. N ú ñ e z Seixas

Part I

The Cold War

15

2 The International Federation of Resistance Fighters: Communist anti-fascism, Germany and Europe

17

Václav Šmidrkal

3 The World Veterans Federation: Cold War politics and globalization

33

Á ngel A lcalde

Part II

Race and Decolonization

51

4 South African veterans and the institutionalization of apartheid in South Africa

53

Jonathan F ennell

5 Enforcing conformity: Race in the American Legion, 1940–1960 Olivier Burtin

69

vi Contents 6 “Fighting for Their Freedom At Home”: Native American Vietnam veterans in the Red Power Movement, 1969–1973

83

M atthias Voigt

7 Poppies, pensions, passports: The British Legion and transnational civil society action in decolonizing Hong Kong

100

Daniel S chumacher

Part III

Decolonization and State-Building

115

8 Algerian veterans’ associations in the late colonial period in Algeria, 1945–1962

117

Samuel A ndr é - Bercovici

9 Colonial soldiers and postcolonial politics in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Upper Volta, 1958–1973

134

R iina T urtio

10 War, mobilization and development in the Islamic Republic of Iran: From the Construction Jihad to the Trench Builders Association, 1979–2013

150

E ric L ob

11 Veterans, decolonization and land expropriation in postindependence Zimbabwe, 2000–2008

167

Obert Bernard M lambo

Part IV

Memory

185

12 Inconvenient heroes? War veterans from the Eastern Front in Franco’s Spain, 1942–1975

187

Xosé M. N ú ñ e z Seixas

13 Memory, authority and anti-war politics of French veterans of the Algerian war of decolonization (1954–1962) H ugh M c D onnell

203

Contents  vii 14 State power, cultural exchange and the “Forgotten War”: British veterans of the Korean War, 1953–2013

219

G race H uxford

15 Retracing memories of war: South African military veterans as tourists in Angola

235

Gary Baines

Index

251

List of contributors

Ángel Alcalde obtained his PhD from the European University Institute in 2015. He was a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ludwig-­Maximilian University of Munich in 2016–2017. He has also been a visiting scholar at the European Institute at Columbia University (New York), the ­Leibniz-Institute for European History (Mainz) and the Center for the History of Global Development at Shanghai University. His latest book is War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Samuel André-Bercovici  is a PhD candidate at the University Paris 1 ­Panthéon-Sorbonne. His dissertation examines European local units and militias during the Algerian War of Independence. He has also conducted research on Algerian veterans’ organizations. He holds an MA degree in political science from Sciences Po and an MA in History from the Sorbonne. Gary Baines is Professor and Head of Department at the History Department of Rhodes University (South Africa). He holds an MA from Rhodes University and a PhD from the University of Cape Town. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the African Studies Centre, University of L ­ eiden (2011), and a Visiting Professor at the University of Toulouse (2015). He has spent the last several years writing about how the Border War is represented and remembered. His latest book is South Africa’s “Border War”. Contested Narratives and Conflicting Memories (Bloomsbury, 2014). Olivier Burtin obtained his PhD from Princeton University. His dissertation explored US veterans’ groups after 1945, particularly the history of the American Legion. He holds a BA (2009) and an MA in History (2011, cum laude) from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and an MA in History from Princeton University (2013). Jonathan Fennell is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Defence Studies at King’s College London. He was awarded a doctorate (2008) and a master’s (2003) in History from the University of Oxford after completing a History and Politics degree at University College Dublin (2002). He is the

x  List of contributors author of Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign: The Eighth Army and the Path to El Alamein (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Grace Huxford,  PhD, is Lecturer in British History at the University of ­Bristol, with particular interests in the history of Britain during the Cold War; oral history; selfhood; and the interaction between war, state and society. Her first monograph, The Korean War in Britain: Citizenship, Selfhood and Forgetting, was published by Manchester University Press (Cultural History of Modern War Series) in 2018. Eric Lob is Assistant Professor at the Department of Politics and International Relations at Florida International University (Miami). He holds a PhD from Princeton University (2013) and an MA degree from the John Hopkins University (2005). In 2013 and 2014, he was a Postdoctoral ­Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University. He has published peer-reviewed articles in Iranian Studies, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Middle East Critique. Hugh McDonnell completed his PhD at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of the book Europeanising Spaces in Paris, c. 1947–1962 (Liverpool University Press, 2016). He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh on a European Research Council Starting Grant “Grey Zone” project that examines complex complicity from historical and theoretical perspectives. Obert Bernard Mlambo, PhD, is Associate Professor of Classics and Comparative History at the University of Zimbabwe. He is currently a ­Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow and a Visiting Scholar at the Global South Studies Centre in the University of Cologne. He is working on a monograph provisionally entitled Veterans, Masculinity and Expropriation in Contemporary Zimbabwe and Republican Rome: A Comparative Study. Xosé M. Núñez Seixas is Full Professor of Modern History at the University of Santiago de Compostela and at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich (2012–2017). He obtained his PhD from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books on nationalist movements, national and regional identities, the history of migration and the cultural and social history of war in the twentieth century. His latest books are Die spanische Blaue Division an der Ostfront (1941–1945) (Aschendorff, 2016) and (ed.) Metaphors of Spain (Berghahn, 2017). Daniel Schumacher is a Fellow at the Centre for Public History at the University of Essex, where he coordinates the Leverhulme-funded “War Memoryscapes in Asia Partnership” (WARMAP). He received his PhD in Modern History from the University of Konstanz. Before joining Essex University, he was a DAAD Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Hong Kong. His work has been published in journals such as Modern Asian Studies and History Compass.

List of contributors  xi Václav Šmidrkal is Assistant Professor in Contemporary History at the Department of German and Austrial Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czechia. He earned his doctoral degree in Modern History from the Charles University in Prague in 2014. Since 2017, he has been a member of an Austrian-Czech research team on war veterans in Austria and Czechoslovakia, based at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, and the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, Austria. Riina Turtio is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for African Studies of Harvard University. She obtained her PhD in International History from the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and an MSSc in Contemporary History from the University of Turku. Her studies included specialization in ­African Studies at the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University. Matthias Voigt is a PhD candidate at the Goethe University of F ­ rankfurt. His doctoral dissertation examines how Native Americans reinvented cultural and warrior traditions within the larger context of US colonial domination and modernity. His dissertation is part of the DFG-funded project “Marginalized Masculinities and the American Nation” (2013–2016), supervised by PD Dr Simon Wendt.

Acknowledgements

This volume is based on the papers presented to the conference “War ­Veterans and the World after 1945”, organized by Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas at the Chair of Modern History of Europe, Ludwig-­ Maximilian University of Munich, in July 2017. The conference was possible thanks to the financial support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The editors wish to express thanks to Sandra Kessler, Ugo Pavan Dalla Torre, Stephanie Wright, Daniel Hedinger, Lisa Lara Leuschel, Maximilian Heumann and Emanuel Steinbacher for their contribution. This volume was edited during Ángel Alcalde’s fellowship at the Center for the History of Global Development, Shanghai University. It also benefitted from the financial support of the Research Group HISPONA (Historia política e dos nacionalismos) at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

1 Introduction A world of veterans Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

The world that emerged from the global confrontation of the Second World War was, in a sense, a world of war veterans. It remained so for decades to come. It has been estimated that some 100 million men and women ­became part of the armed forces of the belligerent states in the Second World War.1 Mass mobilization during the total war experience created enormous ­armies, navies and air forces, which mobilized 34 million soldiers in the S ­ oviet ­Union, 17 million in Germany, 16 million in the United States, 4.6 million in Britain and the Commonwealth, and 5.5 million in Japan’s empire.2 In spite of high casualties, particularly among the Soviets, the Germans and the Japanese,3 the majority of these people were men who returned to their civilian life as veterans after 1945. To these figures, the number of surviving veterans from the First World War should be added as this group was still a considerable and influential part of the population in Britain, France, the United States, Italy, Germany and other European countries in the decades following the Second World War. Veterans were not only present in the main belligerent Western countries. Both world wars mobilized a great number of colonial subjects from the French and B ­ ritish ­Empires; for instance, the Indian army in the Second World War was made up of 2.5 million volunteers. Other conflicts also add to our count. The different armed conflicts that ­followed the end of the First World War mobilized thousands of soldiers in Europe, including the Finnish Civil War of 1918, which called to arms around 300,000 men and women. The Russian Civil War of 1917–1922 ­engaged 7 million combatants from the czarist empire and other countries, and the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 mobilized 2 million conscripts and volunteers from Spain and abroad. Latin American countries, such as ­Brazil, had a token participation in the Second World War, but the Chaco War in 1932–1935 mobilized some 300,000 Paraguayan and Bolivian combatants. In short, from the mid-1940s through to the 1980s, in most countries of the world, a sizable portion of the population had experienced war directly as a result of the conflicts of 1914–1945. Moreover, for many regions, May and August 1945 did not signal an era of peace; millions were forced to fight.4 In Europe, hundreds of thousands fought in the Greek Civil War. The Chinese Civil War, whose roots can be

2  Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas traced back to 1927, lasted until 1949 and was decided through the intensive use of manpower. In 1948, the Arab-Israeli conflict inaugurated a series of wars that punctuated the second half of the twentieth century in the ­Middle East. Humiliated in the Second World War, France bitterly fought wars in Indochina (1946–1954) and Algeria (1954–1962), trying to save its Empire; once again, not only Frenchmen but also African soldiers from French West Africa and foreign volunteers enlisted in the French Foreign Legion were used in combat. In South-East Asia, a vacuum of power after the ­Japanese defeat meant the continuation of armed conflict towards independence. The Indonesian War of Independence between 1945 and 1949 led the N ­ etherlands to mobilize thousands of combatants, ending in the collapse of the Dutch ­colonial empire. In the context of the Cold War, a proxy war in ­Korea between 1950 and 1953 meant the mobilization of a new generation of A ­ merican soldiers, along with international forces – e­ ncompassing conscript soldiers from countries that had barely been belligerent for a ­c entury, such as C ­ olombia, Greece, the Philippines and Ethiopia – and South ­Koreans, who fought against Chinese and North Korean ­armies. In Indochina, the escalation of the conflict between North and South after the French withdrawal brought more than half a million American troops to Vietnam between 1965 and 1973; approximately 2 million Vietnamese soldiers from the North and South participated in this war, as did hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers. From the 1960s, there were long and bloody wars in Third World countries such as Nigeria, Congo and, later, Angola and E ­ thiopia, among other regions. Not only indigenous populations fought in these conflicts. For instance, tens of thousands of Cuban troops sent by ­Fidel ­Castro’s regime widened the human reach. A number of “­border wars”, such as those between India and Pakistan (1965 and 1971) and the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988), also implied the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of men. Shorter conflicts, such as the brief “Football War” ­between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969 and the Falklands War between Argentina and Great Britain in 1982, also form part of this list. As in the Second World War, armed forces in most of these conflicts were composed of large numbers of conscripted civilians and guerrilla troops, not just professional militaries.5 The extreme diversity of backgrounds and experiences makes it difficult to refer to the veterans and ex-combatants of these wars as a single historical group. The nature of armed conflicts around the globe since the Second World War is multiple, from civil wars fought between irregular factions to armed conflicts between states. Men and women who directly participated in warfare were as diverse as their societies. Furthermore, even within the same armed forces, individual experiences of war varied greatly and were determined by a multiplicity of factors, such as social background, race, gender, religion, military rank, type of military force (army, navy, air force, logistical support units, intelligence, etc.), technological level of warfare and so on.6 The only common trait to those millions of individuals was active

Introduction  3 participation in warfare (either in a direct way or by providing logistical support) as members of armed forces or groups. Yet even the meanings attached to this common experience also varied widely across cultures and societies. However, from an epistemological perspective, it is necessary to ­examine “veterans” as a historical category. In this volume, we will use the word “­veteran” as a synecdoche. The term serves as an umbrella under which a variegated set of war experiences and other concepts (such as ­ex-­servicemen, war victims, ex-combatants, prisoners of war, etc.) can be included. In historical research, it is wise to treat the term “veterans” flexibly, as a fragmented, contested and constructed notion in permanent redefinition. However, in anthropological terms, it has been argued that the experiences of combat and military service deeply shape individual and group identities; these ­experiences play the role of rites of passage, even in times of peace, and after living through them veterans see themselves, and are widely ­regarded, not only as different to their former selves but distinct to the rest of society.7 Moreover, historians, sociologists and political scientists have pointed at the striking similarities in individual and group behaviour of veterans across time and space.8 Commonly organized through associations, organizations and political movements – which either genuinely derive from the former groups or simply claim to represent the interests of all ex-­combatants – v­ eterans of modern warfare share a “sense of entitlement”. This self-­p erception leads them to seek privileges and rewards from their states and societies, sometimes transforming themselves into a “status group”.9 On many occasions, veterans’ movements have endangered the stability of states and contributed to provoking political and governmental change. The interwar period witnessed the first serious challenges posed by veterans’ movements, particularly in Europe.10 After 1945, societies tackled soldiers’ demobilization, having learnt the lessons of the past, yet once again, veterans made their voices heard.11 In recent decades, historiography on veterans after the Second World War has examined processes of demobilization, political activities, social struggles, war disability and memory from nation state perspectives. While engaging with wider theoretical debates within the fields of memory, disability, gender, military history and others, this scholarship has been largely concerned with the history of nation states. In other words, most often, scholarly books on veterans are concerned with a single country.12 When different national experiences have been compared, striking similarities emerge; yet the juxtaposition of national cases seldom provides insights beyond the customary assertions of the shared veteran identity and sentiment across the world. While the nation state framework was perhaps the most important for veterans’ themselves, it is not necessarily the one that historians should assume in their analysis. The introduction of transnational and global perspectives, with their particular emphasis on cross-cultural connections and transfers, has constituted a very recent historiographical

4  Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas development in veterans’ history.13 These approaches can be further applied to develop veterans’ history into a wider and more significant research field, which adds a further dimension to previous scholarly interest in war experience and the “brutalizing” consequences of violence. Broadening our perspective on veterans’ history in this way also poses the question of how pervasive and resilient memory and experience of war are. This volume aims to widen historians’ consideration of veterans’ history as a research field by arguing that veterans – understood as distinct historical actors – were relevant for, and became involved in, all the major historical processes that shaped the world after 1945. A caveat should be promptly stressed: Veterans rarely were decisive historical actors, and the veteran identity always coexisted with other, perhaps more powerful, defining traits of individuals and groups. Many returning veterans became peasants, workers or civil servants, repositioning themselves as civilians and integrating their war experience into their daily life. Their veteran identity was one of many overlapping, and even contradictory, layers. While for some veterans, time spent in the military and at war left a deep imprint on their feelings, hopes and fears, often becoming a psychological burden,14 for many others, the transition to daily life in peacetime ran smoothly: They often regarded themselves as lucky survivors. Many of them never participated in public affairs as veterans. Furthermore, the veteran condition of historical – if existed – often played a very small role in their actions. In many instances, veteran movements and organizations either failed in their objectives or disappeared shortly after realizing their aims. The symbolic dimension of veteran identity historically shows a deeper relevance than the specific individuals who embody it. That said, scholars have the task of analysing the historical role and transformation of institutions, practices, discourses, symbols, rituals and actors that form veterans’ history. They not only teach us things about veterans as individuals and as a group but also about large-scale historical processes and events. These considerations underpin this volume. Gathering together a number of contributions that examine very different cases, this book situates veterans within wide historical processes that took place in the world after 1945. The volume’s subtitle underlines three major themes that are present in the contributions: the Cold War, decolonization and memory. We will see that, in post-1945 veterans’ history, these are overlapping and closely interconnected themes.

Cold War politics The Cold War was the key international framework that shaped veterans’ history in the world between 1945 and 1989. By 1947, while most of the soldiers that had fought in the Second World War were demobilized and reintegrated into their societies, tensions between the Allies had unravelled, leading to the fall of an “Iron Curtain” – as Winston Churchill put it in

Introduction  5 March 1946 – separating East and West. In the United States, veterans were actors in the unfolding drama of the Cold War, which deeply marked veteran politics.15 The anti-communist stand of the American Legion, the largest American veterans’ association, was proverbial in post-war America. In other countries of Eastern and Western Europe, the consolidation of the Cold War division affected veterans’ affairs.16 Even if the Soviet Union tried “to unmake veterans as a social group as fast as possible”, Soviet veterans’ organizations were set up for propaganda and political purposes in the Cold War years.17 In communist China, historians tell a similar story.18 The first part of this volume provides an international perspective on veterans’ experience of the Cold War. Ángel Alcalde and Václav Šmidrkal focus on the veterans’ participation in international affairs through the hitherto neglected cases of the World Veterans Federation (WVF) and the International Federation of Resistance Fighters (FIR), respectively. In contrast to the i­ nterwar period when veterans’ international organizations quickly emerged, the WVF and FIR took longer to consolidate – a delay that can be attributed to internal political struggles in the veterans’ movements of the different countries. While FIR, a communist “front” organization, pursued a political agenda that was aligned with the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union, the WVF clearly represented Western – particularly American – ­internationalist values and became linked to the United Nations. Whereas FIR tried to establish European networks of former resistance fighters from East and West on the basis of anti-fascism, the WVF maintained a globalist and anti-communist outlook that helped it to gain members throughout the world as decolonization and the global Cold War unfolded. The complex histories of both organizations are yet to be written, but the Cold War relationship between them is clear. Their long trajectories demonstrate that veterans were political actors far beyond demobilization and the immediate post-war period. Interestingly, different normative notions of ­veteranhood – veterans’ shared identity – were put forward by these organizations, thus showing how the symbolic construction of the veteran was imbued with ideological meaning in the decades after the Second World War.

Decolonization While the Cold War as an international system was the main historical framework after the Second World War, decolonization was probably a historical process with deeper and more long-lasting consequences. Both phenomena are, however, inextricably interconnected. Both the Soviet Union and the United States claimed to support the liberation of peoples from imperial domination, but their actual interventionist behaviour in the Third World has been conceptualized as “a continuation of colonialism through slightly different means”.19 For American policymakers, who tried to build an international anti-communist coalition including newly independent nations, the realities of racial segregation in their own country were a shameful

6  Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas reminder of their contradictory discourse. Not only did US leaders try to overcome racism at home to make their Cold War foreign policy abroad more effective, but also non-white people’s liberation movements in Asia and Africa left a deep impression on segregated black Americans and fostered the civil rights movement in the United States.20 Within the Cold War context, decolonization emerged from, and was intimately connected with, issues of “race”; for this reason, the second part of this volume includes chapters dealing with these overlapping themes. It should be reminded that the soldiers’ experience of the Second World War had an important racial dimension. For the Third Reich, war was a tale of racial extermination and survival, and racism also characterized the United States’ war against Japan. Moreover, tense racial relations marked the soldiers’ experience in multi-ethnic forces such as the Commonwealth armies. In South Africa, as Jonathan Fennell argues in his chapter, a sense of racial cohesion developed among white soldiers during the war; this development made an important contribution to the imposition of apartheid as a consequence of the South African 1946 elections. In the United States, not only was the American Legion a radically anti-communist organization, but also, as Olivier Burtin’s chapter shows, it embraced racist and conformist notions of veteranhood that systematically marginalized black veterans. Yet the other side of the coin was that the war experience also empowered native, non-white veterans to fight for their freedoms and rights. This process reached a global dimension in the decades after the Second World War, which continues to this day. Matthias Voigt’s chapter examines this phenomenon through the case of Native American veterans from the ­Vietnam War: They were attracted to military service by their own cultural “­warrior” traditions, but the experience of Vietnam – witnessing how other peoples’ aspirations to independence were crushed by American intervention – pushed them to fight upon their return for their own “decolonization” in the heart of the United States. From a global perspective, however, we will see that the veterans’ paths towards recognition were not always characterized by violence; they sometimes succeeded by using veterans’ associations’ traditional methods of protest and lobbying. Daniel Schumacher’s chapter discusses how, as late as the 1990s, Asian veterans who had fought with the British against Japan in the Second World War were able to leverage the discourses and practices of British veterans’ associations and win citizen rights in Hong Kong just before its “handover” to China. The chapters in the third part of this volume provide further examples of the conflictive relationship between race and veteranhood, racial conflict and decolonization, but their focus moves towards processes of state-­ building in the colonial and postcolonial context. After revolutionary wars, and in the forging of new nation states from the ashes of European empires, veterans were always regarded as a distinctive group to be either absorbed, excluded or neutralized. In those countries with a sizable group of war-­ experienced men, especially if war had been, or was being, fought within

Introduction  7 their territories or at their borders, veterans could not be ignored. Sometimes, former soldiers acquired a degree of autonomy and power, which transformed them into arbiters of post-conflict politics. Between 1958 and 1990, more than sixty military coups took place in the African continent; many of their protagonists and supporters were officers and soldiers with war experience.21 Within the heavily militarized and tense context of decolonization and the global Cold War, large groups of men with valuable war experience were not to be disregarded in the post-conflict state. However, the diversity of historical experiences is astonishing. The ­divergent roles of military officers in India and Pakistan after partition are remarkable examples: While democratic India remained free from military interventionism in politics, in Pakistan, military-imposed governments were the rule rather than the exception.22 But further research is needed to understand the specific role of veterans in South Asia after the British departure. The case of the French colonial territories in Africa, examined in this volume through the chapters of Samuel André-Bercovici and Riina Turtio, is demonstrative of the variety of paths that could be taken. A long story of racial discrimination against Muslim veterans from French ­A lgeria prevented the transformation of Algerian veterans into loyal supporters of France, yet French authorities applied a variety of means to mobilize those veterans against the Algerian nationalist movement. French West A ­ frica had a different history: The different independent nation states that separated from France between 1958 and 1960 incorporated former colonial soldiers into their national armies to various degrees; veterans became an important link between the former colonizer and independent Guinea, Ivory Coast and Upper Volta. The chapters in this part also suggest that the relevance of veteran politics did not end with the attainment of independence and the consolidation of relatively stable post-revolutionary state structures. In this sense, this part addresses important gaps in knowledge about the world after 1945. Yet more research is needed. For instance, historians are only starting to learn about the highly important role of the military and war memory in North Korea’s “Garrison” state after the war of 1950–1953.23 The relevance of veteran identity in the Global South’s Mecca of revolution, Algeria after 1962, still needs to be assessed.24 While the history of American veterans of Vietnam has been examined from multiple perspectives,25 how Vietnamese ex-soldiers from both sides of the conflict fared in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam remains a blind spot in English-speaking historiography. In this volume, the chapters by Eric Lob and Obert Bernard Mlambo not only demonstrate the importance of veterans and the war experience for the construction of new regimes in the Third World during the late- and post-Cold War period, but also point to veterans’ role as ideological and political agents. Both in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and independent Zimbabwe, anti-Western movements in the shape of anti-colonial armed struggle (Zimbabwe) and an Islamic revolution (Iran) were symbolically

8  Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas embodied by veterans. Veterans were treated as the true bearers of new ideological values: religious-nationalist populism in the IRI and postcolonial anti-Imperialism in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Emerging as nation states in the final phase of the Cold War, independent Zimbabwe and the IRI resorted to radical redistribution of land and swift infrastructural development to consolidate; yet in both cases, development and land redistribution were intimately connected with the war experience. In different ways, veterans were important actors; they had a clear political role that allowed the balance to tip in favour of one faction or another during periods of political crisis. In November 2017, while this introduction was being written, Zimbabwean veterans again proved crucial to the defenestration of Mugabe from power.

Memory In the world after 1945, one of veterans’ most relevant public roles was played in war memory politics. The chapters in the fourth part of this volume show that a complex relationship between memory and oblivion characterized the transformation of veterans’ war memory in the decades after the Second World War. As a result, while still largely shaped by national and international politics, veterans’ memory generally became more autonomous and independent than before. The cult of fallen soldiers still constituted the first and foremost concern of post-war politics of memory after the Second World War.26 War commemorations and the task of narrating past conflicts implied the ascribing of a positive meaning to sacrifice, both for winners and vanquished.27 Yet the new historical context after 1945 transformed how belligerent societies memorialized war. Compared to their protagonism in war commemoration during the interwar period, the public relevance of veterans declined in Europe after 1945. This decline can be attributed to the disappearance of war as a tangible threat in the European continent after the Second World War – with the notable exception of the Balkans. However, veterans’ associations had a persisting prominent role in the public sphere of the United States, where they steadily became agents of memory. Furthermore, as armed conflict continued in other areas of the world after 1945, veterans still played an important role in how such conflicts were represented and narrated. Veterans decisively moulded the cultural meanings and implications of such crucial terms for post-war societies as reconciliation, peace, sacrifice and post-war reconstruction. Although this task mostly referred to national societies, it was also strongly conditioned by the global frame of meaning that the Cold War imposed. This was not a one-sided but rather a two-sided phenomenon. Collective war memories in each country were adapted to the dominant narratives of the period 1946–1989 in the international context; however, they were also adapted according to specific national frameworks. The Cold War frequently posed a difficult question to those who remembered the Second World War: How could former allies become adversaries and former

Introduction  9 enemies become loyal allies in such a short space of time? In some other cases, public institutions and national armies imposed rigid constraints on the social interpretation of past armed conflicts. States established narratives and accommodated these narratives to the new conditions of the Cold War, as Italian and German politics of memory after the Second World War clearly show.28 The Soviet regime after 1945 prevented the former frontoviki from creating any kind of powerful associations and considered the dissemination of soldiers’ memoirs to be a threat to the state’s security.29 German, British and French veterans of the Second World War contributed to redrawing the line that separated friends from enemies: Western anti-­ fascists and democrats from totalitarian fascists and Eastern communists. This task was facilitated by the German reinterpretation of the war on the Eastern front against Soviet communism. As the Soviet Union became the new common enemy, this Soviet-German war was presented as a precedent of the ensuing Cold War.30 Xosé M. Núñez Seixas’s article on the Spanish Blue Division veterans demonstrates that, between the Second World War and the Spanish transition to democracy in the late 1970s, the specificities of the Franco regime determined to a greater degree the twists and turns of the Spanish Eastern front veterans’ memory and politics; however, the Cold War reframing of Second World War memory allowed Spanish veterans from the Eastern front to operate in the public sphere more openly. Post-1945 armed conflicts throughout the world posed further challenges to war commemoration and memory. How to pay homage to the fallen soldiers in armed conflicts that were officially defined as “police actions” (as Harry Truman famously defined Korea) or as exercises of internal “pacification” (as France for decades defined the Algerian War)? Public remembrance of the colonial wars was subject to the necessity of forging friendly postcolonial relationships with newly created nation states in Asia and ­Africa. Commemorating one’s own heroes required forgetting the war crimes they committed while emphasizing the enemy’s cruelty.31 The global normative context also mattered and strongly contributed to reframing the meanings ascribed to war. Thus, for former colonial powers, such as the Netherlands and Portugal, the term “colonial war” became taboo, given its association with the dark sides of colonial rule and its contradiction with the self-portrait of victims in the Second World War.32 In turn, former colonized peoples did not always restrict themselves to commemorating past atrocities committed by the colonizers. Many newly independent countries were interested in reshaping diplomatic, cultural and economic ties with their former European masters. The memory of the liberation wars sometimes became an instrument for legitimizing the winning side of ensuing civil wars or border conflicts with other decolonized states.33 In these cases, following a pattern established during the interwar period, a cult of fallen soldiers and/or victims was used as an instrument of reconciliation and of the exaltation of the sacred union of the nation in arms. These modes of remembrance contradicted the long-term fundamental goals of forgiveness

10  Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas and reconciliation. Even war tourism, visits of veterans to battlefields and encounters with former enemies were effective means of accelerating reconciliation, but they also often served to reinforce past war narratives.34 As the chapters in this part of the volume show, veterans were sometimes caught between the official memory politics on the one hand and their own need to commemorate, narrate and speak out about their experience on the other hand. In this situation, autonomous, independent and largely personal veterans’ memories and narratives took on a more important dimension than they had in the epoch before 1945. In other words, many veterans’ groups enjoyed a higher degree of autonomy regarding the crafting of their narratives. Israeli soldiers of the 1948 war and, more recently, Argentine veterans of the Falklands conflict are cases in point. In different ways, their views of these conflicts as well as their claims for recognition and their public commemorations often challenged the “official” narrative imposed from above by state institutions.35 The case of British veterans from the Korean War, as examined in Grace Huxford’s chapter in this volume, is a clear example of the largely autonomous character of veterans’ memory: veterans possess their particular war remembrances, which are not dictated from above. This cherished private memory can become public and politically instrumental, though. French veterans from the Algerian War, as argued by Hugh McDonnell’s chapter, used personal memories to leverage authority in the public sphere; an authoritative first-hand account of war can serve the purpose of challenging official narratives. As Gary Baines describes in his chapter, South African veterans of Angola, years after the end of both the Cold War and apartheid – which had given meaning to this conflict – ­created their own paths towards collective remembrance and personal healing. In short, in the globalizing post-1945 world, not all veterans, not all fallen soldiers and not every war experience could be memorialized, recognized and presented on an equal footing. It is significant that the WVF, an international organization including veterans from very diverse regions of the world, was relatively unconcerned with issues of war remembrance and did not prominently participate in ceremonies for fallen soldiers. While veterans’ war memory increasingly became a narrower affair in the late ­twentieth century, greater interdependence between distant memories of war simultaneously came to the fore. In other words, globalization decisively ­affected veterans’ memory. Former French officers from the Algerian War compared French atrocities against Algerians not only with the Nazi massacre of ­Oradour (France, 1944) but also with My Lai (Vietnam, 1968), as ­McDonnell mentions in his chapter. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as underscored in Núñez Seixas’s chapter, a travelling Spanish Blue Division veteran, struck by the impressive Soviet war memorial in Treptower Park, decided that this was the kind of memorial he wished for his former comrades of the Eastern front. Huxford’s chapter shows that British veterans’ trips to South Korea in the 1980s were a turning point in their memories and interpretation of the Korean War. In 2012, Baine’s chapter

Introduction  11 tells us, a wandering South African veteran in search of identity and personal healing visited the abandoned battlefields of Angola. In this foreign country, he had an encounter with a former Cuban combatant – a former enemy – of the same war. Unable to maintain a conversation due to the lack of a common language, they were nonetheless able to experience a sense of camaraderie. This emotional connection may have been fleeting. However, it reminds us of the global dimension of the veterans’ identity and the shared history that this volume brings to the fore.

Notes 1 Michael Snape, “Front Line I”, in Richard Overy (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 258–292. 2 Frederick W. Perry, The Commonwealth Armies: Manpower and Organisation in Two World Wars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 75; Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: The Red Army 1939–1945 (London: Faber and Faber, 2005); Mark D. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again. America’s World War II Veterans Come Home (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001), vi; Edward J. Drea, Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853–1945 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009); Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hitler’s Wehrmacht, 1935–1945 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016), 43–90. 3 See Peter Lagrou, “Les guerres, les morts et le deuil: Bilan chiffré de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale”, in Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau et al. (eds.), La violence de guerre 1914–1945 (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 2002), 313–327. 4 For an overview on post-1945 wars, see Jeremy Black, War since 1945 (London: Reaktion Books, 2004). 5 Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Mark Philipp Bradley, Vietnam at War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 119, 123, 131; Martin Evans, Algeria: France’s Undeclared War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Odd Arne Westad, Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); Ruth Ginio, The French Army and its African Soldiers. The Years of Decolonization (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), 77–140; David M. Anderson and Daniel Branch (eds.), Allies at the End of Empire Loyalists, Nationalists and the Cold War, 1945–76 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). 6 Snape, “Front Line I”; see also Alf Lüdtke and Richard Bessel (eds.), No Man’s Land of Violence: Extreme Wars in the 20th Century (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006). 7 Eric J. Leed, No Man’s Land. Combat & Identity in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 193–213; Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing. Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare (London: Granta Books, 1999); Joseba Zulaika, Chivos y soldados: la mili como ritual de iniciación (San Sebastián: Baroja, 1989). 8 David A. Gerber (ed.), Disabled Veterans in History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Jaremey McMullin, Ex-Combatants and the Post-Conflict State. Challenges of Reintegration (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 45–77. 9 Martin Crotty and Mark Edele, “Total War and Entitlement: Towards a Global History of Veteran Privilege”, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 59:1 (2013), 15–32. 10 Stephen R. Ward (ed.), The War Generation. Veterans of the First World War (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1975); Ángel Alcalde, War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

12  Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas 11 Demobilization can also be examined from a cultural point of view; see John Horne, “Kulturelle Demobilmachung, 1919–1939: ein sinvoller historischer ­Begriff?”, in Wolfgang Hardtwig (ed.), Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1939 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 129–150. 12 James M. Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland. German Veterans after the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Stephen Garton: The Cost of War. Australians Return (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996); Bert-Oliver Manig, Die Politik der Ehre. Die Rehabilitatierung der Berufssoldaten in der frühen Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004); ­Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation. Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Van Ells, ­ eneration To Hear Only Thunder Again; Michael D. Gambone, The Greatest G Comes Home. The Veteran in American Society (College Station: Texas A&M University, 2005); Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War. A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: ­Oxford University Press, 2008); Neil J. Diamant, Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families, and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1948–2007 (Lanham, MD: Rowman  & Littlefield, 2009); Birgit Schwelling, Heimkehr–­Erinnerung–Integration. Der Verband der Heimkehrer, die ehemaligen Kriegsgefangenen und die westdeutsche Nachkriegsgesellschaft (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010); ­Bernard Kelly, Returning Home. Irish Ex-Servicemen after the Second World War (­Dublin: Merrion, 2012); Ángel Alcalde, Los excombatientes franquistas. La cultura de guerra del fascismo español y la Delegación Nacional de Excombatientes (1936–1965) (Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2014); Joanna Wawrzyniak, Veterans, Victims, and Memory. The Politics of the Second World War in Communist ­Poland (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015); Filippo Masina, La riconoscenza della nazione. I reduci italiani fra associazioni e politica, 1945–1970 (Florence: Le Monnier, 2016). 13 Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman (eds.), The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Lisa Pinley Covert, “The GI Bill Abroad: A Postwar Experiment in International Relations”, Diplomatic History 40:2 (2016), 244–268; Alcalde, War Veterans and Fascism. 14 See Alice Förster and Birigt Beck, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and World War II: Can a Psychiatric Concept Help Us Understand Postwar Society”, in Richard Bessel et al. (eds.), Life after Death. Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 15–35; Svenja Goltermann, Die Gesellschaft der Überlebenden. Deutsche Kriegsheimkehrer und ihre Gewalterfahrungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich: Dva, 2009). 15 Robert Saxe, Settling Down. World War II Veterans’ Challenge to the Postwar Consensus (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 117–153. 16 For instance, see Lagrou, The Legacy, and Wawrzyniak, Veterans. 17 Edele, Soviet Veterans, 11, 163–184. 18 Diamant, Embattled Glory; cf. Gordon White, “The Politics of Demobilized ­Soldiers from Liberation to Cultural Revolution”, The China Quarterly 82 (1980), 187–213. 19 Westad, The Global Cold War, 396. 20 Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line. American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 21 Chuka Onwumechili, African Democratization and Military Coups (Westport: Praeger, 1997), passim; A.B. Assensoh and Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh, African Military and Politics: Coups and Ideological Incursions, 1990–Present (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Mathurin C. Houngnikpo, Guarding the Guardians. Civil-­Military Relations and Democratic Governance in Africa (Farnham: ­Ashgate, 2010).

Introduction  13 22 Steven I. Wilkinson, Army and Nation. The Military and Indian Democracy since Independence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); ­Daniel Marston, The Indian Army and the End of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press, 2014). 23 Youngjun Kim, Origins of the North Korean Garrison State: The People’s Army and the Korean War (London: Routledge, 2018). 24 Jeffrey James Byrne, Mecca of Revolution. Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Evans, Algeria, 355–356. 25 Andrew E. Hunt, The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Richard Stacewicz, Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of Vietnam Veterans against the War (New York: Twayne, 1997); Gerald Nicosia, Home to War. A History of the Vietnam Veterans’ Movement (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001); James E. Westheider, Fighting on Two Fronts. African Americans and the Vietnam War (New York: New York University Press, 1997). 26 George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Reinhart Koselleck and Michael Jeismann (eds.), Der politische Totenkult: Kriegerdenkmäler in der Moderne (­Munich: Finck, 1994); see also some contributions to Polly Low, Graha Oliver and P. J. Rhodes (eds.), Cultures of Commemoration: War Memorials, Ancient and Modern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Manfred Hettling and Jörg Echternkamp (eds.), Gefallenengedenken im globalen Vergleich. Nationale Tradition, politische Legitimation und Individualisierung der Erinnerung (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013). 27 See J. Macleod (ed.), Defeat and Memory: Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modern Era (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 28 Filippo Focardi, Il cattivo tedesco e il bravo italiano. La rimozione delle colpe della seconda guerra mondiale (Bari: Laterza, 2013). 29 Nina Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York: Basic Books, 1994); Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957 (London: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 31–40, 101–108. See further Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: S ­ oviet Voices ­ ompany, 1992); from the Afghanistan War (New York: W. W. Norton and C Silke Satjukow, Besatzer. Die “Russen” in Deutschland 1945–1994 (­Göttingen: ­Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008). 30 See some contributions to Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens (eds.), Experience and Memory. The Second World War in Europe (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2010), as well as Stefan Troebst and J. Wolf (ed.), Erinnern an den Zweiten Weltkrieg. Mahnmale und Museen in Mittel- und Osteuropa ­(Leipzig: ­Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2011); J.M. Faraldo, La Europa clandestina: ­Resistencia a las ocupaciones nazi y soviética, 1938–1948 (Madrid: Alianza, 2011), 208–225; Nikolay Koposov, Memory Laws, Memory Wars. The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 60–237; Thomas ­Sherlock, ­Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post Soviet Russia (New York: ­Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 31 See Jay Winter, “Thinking About Silence’, in Efrat Ben-Ze’ev, Ruth Ginio and Jay Winter (eds.), Shadows of War. A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3–31. 32 See some references in Miguel B. Jerónimo (ed.), The Ends of European Colonial Empires: Cases and Comparisons (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). For the Dutch case, see Gert H. Oostindie, Soldaat in Indonesië; Getuigenissen van een oorlog aan de verkeerde kant van de geschiedenis (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2015).

14  Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas For the Portuguese case, see also Manuel Loff, “Estado, democracia e memória: políticas públicas e batalhas pela memória da ditadura portuguesa (1974–2014)”, in Manuel Loff, Luciana Soutelo and Filipe Piedade (eds.), Ditaduras e Revolução. Democracia e Políticas da Memória (Coimbra: Almedina, 2015), 23–144, as well as Carlos Maurício, “A Guerra Colonial e a Descolonização vistas pelas Sondagens de Opinião (1973–2004)”, Nação e Defesa 130 (2011), 267–295. 33 Reinhart Kössler, “Facing a Fragmented Past: Memory, Culture and Politics in Namibia”, Journal of Southern African Studies 33:2 (2007), 361–382, as well as id., Namibia and Germany. Negotiating the Past (Windhoek: University of Namibia Press, 2015). 34 See Chris Ryan (ed.), Battlefield Tourism: History, Place and Interpretation (­A msterdam: Elsevier, 2007). 35 For Israeli soldiers, see Efrat Ben-Ze’ev, “Imposed silences and self-censorship: Palmach soldiers remember 1948”, in Ben-Ze’ev, Ginio and Winter (eds.), Shadows of War, 181–196. For the Argentinian veterans, see Rosana Guber, De chicos a veteranos. Nación y memorias de la Guerra de Malvinas (La Plata: Ediciones al Margen, 2009) and Federico Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas, 1982–2012 (Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2012).

Part I

The Cold War

2 The International Federation of Resistance Fighters Communist anti-fascism, Germany and Europe Václav Šmidrkal The experience and memory of the Second World War and its violent aftermath deeply marked the history of Cold War Europe after 1945.1 ­During the war, Central, Eastern and South-East Europe became the scenes of an all-out confrontation between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as well as their allies.2 Mass murder, partisan warfare, bombings and destructive ­battles characterized the everyday lives of millions of people. But the traumatic experiences of defeat, occupation, collaboration and resistance also became key elements in the reconstitution of Western European states and their societies after 1945. A few years after the end of the war, in 1951, the ­International Federation of Resistance Fighters (FIR) was founded in ­Vienna as an umbrella organization for former resistance fighters and ­victims of Nazism and fascism. As this chapter will show, this organization did not only operate in communist Eastern Europe. Its main purpose was to transcend the Cold War divide and to create a Europe-wide network based on a shared experience of “anti-fascism”. Together with other international communist “front organizations”3 – as Western observers called them – which presented themselves as independent but were in fact controlled by the ­Soviets, FIR contributed to the creation of a communist-controlled transnational sphere, the heyday of which took place during the Cold War.4 The long history of the FIR has been so far quite neglected by historians, but it can provide revealing insights into the Europeanizing effects of communist “anti-fascism” and the Second World War veteran groups that ­subscribed to this idea.5 While foreign regular armies brought liberation from Nazi Germany and her allies to many European countries and therefore decided the result of the war, resistance movements from within the occupied nations were crucial for the reconstruction of national unity and self-confidence after the war.6 FIR often preferred the rather heroic term “anti-fascist resistance fighters” to refer to the heterogeneous groups of people who experienced the war both as active members of resistance movements and as passive victims of persecutions. In order to avoid this v­ alue-laden terminology, I use the more neutral term “veterans” to describe the different groups of people that were associated in the member organizations of the FIR for they understood themselves as

18  Václav Šmidrkal participants in the war, even though most of them did not experience the war as battlefield soldiers. This chapter offers an inquiry into the FIR’s historical significance by studying its activities in the 1950s and 1960s. While acknowledging the ­Eastern European communist roots of FIR, this chapter argues that the FIR’s main operational area was Western Europe, particularly countries that faced the challenge of coming to terms with their “fascist” past and were the main object of the superpowers’ competition. My research is based on published and unpublished materials available at the FIR’s archival collection in Vienna and at the archival collection of one of its member organizations, the Czechoslovak Union of Freedom Fighters (Svaz bojovníků za svobodu, SPB), in the Czech National Archives in Prague. Thus, this chapter combines an analysis of the transnational dimension of the former FIR’s secretariat and the national dimension of one of the most important member organizations from the communist East. In the first section, I focus on the origins of the FIR in the latter half of the 1940s. The following sections discuss FIR’s character as a communist “front organization” and its activities, spanning from material concerns to attempts at identity-building. Finally, I take a look at FIR’s relations with other international veterans’ organizations that pursued similar goals in the transnational sphere of the Cold War.

Forerunners FIR’s forerunners originated in the early post-1945 context of international networks between former partisans and political prisoners of Nazi concentration camps. Together, they represented a group of war veterans that was structurally different from those of other ex-soldiers. However, the FIR members’ war experience had a similarly formative impact on their mentalities and behaviour. The political prisoners’ “comradeship” was established on the basis of the “passive front of prisons and concentrations camps”, but it was presented in a similar way to traditional military comradeship. This sense of belonging was believed to level social, national, political or religious differences and to create strong bonds overcoming “any dams and curtains” that could prevent post-war cooperation between former political prisoners.7 “It did not matter if it was a German communist, a French catholic, or a Russian captive who needed help”,8 Josef Plojhar – communist Roman Catholic priest and former inmate of the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps – recalled in 1948. Along with group cohesion based on similar war experiences, a post-war radical leftist agenda also connected these veterans across Europe. Beyond the material, social and medical interests of veterans and the question of their representation in memory politics, former political prisoners put forward a fully fledged political program of revolution. The Fédération internationale des anciens prisonniers politiques (­International Federation of Former Political Prisoners, FIAPP) was formed

The International Federation of Resistance Fighters  19 in Paris in 1947 after a series of preliminary talks among the national organizations. While there were no Austrian or German representatives when FIAPP was established, it accepted applications from these countries soon after, in 1948. In doing so, the FIAPP hoped to overcome divisions between the war’s victors and vanquished, and between communist and democratic states, to recreate the war coalition of shared ideas.9 Parallel to former political prisoners, former partisans from different countries also felt strong bonds of cohesion; international solidarity during the war among partisans and shared radical leftist political agendas in the postwar period led to transnational networking.10 At a meeting ­organized under the auspices of the Český svaz partyzánů (Czech Partisans’ Union) in Prague in April 1946, delegates from the USSR, Bulgaria, ­Yugoslavia, Greece and Republican Spain in exile agreed to convene a congress in B ­ elgrade in 1947, which would eventually lead to the establishment of a ­European federation of former partisans.11 In a meeting in Rome in ­December 1947, the Soviet general and former partisan Sydir Artemovych Kovpak suggested, though, that partisans’ organizations should join the already ­existing ­FIAPP instead of creating their own international federation.12 The need to reinforce these networks in the context of the unfolding Cold War, particularly following the establishment of the Soviet Bloc in ­Europe, finally led to the foundation of FIR. At its 3rd congress in Vienna in 1951, ­FIAPP transformed itself into the Fédération international des ­résistants, des victims et des prisonniers du fascisme (International Federation of ­Resistant Fighters, Victims and Prisoners of Fascism), which in 1954 ­shortened its name to the International Federation of Resistance Fighters. This transnational actor widened its scope by accepting not only national organizations of former political prisoners and partisans but also other ­organizations of people who in any way opposed “fascism” or had been persecuted by it and were willing to cooperate within the framework of FIR.

The making of the communist “front organization” FIR formed part of the various international “front organizations” that were created after 1945 and controlled by either of the blocs, despite their official policy of impartiality.13 These “fronts” were typically neither international organizations nor international non-governmental organizations. They were not made up of member states; however, individual governments controlled the organizations’ politics. By delegating certain issues to these “transnational advocacy networks”,14 governments expected to increase the credibility and attractiveness of the themes with which those organizations dealt. Among the most influential examples in the communist-controlled transnational sphere were the World Peace Council, the World Federation of Trade Unions and professional-oriented organizations like The World Union of Students or the World Federation of Scientific Workers.15

20  Václav Šmidrkal In this regard, FIR’s grand strategy was not different from those of ­ thers; it basically aimed to conceal its communist background – as this o allegiance would disqualify it in the West – and therefore to appeal to a wider public by presenting itself as a neutral grass-root endeavour. For this purpose, FIR developed specific rhetoric and practices, and applied organizational ­structures that would serve this goal. The FIAPP-Informations monthly magazine, published from 1948 to 1951 in English, French and Russian, ­offers a valuable insight into this strategy. Prepared and printed in Prague under the leadership of the Czechoslovak SPB, the magazine was criticized in early 1949 by French communist Maurice Lampe, among others, for ­being “too Marxist” in both its tone and content. The FIAPP-­ Informations’ use of concepts like “imperialists”, “international reaction” or “American capitalists” and reporting of events such as the expulsion of the Archbishop of Prague and former concentration camp inmate ­Josef Beran from the SPB, ­irritated FIAPP member organizations that were not communist-­dominated. Lampe warned that making FIAPP sound too communist would lead to its break-up; non-communist organizations would feel forced to leave the organization.16 FIAPP as well as FIR learned to use a language that on first sight did not resemble the language typical of communist discourse of that time. Some communist slogans and terms were intentionally avoided in FIAPP propaganda; others were almost mechanically replaced by more palatable equivalents. In this system of symbols, communists were typically dubbed as “patriots” or “democrats” whose utmost goal was “­national independence”. Meanwhile, oppositional political movements or US dominance in the West were often described with terms rooted in the Second World War experience, such as “fascism” or “occupation”. The strategy of using moderate language was coupled with a careful political agenda. At the FIR Bureau meeting in Potsdam, East Germany, in 1952, the Soviet delegate Chikalenko suggested that FIR should not close its door to people who were not in tune with its political views but rather try to attract them at least on the basis of shared concerns. Chikalenko mentioned the example of Denmark, where the position of FIR members was weak, but FIR could intervene in the question of legal status and social provisions for former political prisoners. From this position, it could advance and start addressing more politically sensitive issues, such as the rearmament of West Germany or the fight for world peace.17 According to Chikalenko, the FIR’s members did not have as many financial resources as their opponents, but FIR had the power of ideals, and it could make use of the “moral capital” of former concentration camp prisoners. In day-to-day tactics, FIR was quite successful among former concentration camps inmates and their international activities. This was particularly important in Germany; there, FIR could attempt to transform former prisoners into moral guardians over West Germany’s future. ­A lthough different views were presented at a meeting of former political prisoners of the ­Buchenwald concentration camps in Weimar in October 1952,

The International Federation of Resistance Fighters  21 the communists managed to direct the meeting to the formulation of a common appeal to all former victims of Nazism against the remilitarization of West Germany.18 Assembling and disseminating evidence that the rights and memory of former resistance fighters and concentration camp prisoners were at risk in West European states and denouncing that communists, with or without long-standing anti-fascist credentials, were being persecuted and discriminated against, while former Nazis returned to positions of power were successful strategies as long as West European states were actually confronted with these realities.19 However, while FIR was relatively successful in the appropriation of ­c ertain social issues that were receiving scarce attention in Western ­Europe, it fell short in linking them to political matters. While it was possible for the French FIR’s members to mobilize public opinion in their country against the release of former Nazi generals from prisons, it was difficult for them to raise public awareness with protests against US “­bacteriological warfare” in Korea.20 Whereas events such as the funeral and commemoration of West German communist Philipp Müller (1931–1952), who was shot death by a policeman at a demonstration against the rearmament of West ­G ermany on 11 May 1952 in Essen, were easily ­appropriated by FIR in public d ­ ebates,21 its communist “front” character led it to hold biased views on similar events. While hypercritical of  the West’s drawbacks, it typically turned a blind eye to the situation in the East. It became ­e specially ­v ulnerable when it had to take a stance on the inner crises of the Soviet bloc countries, such as the Hungarian ­uprising in 1956, when the Soviet ­Union was unequivocally ­c ondemned by the West and stubbornly defended by the East. While in 1956, FIR only tentatively supported the Soviets with appeals to peace and solidarity,22 during the 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia, FIR kept silent. However, FIR President Arialdo Banfi protested against it in a personal letter to the FIR Bureau’s mem­ zechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact bers. For Banfi, the occupation of C forces threatened values that were paramount to anti-­fascist resistance ­ econd World War and to FIR, namely, n ­ ational sovereignty, during the S freedom and democracy.23 For the French communist Jean Toujas, who visited ­Czechoslovakia in October 1968, and for other leaders of FIR, it was preferable to withhold comment on this event in order to prevent the splitting up of FIR. It was unlikely that Eastern and Western member ­organizations would be able to find a common position on such a divisive issue. Pro-Western organizations, such as the Interdoc Network or the Committee for the Study of Communist Front Organizations in West Germany, tried to raise public awareness of the “real face” of communist organizations such as FIR.24 However, FIR’s partisan role in the Cold War was not only criticized by Western observers but also by some of its leaders. As will be shown in the next section, a large backlash against the FIR’s Cold War strategy came from within its own power structures.

22  Václav Šmidrkal

The communist “front” character exposed In April 1957, when the FIR Bureau met in West Berlin, its Belgian secretary Luc Somerhausen sharply criticized the very existence of FIR and resigned his membership. The actual trigger for his defiance was the campaign launched by communist states, and supported by FIR, against the ­appointment in April 1957 of West German General Hans Speidel as ­Supreme Commander of the Allied NATO ground forces in Central Europe. Somerhausen agreed with FIR that the appointment of a former Wehrmacht officer to such a high position in NATO was an insult to all resistance fighters. For them, Speidel’s return to Paris to take up a new a position of power as NATO commander was bitterly ironic, given his participation in the defeat and occupation of France during the Second World War. However, Somerhausen pointed out that the German Democratic Republic (GDR) also treated some former Nazi officers with leniency; for example, Friedrich Paulus, accountable for war crimes committed in occupied Belgium (the Vinkt massacre in May 1940), lived unpunished in the GDR until his death in February 1957.25 Somerhausen pointed at the FIR’s double standards towards East and West Germany, and Eastern and Western Europe. He also criticized the far-fetched analogies and interpretations made by FIR, which denounced the Treaties of Rome for the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) and EURATOM. In this view, European integration was interpreted as a way of transforming Europe into a “Great Germany of Hitler”, stripping participant nations of the independence they had won in 1945.26 In contrast, for Somerhausen, the idea of a Europe free of custom burdens and other barriers was in full accordance with the ideas of the resistance movement. Another of Somerhausen’s important objections concerned the tension between FIR’s official, politically neutral character and its actual loyal support of Soviet bloc politics. He disclosed the embarrassing fact that FIR was a federation that united member organizations both from the communist East and the democratic West, but while most of its members and resources came from the East, its main area of activities was in the West. Somerhausen also criticized attempts to camouflage this unbalance by moving the FIR secretariat from Warsaw to Vienna or by organizing FIR meetings in West Berlin rather than in the capital of the GDR. Besides Somerhausen’s revelations, the “front” character of FIR was obvious from the FIR’s membership. The FIR pretended to represent a high number of veterans from the East and the West alike, but in fact, its membership was not balanced. There were two kinds of member organization in FIR from the communist East. On the one hand, there were nationwide veterans’ associations, such as the Czechoslovak SPB and the Polish Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy (Związek Bojowników o Wolność i Demokrację, ZBoWiD), which – despite their forced unification and personnel purges – had maintained a hierarchical organizational structure and

The International Federation of Resistance Fighters  23 large membership. On the other hand, there were governmental committees composed of a few selected representatives that spoke on behalf of the veterans, such as the Committee of Anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters (Komitee der antifaschsitischen Widerstandkämpfer, KdAW) from East Germany. This crucial difference between member organizations also had an impact on the activities of the FIR. While veterans’ associations, such as the ­Czechoslovak SPB or the Polish ZBoWiD, expected a top-down approach to FIR’s activities, organizations from the GDR or the USSR made this impossible because in these countries, there were no veterans’ associations to transmit the messages and policies of FIR to the masses of veterans. In contrast, despite FIR presidents originating from France (Henri ­Manhès, Alix Lhote) or Italy (Arialdo Banfi), Western European states were typically represented in FIR by small and fragmented organizations. For instance, Denmark with its eleven organizations in 1971 never had a say in the FIR; nor did FIR consider Denmark a key member. National organizations from Western Europe were either groups of former concentration camp inmates, which emerged during the Second World War from camps such as Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald or Stutthof, or were created by local communist parties like in the case of the West German Union of Victims of Nazi Persecution (Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes, VVN). The most important and largest Western member organizations in FIR were the French National Federation of Deported and Interned Resistance F ­ ighters and Patriots (Fédération Nationale des Déportées et Internés Résistants et Patriots, FNDIRP) and the National Association of Italian Anti-Fascist Political Persecuted (Associazione Nazionale Perseguitati Politici Italiani Antifascisti, ANPPIA).27 FIR’s sources of financial backing also pointed to the communist “front” character of the organization. Precise accounting data are not available but there is evidence to suggest that FIR was almost entirely financed by Eastern bloc organizations and states. In 1952, FIR’s annual budget was 1.5 million Austrian schillings out of which the Czechoslovak SPB ­contributed 180,000. Within the SPB, contributions were raised through the more or less compulsory sale of FIR stamps to SPB members and by ad hoc ­governmental subsidies.28 For 1953, the FIR asked to raise 2.12 million schillings to cover its activities, which mostly took place in costly West European states.29 Besides the salaries of the secretariat members and FIR publications, a certain portion of the budget was meant to be redistributed among the member organizations in Western countries that needed support if they were to survive.30 Donations from Eastern members of materials and services, such as booklet printing, also helped to support FIR. Moreover, the Czechoslovak SPB r­ epeatedly gifted local products with high added value, such as ­Bohemian crystal glass, ceramics or artificial jewellery, to charitable fundraisers (kermesse) organized by Western member organizations in their home countries.31 However, Eastern solidarity with Western comrades was not unlimited and FIR had to constantly manage money shortages. This troubled

24  Václav Šmidrkal financial situation was further exacerbated by FIR’s poor economic management and increasing living costs in Vienna caused by high inflation ­ elegates at the meeting of the FIR presidium learned the rates. In 1961, d unpleasant news that the FIR had spent about 700,000 schillings in the first three months of 1961, which would lead to its bankruptcy by the end of the year.32 While the Western organizations could not give more, the Eastern organizations refused to increase their contributions and demanded a curb on FIR’s expenses. Even though FIR was able to stabilize its budget, the problem of underfinancing became a chronical symptom of the East-West unbalance in the organization. The East was not unconditionally ready to increase its contributions in hard currency for an organization that was believed to waste money. Meanwhile, the Western member organizations were not happy to pay their dues but rather expected subventions from FIR in exchange for their loyalty. In the 1960s, the decreasing importance of FIR and its diminishing ability and will to sustain its existence lead to a standstill as budgetary constraints prevented FIR from expanding its activities. On the contrary, in 1968, FIR’s magazine Der Widerstandkämpfer/Résistance unie decreased its periodicity from six to four issues a year, and in 1975, it had to abandon its present form and became a typewritten newsletter. The reluctance to finance FIR was rooted in the perception that the FIR’s secretariat in Vienna was poorly managed. Since the mid-1950s, different member organizations regretted the secretariat’s dissatisfying results and low productivity while being irritated by repeated requests to raise their yearly contributions. The Czechoslovak SPB expected the FIR’s permanent secretariat in Vienna to be the executive body that would function as both information hub and organizational engine. The secretariat would supervise the members’ implementation of the FIR’ political agenda as set by the congresses.33 These expectations about the secretariat were rather overoptimistic for it was underfinanced and had to fit the heterogeneous nature of FIR member organizations. The Czechoslovak delegation to the FIR’s third congress in Vienna in 1954 was not only disenchanted by the organizational chaos that marked the congress; the Czechoslovak delegates also witnessed how quickly loyalties shifted after a national delegate took up a position in the secretariat. During the congress, Marie Kalkusová, a Czechoslovak member of the FIR secretariat did not show interest in the Czechoslovak delegation arguing that she was being paid by FIR, not by the SPB and did not feel obliged to help her former colleagues.34 In short, the FIR secretariat lived its own life disconnected from the member organizations and their problems. According to a Polish insider of the FIR’s activities in the mid-1960s, the main problems of the Viennese secretariat were a low working morale, a lack of planning and persisting inner disputes among its French and Italian members. He still believed in FIR as a necessary platform, but its potential was underused. FIR could only develop further if it established a solid organizational structure.

The International Federation of Resistance Fighters  25 For this purpose, more money and better leadership were needed, which no one was willing or able to provide.35

Common interests and identity across the Iron Curtain The heterogeneity of FIR’s member organizations and its character as a communist “front” organization had an impact on its activities. FIR focussed on the issue of social benefits and medical care and tried to equate the anti-fascist resistance fighters’ rights to the rights of other veterans. FIR was also involved in broader political debates that shaped Western Europe post-war. While social issues could mobilize veterans in Western countries, political issues were the main concern for the FIR executive elites in the East. A communist-inspired notion of “anti-fascism” was the common ideological denominator that FIR tried to promote. The Soviet Union and communist contribution to victory in the Second World War had generated a new concept of “war veteran” that brought together different war experiences under the idea of transnational anti-fascism. While the Allied coalition broke down after 1945, the communists harvested anti-fascist sentiment in societies traumatized by the experience of war and occupation. However, anti-fascism was quickly discredited as a communist ideological tool that just served communist rule in many East Central European states.36 After the beginning of the Cold War, FIR’s ideologues argued that while fascist states were defeated in Second World War fascism itself was not. This perception of reality formed the basis for cooperation across the Iron Curtain. If in the East, fascism was uprooted by a communist revolution, in the West fascism could resurrect. Communist understanding of fascism as a reactionary ideology also led to the condemnation of some aspects of Western capitalism as fascism. Despite the tensions implicit in the vaguely formulated communist “­anti-fascism”, the concept could indeed form the basis of shared ideas across Europe. As some authors argue, anti-fascism after 1945 was not only communist rhetoric; it can also be seen as a crucial factor within post-war consensus and stability in Europe, both in the East and West.37 Further, one of the common objectives in the East and West was the punishment of former fascists and their elimination from public and political life, particularly in Germany, Austria and Italy. In its Cold War grand strategy, the Soviet Union stressed the dimension of justice, which challenged US emphasis on liberty.38 Thus, “justice”, understood as coming to terms with the Nazi past and transcending unequal standards for communist and non-communist resistance fighters and victims in Western countries, was also one of the most important themes of FIR’s program. West Germany was seen as the key arena for coming to terms with the legacy of “fascism”. Exploiting the moral capital of Germany’s victims, FIR was able to mobilize transnational support against the integration of West

26  Václav Šmidrkal Germany into the wider Western geopolitical alliance.39 FIR also pointed to the persecution of communists in West Germany as proof of the continuities between fascism and capitalism. In the West German democracy, FIR members believed, the victims of Nazism remained unacknowledged or were even seen as a political danger. In contrast, Eastern communist states place these people on a pedestal, even though this recognition was partial and selective. In order to reinforce the wartime spirit of the anti-fascist resistance, FIR also tried to forge a common identity through artistic, literary and historiographical works. During its fourth congress in Vienna in November 1954, FIR organized a “festival of the resistance” where common cultural grounds of the European anti-fascist resistance were put on display in the form of writings, paintings and films made in different European countries.40 A similar identity-building exercise consisted of the publication in 1969 of the anthology of European resistance literature, which was to be prefaced by the German resistance fighter and writer Günther Weisenborn (1902–1969).41 Common identity was not only constructed in artwork but it was also performed in international summer camps for the children of resistance families, in spa sojourns and excursions. During these activities taking place mostly in the 1950s, veterans from the West were invited to the East and vice versa.42 A number of international conferences of historians and history teachers were organized by FIR in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which attempted to create a common historiographical account of European anti-fascist resistance. FIR published the Notebooks of Resistance Fighters (Hefte der Widerstandskämpfer/Cahiers des résistants) in French and German between 1959 and 1963. Edited by the Italian communist, resistance fighter and former Bunchenwald inmate Renato Bertolini (1905–1983), this publication brought together a number of studies underscoring the national and international character of resistance in different European countries. However, the impossibility of finding a common position on the narrative of European resistance became quite clear. The historical conferences organized by FIR revealed the diverging goals of local historiographies. For instance, during a session of the FIR historical commission in 1960, Czechoslovak delegate Čestmír Amort defended the view that the leading role of communist in the anti-fascist resistance was an established historical truth: “We cannot and may not conceal [it] because otherwise we would not be historians”. Yet others such as Austrian historian Wilhelm Steiner disagreed and pleaded for a more nuanced view.43 As a result, the practical value and professional standards of these and similar congresses were compromised by the political orientation of these events.44

From rivalry to cooperation FIR was not the only organization that aimed to create an international network of Second World War veterans. From the very beginning it competed for influence with other organizations. From November 1950, its main

The International Federation of Resistance Fighters  27 rival became the World Veterans’ Federation (VWF), founded by American and French veterans and quickly transformed into a global organization that outnumbered the FIR in terms of member countries and veterans represented. However, the WVF’s weakness was that, except for Yugoslavia, no organization from communist Eastern Europe became a member. The WVF was mainly driven by US foreign policy interests and was perceived by the East as a US anti-communist “front” organization. Although neither the WVF nor the FIR attacked each other directly on the pages of their magazines or in other published documents, they both understood their relationship to be one of rivalry. Their different origins and programs and their different views on the German and European question were clear. This silent rivalry was most clear when FIR and the WVF held their fourth and fifth congresses, respectively, immediately after each other in Vienna in November and December 1954. Nevertheless, in the second half of the 1950s, FIR and some of its member organizations observed the activities of the WVF with interest. The FIR’s leaders read the WVF’s publications and sent FIR representatives to WVF congresses, where they were officially invited as guests. However, they also recognized that the WVF had far greater potential as an international organization of war veterans than the FIR. Irritated by anti-Soviet and ­anti-communist tones during the WVF general assembly in West Berlin in 1957, and not having been given the floor to respond to these voices, the SPB leadership considered their participation as observers pointless.45 They also realized that if they had been full members like the Yugoslav veterans, they could have exerted their influence within the WVF and perhaps changed its political alignment. The Czechoslovak SPB considered applying for membership of the WVF, but the WVF’s positions on international issues concerning Soviet foreign policy discouraged them from doing so. D ­ irect infiltration of the WVF by communist veterans’ organizations seemed ­desirable but impracticable: Communist organizations would not pass the “entrance exam” required to join the WVF, which included testing the applicants’ opinion on the Hungarian uprising in 1956 (the WVF took a clear position condemning Soviet intervention).46 By hopelessly submitting their applications for membership to the WVF, FIR member organizations could prove that the WVF practiced a “one bloc” policy. Eventually, this could pave the way to establishing a new communist-controlled international organization of veterans that would try to win over the VWF’s current as well as future members.47 However, this plan seemed too risky, because it could also be used by the WVF as a campaign against the FIR and the communist veterans. FIR also considered a strategy of encirclement against the WVF. Communist veterans’ organizations were to develop a dense network of contacts with the WVF’s West European members; through them, FIR would exert influence on the activities of the WVF. The problem here was that the FIR’s members had only limited contacts to WVF members, and they were not

28  Václav Šmidrkal willing to use them for an orchestrated covert manoeuver that was not sure to succeed.48 FIR’s final strategic option was the reconsideration of its scope as an organization: opening its ranks to ex-soldiers in general. However, current members feared that this change would debilitate the particular character of their organization.49 The transatlantic and global WVF was the strongest, albeit not the most direct rival of FIR. In fact, they had somewhat different concerns, and they were able to find a modus vivendi by focussing on their different agendas and target groups. The establishment of international organizations of resistance fighters in Western Europe was more challenging for FIR. Along with the European Federation of Ex-Combatants’ Associations (Fédération européenne des associations des anciens combattants, FEDAC) created in June 1955 by Belgian, Italian, Luxembourg and West German veterans,50 the Union of the Resistance for a United Europe (Union de la Résistance pour une Europe unie, URPE) and the International Union of the Resistance and the Deportation (Union internationale de la Résistance et de la Déportation, UIRD) emerged to unite non-communist resistance fighters behind the idea of a united Europe of democratic states.51 If FIR believed that the WVF could be infiltrated, encircled or at least ignored, these organizations had objectives that directly threatened FIR, and they repeatedly attacked each other publically. Coupled with the European integration process, the URPE and UIRD argued that the European Coal and Steel Community founded in 1952 and the European Communities founded in 1957 represented what the resistance fighters fought for during the Second World War. While their idea of Europe had a concrete shape based on European institutions, FIR’s idea of Europe adopted a rather reluctant approach towards integration. FIR preferred a Europe of sovereign nation states, which would not be restricted by membership of non-communist international or supranational structures and, therefore, more open to Soviet influence. The URPE and UIRD were able to make a strong case against FIR during the European communist crisis of 1956. Moreover, when Luc ­Somerhausen resigned his position at FIR in April 1957, his declaration urged FIR to adopt a more pan-European approach. Somerhausen argued that the different opinion groups in the resistance movement should be respected without constraining them to the narrow category of “anti-fascism”; only political impartiality would allow for the transcending of Cold War ­divisions.52 Somerhausen’s arguments became instrumental for another Belgian, ­Hubert Halin, a key member of the UIRD who saw European ­integration as the actual goal of the resistance movement during the Second World War. Much more than the WVF, Halin’s UIRD and his magazine La voix internationale de la résistance became a platform that directly contested the legitimacy of FIR as a representative of the European resistance movement. For years, the UIRD and FIR accused each other of causing division among former resistance fighters. While the UIRD claimed that FIR had a communist background and served Soviet interests, FIR claimed that the

The International Federation of Resistance Fighters  29 UIRD supported only US and West German policies of rearmament and reintegration of former Nazis.53 Throughout the 1950s, FIR and its member organizations strongly disapproved of attempts at cooperation among ex-enemy veterans taking place in Western Europe, the goal of which was to unite them behind NATO and the European institutions. However, during the period of détente in East-West relations, the demise of Soviet-style communism in Western Europe after 1968 and closer European cooperation culminating in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Helsinki in 1975, FIR also slowly changed its strategy from confrontation to cooperation. The international meetings of former Second World War participants that took place in Rome in 1971, in Paris in 1975 and in Rome in 1979 were co-­ organized by the “big four” veteran organizations: Next to WVF and FIR, it was the European Confederation of Ex-Combatants (Confédération européenne des anciens combattants, CEAC) and the International Confederation of Former Prisoners of War (Confédération internationale des anciens prisonniers de guerre, CIAPG).54 Similar to meetings held by politicians in Helsinki, which lead to the Helsinki Accords of 1975, representatives of veterans’ organizations met and agreed on the need to cooperate towards disarmament, security and peace in Europe. FIR was finally recognized as a key partner in this matter. However, the organization could not stop its decline, caused by its notorious “front” character as well as its chronic lack of money and the slow exhaustion of its program.

Conclusion FIR was structurally similar to other communist international “front organizations”, which emerged after 1945 as a product of the post-war settlement and the rise of the Soviet Union to superpower status. FIR appropriated the anti-fascist spirit that became most persuasive in the first decade or so after 1945, when Western societies prioritized the silencing and forgetting of their uncomfortable and traumatic past, when communism seemed to be a potent alternative. The transnational networks created by former resistance fighters against Nazism and fascism and by victims of political repression helped integrate these veterans into their respective societies. However, with the unfolding Cold War, the legacy of resistance and common wartime ideals were manipulated in order to support international communism, to defend the communist bloc and to criticize the West. FIR amplified the voice of less privileged veterans, not only to stir the consciences of Western European societies but also to challenge the legitimacy of the West European political order in favour of domestic communist parties and the Soviet Union’s foreign policy designs. The political potential of FIR was short-lived. But FIR’s decline was not just a consequence of the crises of 1956 or 1968. In the 1970s, the German and European questions that had concerned FIR leaders lost much of their

30  Václav Šmidrkal weight in East-West relations. Also, unbalanced solidarities between Eastern and Western members of FIR prevented the organization from developing further. From the mid-1960s, FIR activities decreased substantially. ­ fter However, no matter how imperfect FIR was, it never gave up its aims. A all, FIR remained indispensable for communist transnationalism in the ­sensitive sphere of Second World War memory. Further inquiry into the history of FIR can enable us to better understand the transnational ties going across the Iron Curtain as well as the d ­ ynamics of the Cold War in Europe. The history of FIR reveals the strengths and weaknesses of Communist strategies to shape the transnational sphere through their own network of organizations. It also shows the centrality of the German and European question after the Second World War and the struggle to come to terms with the traumatic past. Finally, it also sheds light on the history of Western communism and veterans’ organizations. These groups walked the tightrope of trying to capitalize on their position in the West while maintaining advantageous relations with the East in a European context deeply marked by Cold War rivalries.

Notes 1 This work has been supported by Charles University Research Centre program No. 9 (UNCE VITRI). 2 Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010); Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (London: Penguin Books, 2012). 3 Bernard S. Morris, “Communist International Front Organizations: Their ­Nature and Function”, World Politics 9:1 (1956), 76–87; Robert Orth, Hilforganisationen des Weltkommunismus (Munich: 1963); Ian Phelps-Fetherston, ­S oviet International Front Organizations: A Concise Handbook (New York: 1965); ­Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes (DÖW), 51616/59, Die internationale kommunistischen Frontorganisationen, Ost-­P robleme 13 (1961), 18–19. 4 FIR managed to survive the fall of communism in Europe and continues to pursue its activities in an altered context with a limited scope to this day; its last congress took place in Prague in November 2016. See the Czech communist newspaper, mh, “V Praze rokovali antifašisté”, Haló noviny, 21 November 2016, www.halonoviny.cz/articles/view/44514029 (accessed 30 October 2017). 5 Pieter Lagrou’s work on Western European memory of the Second World War also addresses the FIR from the perspective of France, Belgium and the Netherlands, see Pieter Lagrou, Pieter. The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and ­National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press, 2000); For a study of FIR during 1989, see Maximilian Becker, “The Fédération Internationale des Résistants (FIR): Its Activities during the Breakdown of the Soviet Bloc”, S:I.M.O.N. 3 (2016), 4–24. 6 Evan Mawdsley, “Fifth Column, Fourth Service Third Task, Second Conflict?”, in Philip Cooke and Ben H. Shephard (eds.), European Resistance in the Second World War (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Praetorian Press, 2013), 14–32, 30. 7 Národní archiv (NA), f. MZV-VA II. část, k. 38, MUDr. František Bláha, Kamarádi, Svobodné noviny (10 April 1948). 8 NA, f. MZV-VA II. část, k. 38, Josef Plojhar, Závazek z koncentráků (11 April 1948).

The International Federation of Resistance Fighters  31 9 NA, f. MZV-VA II. část, k. 38, Svobodné noviny, 6 April 1947; Němečtí političtí vězňové do FIAPP (28 May 1948). 10 Massimo Storchi, “Italy”, in Cooke and Shephard, European Resistance, 113–133, 121. 11 NA, f. MZV-VA II. část, k. 534, “Mezinárodní federace evropských partyzánů”, Práce (Prague), 25 April 1946. 12 NA, f. ÚV KSČ – mezinárodní oddělení, sv. 12, a.j. 35, Návrh dopisu Pavla ­Borského, pp. 1–2. 13 Facts about International Communist Front Organisations ([n. p.], 1957), 5. 14 Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). 15 William Styles, “The World Federation of Scientific Workers, a Case Study of a Soviet Front Organisation: 1946–1964”, Intelligence and National Security 32 (2017), 1–14. 16 NA, f. ÚV KSČ – mezinárodní oddělení, sv. 12, a.j. 35, Dopis Svazu bojovníků za svobodu Bedřichu Geminderovi (5 April 1949). 17 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 58, Zápis z 11. schůze předsednictva ÚV-SPB konané dne 24. dubna 1952, 3. 18 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 58, Mezinárodní schůzka ve Výmaru. 19 Jörg Echternkamp, Soldaten im Nachkrieg: Historische Deutungskonflikte und westdeutsche Demokratisierung 1945–1955 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2014); Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik. Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-­Vergangenheit (Munich: Beck, 2012). 20 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 58, Zápis ze schůze předsednictva ÚV-SPB konané 17. července 1952, 2. 21 Ibid., 3. 22 “Ungarn: Machtvolle Solidaritätskundgebung der Widerstandskämpfer für ihre ungarischen Kameraden”, Der Widerstandkämpfer, 4 (11–12, 1956), 15. 23 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 72, Překlad dopisu senátora A. Banfiho, předsedy FIRu všem členům byra FIR. 24 Alexander Heldring, The International Federation of Resistance Movements: History and Background (The Hague, 1969); for the Interdoc Network, see Gilles Scott-Smith, Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network: Cold War Internationale (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 25 DÖW, 51616/140, Intervention de Luc Somerhausen; Note relative à ma demision de sécretaire, de membre du conseil général de la FIR et de président du comité belge de la F.I.R. (15 April 1957), 3. 26 Ibid., 6. 27 20. Jahrestag der FIR: Zwanzig Jahre im Dienst der Widerstandskämpfer und ihrer Ideale, 1951–1971 (Vienna: 1971), 57–59. 28 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 64, Návrh na vydávání známek FIR v roce 1958. 29 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 59, Návrh rozpočtu [generálního sekretariátu] na rok 1953. 30 NA, f. ÚV KSČ – mezinárodní oddělení, sv. 12, a.j. 35, Dopis Jana Vodičky s. Kleňhové-Besserové (21 April 1953). 31 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 67, Zahraniční styky S.P.B. v r. 1960, 7. 32 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 67, Zpráva o cestě do Vídně ve dnech 7.–9. května 1961 na zasedání předsednictva FIR. 33 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 67, Mezinárodní organisace odbojářů (FIR), 2. 34 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 60, Zápis ze schůze předsednictva ÚV SPB konané dne 1. prosince 1954. 35 Archiwum Akt Nowych, z. ZBoWiD, sygn. 2/7, Notatka informacyjna o działalności Międzynarodowej Federacji B. Uczestników Ruchu Oporu (FIR) (no date, probably mid-1960s]).

32  Václav Šmidrkal 36 For the GDR, see Josie McLellan, Antifascism and Memory in East Germany: Remembering the International Brigades 1945–1989 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). 37 Dan Stone, Goodbye to All That? The Story of Europe since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014), 8–10; see also Tony Judt, Die Geschichte Europas seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2006), 82. 38 Odd, Arne Westad. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 39 For such a campaign against West Germany, see …und heute? Die Ziele Hitlers und der Nazis. Ihre Verurteilung durch die Welt. Ihr gefährliches Wiederaufleben. Eine alermierende Dokumentation (Frankfurt am Main: Röderberg-Verlag, 1966). 40 Der Widerstandkämpfer, 2 (6 November/December 1954). 41 Literatur und Widerstand: Anthologie europäischer Poesie und Prosa (Vienna: FIR, 1969). 42 For a summary of FIR’s activities, see 20. Jahrestag der FIR: Zwanzig Jahre im Dienst der Widerstandskämpfer und ihrer Ideale, 1951–1971 (Wien, 1971). 43 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 67, Zpráva o zasedání historické komise FIR-u ve Vídni ve dnech 28.–30. prosince 1960, 3. 44 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 60, Zápis ze schůze předsednictva ÚV SPB konané dne 16. července 1954. 45 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 63, Současná mezinárodní situace a boj proti fašismu, 1–2. 46 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 64, Zpráva o účasti československého delegáta na XII. Národním kongresu válečných zajatců francouzských, pořádaných ve dnech 15.–17. května 1958 ve Vichy, 6–7; “Déclarations de la F.M.A.C.”, Monde combattant 5 (December 1956), 2. 47 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 64, Zpráva o účasti československého delegáta na XII. Národním kongresu válečných zajatců francouzských, pořádaných ve dnech 15.–17. května 1958 ve Vichy, 5–6. 48 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 67, Mezinárodní organisace odbojářů (FIR), 3. 49 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 67, Záznam o poradě konané dne 29. srpna 1961, 3–4. 50 Arnd Bauerkämper, “Reisen in die Vergangenheit”, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 76:1 (2017), 104–131, 116. 51 Pieter Lagrou, “La Résistance et les conceptions de l’Europe, 1945–1965. Anciens résistants et victimes de la persécution face à la Guerre froide au problème allemand et à l’intégration européenne”, Cahiers d’Histoire du Temps présent 2 (1997), 155–197, 191. 52 DÖW, 51616/140, Intervention de Luc Somerhausen, 3. 53 NA, f. ÚV SPB, k. č. 65, Zprávy ze světa odbojářů (prosinec 1958). 54 DÖW, 51616/68, Incontro mondiale degli ex-combattenti per il disarmo. Rome 1979.

3 The World Veterans Federation Cold War politics and globalization Ángel Alcalde

The World Veterans Federation (WVF) is an international non-­governmental organization created in 1950. Currently, it is considered the largest veteran organization in the world, with 172 veteran associations from 121 countries representing some 45 million veterans worldwide.1 Since 1952, the WVF maintains consultative status with the United Nations; it is one among hundreds of international organizations that proliferated after 1945.2 Historians have largely neglected the history of the WVF, and specialists on veterans history have lamented this lack of research.3 The WVF offers an excellent window through which to observe the history of veterans in the world after 1945; it provides a global perspective on veterans’ movements and organizations across the globe since the end of the Second World War. Moreover, through the lens of the WVF, one can gain insights into the history of the “transnational sphere”,4 into hitherto unexamined dimensions of the global Cold War and into wider processes of twentieth-century globalization. The WVF was not just another international organization among many. Because of its membership figures, its material and symbolic capital, the range of its activities conducted across the world and the global network of individuals and institutions that it constructed, the WVF stands out as a highly interesting case in post-1945 global and transnational history. Its peculiarities also deserve attention. In this chapter, I will provide an overall glance into the history of the WVF. I will briefly explore its origins and the context in which it emerged. Then I will examine the trajectory of the organization by looking at its leadership, membership, funding and main activities between 1950 and today. Thus, I provide the very first approximation to the WVF from a historical viewpoint that serves as a platform for further research. I will argue that the history of the WVF must be observed in the context of the global Cold War but not only within this framework. This study also allows us to grasp the global dimension of post-1945 veterans’ history, which forms the background of this volume.

Origins The Second World War was a watershed in veterans’ history. The first reason for this is that this conflict destroyed fascist and fascist-inspired regimes

34  Ángel Alcalde that had manipulated veteran politics while glorifying the symbol of the combatant. In post-war Germany, veteran organizations were banned;5 in Italy, they went through a profound transformation.6 In France, the uncomfortable past of Vichy’s Légion Française des Combattants could only be surmounted by creating a new unifying platform of veterans’ associations: the Union Française des Anciens Combattants (UFAC), a confederation that gathered together veterans from very politically diverse groups.7 The second reason is that after the demobilization of millions of soldiers, a new generation of men with war experience came to the fore in different countries. With some 16 million veterans,8 the victorious United States became the new centre of gravity of international veteran politics. New associations, such as the American Veterans Committee (AVC) and American Veterans of World War II (Amvets), emerged, challenging the hegemony of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars in American veteran politics.9 In Britain, the structure of veteran politics remained unchanged, but in the Cold War context the British Empire Services League gained prominence as an instrument to hold together veterans from the colonial dominions. The Soviet Union was home to millions of veterans, but its totalitarian government thwarted veterans’ movements and associations.10 In Eastern Europe, however, communist influence led to processes of unification and concentration of power in veteran politics: Communist-dominated platforms for veterans’ and war victims’ associations emerged in Poland and Yugoslavia, for instance.11 Although an international organization of former resistance fighters and political prisoners, the Fédération Internationale des Anciens Prisonniers Politiques (FIAPP), initially gathered representatives from both Eastern and Western Europe, by 1947, it fell under the clear domination of communists from the Eastern Bloc.12 After the Second World War, the international landscape of veteran politics was shaken, and the old international veterans’ organizations, such as FIDAC and CIAMAC, had vanished.13 After a number of unsuccessful initiatives to create a new international veterans’ organization, French veterans from UFAC managed to consolidate international contacts in this direction between 1948 and 1949.14 Albert Morel, a French First World War veteran with significant experience in veteran politics, was tasked to organize a new international platform. The French veterans’ objective of defending peace was shared by other veteran leaders in Western countries. In particular, American veterans from the AVC responded to Morel’s call and sent a representative, Gilbert Harrison, to veterans’ international meetings in Europe. However, by 1949, the Cold War context profoundly influenced international encounters between veterans. At that time, the world was witnessing a great struggle between East and West over the notion of “peace”. From 1947, the Soviet Union and the Cominform systematically and intensively employed a discourse of “peace” as a propaganda tool.15 The United Nations (UN), an organization with the purpose of keeping international peace and security, was heavily influenced by the United States, and as a result, it increasingly became a battlefield for Soviet and American Cold War propaganda.16

The World Veterans Federation  35 In a context marked by the international tensions of the early stages of the Korean War, the foundational conference of the WFV was held in Paris in November 1950. The resulting organization, initially named International Federation of War Veterans Organizations,17 was characterized by a clear American preponderance, even if Paris became the site for the headquarters, and the Frenchman Albert Morel was elected President. The most important leadership position, that of Secretary General, was reserved for an American veteran from Amvets: Elliot H. Newcomb. Gilbert Harrison from the AVC was instrumental in providing important resources.18 These leaders gave the WVF an outspoken anti-communist outlook. After the foundational conference, the New York Times interviewed Newcomb and published the headline “World veterans aim at ‘real peace’ – ‘Genuine’, Not Russia’s ‘Phony’ Variety”.19 The official aims of the WVF were to maintain international peace and to promote the rights and well-being of veterans and victims of war. The organization stated allegiance to the San Francisco Charter and placed itself squarely behind the UN. Indeed, the WVF soon obtained consultative status with the UN. However, this alignment should not be confused with neutrality in the Cold War: The WVF intended to act as a “permanent non-Communist, non-governmental arm of the United Nations”.20 Significantly, one of Newcomb’s first actions after taking up his post in Paris was visiting the NATO Supreme Allied Commander in ­Europe, Dwight Eisenhower, and pledging him the support of the WVF.21 Much can be understood about the trajectory of the WVF by considering the process of its creation, as summarized earlier. The subsequent history of the WVF, however, is long, complex and – until now – unknown to historians. The next sections will shed light on this hitherto obscured history and will explore the membership, leadership, funding and activities of the organization since 1950. To conclude, I will offer an interpretation of the history of the WVF on the basis of my exploration of archival sources.

Membership and leadership As an international non-governmental organization, the WVF welcomed member associations from different countries rather than national representatives. However, the country of origin of the associations and their representatives played an important role as an organizational criterion. Nation states were represented in the WVF through the organizations that decided to join independently, but the representativeness of the member associations varied. For instance, France became represented in the WVF through the UFAC, itself a confederation of numerous French associations. The UFAC representatives in the WVF, however, were selected equitably among the ­diverse French associations affiliated with UFAC, from the communist ­Association Républicaine des Anciens Combattants (ARAC) to the conservative Union Nationale des Combattants (UNC). Thus, it was often the case that the French voting record in the WVF showed fragmentation.

36  Ángel Alcalde In the case of the United States, the AVC, Amvets and Disabled American Veterans were represented in the WVF, but the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars – the most important veteran associations in terms of national membership – declined to take part. During the first half of the 1950s, British veterans were represented in the WVF by a number of small associations, but most British veteran organizations, including the influential British Legion and the British Empire Services League, did not join. Exceptionally, an international organization of prisoners of war, the Confédération Internationale des Anciens Prisonniers de Guerre, was also admitted as a supranational member of the WVF.22 This organizational structure was one of the reasons behind the WVF success. On the one hand, the WVF was generally well regarded by the UN because the diverse WVF member organizations were influential in their respective countries; the WVF offered the UN a way of expanding its influence in different regions of the world, particularly in Asia and Africa. As one UN official from the Economic and Social Council confidentially put it in 1952, the WVF “seems to be our guinea-pig NGO!”.23 On the other hand, the WVF was seen by many veterans’ groups from different countries as a platform to transmit their claims to wider and higher audiences. This was particularly important for newly independent countries during the protracted process of decolonization in South-East Asia and Africa. Therefore, during the period of expansion of the WVF in the 1950s and 1960s, the admission process for organizations from new countries was a source of intense internal debate and political manoeuvring.24 Observing which countries were represented at the WVF is telling because it clearly shows the impact of Cold War geopolitical divisions on the transnational sphere. The first preparatory meetings leading to the foundation of the WVF, held between 1946 and 1949, were attended by French (always the organizers), Belgian, Dutch, South African, Brazilian and American veterans. The foundational conference of November 1950 was attended by French, American, Belgian, Finnish, Italian, Turkish and Yugoslav veterans; there were observers from Canada and Denmark, and associations from Greece, the Netherlands, Israel, Luxemburg and the Philippines communicated their desire to join the WVF. No contacts were established with veterans from the Soviet Union and China, despite the fact that there were millions of men with war experience in these countries. In July 1951, an “emergency” conference on international security was held by the WVF in Rome. This event clearly showed the balance of power between countries: From the ten WVF member nations at that point, the United States and France sent ten representatives each, while Yugoslavia, Belgium, Greece and Israel sent three to five delegates, with the remaining countries sending just one or two.25 By November 1951, when the first WVF General ­Assembly took place in Belgrade, the organizational and membership structure had been well defined; the United States and France, controlling the general-secretariat and the presidency, were the leading countries. The post of Secretary-Treasurer

The World Veterans Federation  37 fell to Dutch veteran and former prisoner of war Colonel Willem Charles (Bib) van Lanschot. The WVF Council was composed of nine members, one per every other country represented at the organization: Belgium, the Philippines, Yugoslavia, Israel, Greece, Canada, Luxemburg and Norway, plus the international (actually a Frenchman) representative of prisoners of war (POWs). In addition, six vice presidents were elected from this pool ­ anadian Alfred of council members: Yugoslav General Miloje Milojevic, C John Wickens, Luxembourg national Rudy Ensch, the Philippines’ representative Amado Bautista, Greek Georges D. ­Calogeropoulos and ­Belgian Joseph Neves. The very prominent Yugoslav participation in the WVF is crucial to ­understanding the impact of the Cold War in the organization. Not only was the first WVF general assembly held in Belgrade in November 1951, but it also featured a speech by Marshall Tito. Yugoslav General Miloje Milojevic exerted an important role inside the organization. Given the fact that the WVF had earlier revealed a clear anti-communist inclination, the importance of Yugoslavia in the organization can only be understood as a reflection of the American “wedge” strategy to attract this socialist country into the United States’ orbit after the 1947 split between Tito and Stalin.26 Another unstated criterion for the participation of countries as members or observers in the WVF meetings seems to have been NATO ­membership.27 The WVF was not a NATO league of veterans, and the UN was clearly the institutional reference for the WVF leaders, rather than the A ­ tlantic ­Alliance. However, the reality is that no Soviet representatives and no veteran organizations from Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia aside, became part of the federation until the last stage of the Cold War. Spanish veterans under the Franco regime were never invited to join. For veteran associations from different countries, one of the key reasons not to join the WVF was that the latter seemed inclined to undertake political action and express political opinions. This was the main alleged reason why Finnish veterans withdrew their initial commitment, and important British groups remained reluctant to participate. Interestingly, beyond the Western world, it was the Philippines, a former colony of the United States and still a springboard of American influence over South-East Asia, that was the first country from Asia or Africa to join the WVF (1951). In addition, veterans from Pakistan, but not from India, soon showed interest in joining. Indian veterans of the Second World War were still under the control of the British Empire Services League, which remained as aloof as the British Legion regarding membership of the WVF. Later, small independent organizations of Indian veterans joined the WVF, but the British organizations were reluctant to accept them. Pro-Western veteran leaders from Nigeria and South Korea also sent observers to the 1951 Belgrade conference. However, it was not until the mid-1950s that the leaders of the WVF gained a firm foothold in Asia, thanks to a number of research and networking trips to the region – particularly to the South

38  Ángel Alcalde Table 3.1  W VF leadership Presidents 1950–1957 – Albert Morel (France) 1957–1994 – Willem C.J.M. van Lanschot (the Netherlands) 1994–1997 – Major General Bjorn Egge (Norway) 1997–2000 – Serge Wourgaft (France) 2000–2014 – Datuk Abdul Hamid Ibrahim (Malaysia) Secretary Generals 1950–1954 – Elliot Newcomb (United States) 1954–1961 – Curtis Campaigne (United States) 1961–1967 – Norman Acton (United States) 1967–1976 – William O. Cooper (United States) 1976–1997 – Serge Wourgaft (France) 1997–2007 – Marek Hagmajer (Poland) 2007–2015 – Mohammed Benjelloun (Morocco) Treasurer-Generals 1950–1951 – Roger Parmelan (France) 1951–1957 – Willem C.J.M. van Lanschot (the Netherlands) 1957–1961 – Georges Cordier (Belgium) 1961–1991 – Vittorio Badini-Confallonieri (Italy) 1997–2000 – Datuk Abdul Hamid Ibrahim (Malaysia) 2000–2012 – David Trevor Knowles (United Kingdom) 2012–2015 – Lieutenant General Remco Seijn (the Netherlands)

East – and the opening of a WVF office in Bangkok. This strategy was conducted in collaboration with the UN’s NGOs division and had aimed to ­debilitate the British Empire Services League’s influence in the region.28 Even after associations of veterans from Asian and African countries started to join the WVF, one can safely state that, during the first decades of its existence, the “W” of the organization’s initials stood for “Western” rather than for “World”. The nationalities of the members of the executive committee (President, Secretary General and Secretary-Treasurer) confirm this clearly Western character (Table 3.1).29

Funding The issue of funding the WVF was often discussed by external observers ­because it seemed to be shrouded in secrecy. Where did the money come from? The most simple answer would be the United States. However, the finances of the WVF were always complex. When the organization was founded, an annual fee for all member organizations was established. Yet the total amount thus collected was clearly inadequate to form an international organization with ambitious aims such as maintaining international peace. A lot of financial and material resources were needed. During the preparatory meetings leading to the creation of the WVF, Gilbert Harrison from the AVC offered to provide a generous figure. He was indeed instrumental in collecting part of the initial sum needed to launch the WVF. The New York Times reported that

The World Veterans Federation  39 Gilbert Harrison had been financially ­supported by the ­Carnegie ­Endowment for International Peace.30 Between the days of the foundational conference in November 1950 and the beginning of WVF activities in Paris, the elected Secretary General Elliot Newcomb – a former salesman – also conducted fundraising activities in the United States. This strategy proved successful. A substantial amount of funding from American private donors allowed the WVF leaders to set up an office in Paris, hire personal and pay for several networking trips to different European countries during 1951. Newcomb’s salary as full-time Secretary General was said to be quite high ($10,000 per year). This income reportedly allowed him to be “sitting pretty in Paris” with his wife and son.31 In short, it is true that, as critical observers inside and outside the WVF often pointed out, much of the money came mostly from the United States, especially from members of a rich elite of East-coast liberal philanthropists. One of the known wealthy backers, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt Jr., who had served in the Second World War, became president of World Veterans Fund Incorporated, an organization exclusively devoted to collecting money for the WVF. This entity had close contacts with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In its fundraising activities, the World Veterans Fund took advantage of the fact that Harold Russell, a disabled veteran and leader of Amvets, was very famous in the United States for having won two Oscars for his role in William Wyler’s movie The Best Years of our Lives (1946). ­Harold Russell enthusiastically participated in many WVF activities and fundraising campaigns. Favourable legislation on tax exemptions for charitable donors in the United States accounted for the fact that in the mid-1950s, American private donations provided the bulk of the WVF budget. This was no small sum: By 1955, the WVF’s annual budget was around $1  million. Cognizant of the origin of the funds, different European leaders of the WVF tried to correct this dependency on American money, but fundraising activities in Europe were never as successful as in the United States.32 Despite substantial income, the WVF experienced financial difficulties in different periods. Most commonly, member organizations did not pay their fees on time. Expenses on propaganda and publicity were staggering, because the organization published a high-quality monthly magazine, New Era / Ère Nouvelle, edited in both English and French. The production costs of New Era, later renamed The World Veteran, by far exceeded the sales and income for publicity. In addition, the WVF headquarters published a weekly newsletter that was sent to all member organizations throughout the world. Hiring prestigious experts and advisors for generous amounts of money was common practice. In 1952, the year of the WVF’s consolidation, the organization received 1.25 m ­ illion French francs in donations, but expenses amounted to approximately 3 ­m illion.33 It is easy to understand why the position of treasurer-general in the WVF was not merely an administrative position but a key political role. In 1951, the first WVF treasurer-general, Roger Parmelan, was replaced by Colonel van ­Lanschot, who managed the organizations’ finances until 1957. Proof of the

40  Ángel Alcalde relevance of his post is that in 1957 van Lanschot was elected President of ­ urtis ­Campaigne, WVF the WVF, a position he held until 1994. Similarly, C Secretary General between 1954 and 1961, had previously been Executive Director of the World Veterans Fund.34 Dependency on private sources of income undoubtedly conditioned the range of activities and the political orientation of the WVF. As time went on, fundraising activities in the United States became increasingly difficult. As the president of the World Veterans Fund Alfred G. Vanderbilt told the Secretary General of the WVF, Norman Acton, in 1964, there was a strong feeling that it becomes constantly less necessary or proper for contributors in the United States to finance practically all the costs of an international organization with membership in 51 countries, many of which show signs of steadily advancing economic stability.35 In the early 1960s, WVF leaders were obliged to make an effort “to adjust the functions of the WVF so that it might carry out […] activities more specifically in accord with the interests of the sponsors”.36 As stated in an internal confidential document written in 1961, clear objectives had to be agreed upon if the WVF wanted to retain financial support: The first aim of the WVF should thus be “to maintain control of the international veterans movement by forestalling Communist efforts to penetrate the organization”.37 It was argued that, if possible, not only should Western understandings of peace, freedom and justice prevail, but also certain organizations and national representatives should be given greater weight. The WVF should work “to disseminate facts and opinion which [are] generally compatible with the interests of the US” while demonstrating “the value of free communication”.38 However, the WVF should not operate “as an overtly pro-US or pro-West institution”, and for this reason, the principles of the organization should be tied to the San Francisco Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.39 As we see, if one ascribes relevance to the origin of the funds and to the influence of donors in the activities of the WVF, criticism of some observers who dismissed the organization as one serving American interests should be taken seriously. However, after 1967, the flow of money from the United States to the WVF rapidly dried out. Having received fewer and fewer funds since the late 1960s, the organizations’ range of activities shrank, and its number of employees decreased. In 1967, World Veteran transformed into a quarterly publication. This decline was slow and relentless, and it implied a profound ­reconfiguration of the WVF during the final periods of the Cold War. The availability and origin of funds, therefore, profoundly marked the level and quality of activities conducted by the WVF.

Activities For decades, the WVF conducted a broad range of activities. Broadly speaking, there were two main fields of interest for veterans: international

The World Veterans Federation  41 peace and rehabilitation. The history of the WVF can be divided into three different of periods marked by the preferential focus of the organization on distinct kinds of activities. This periodization overlaps with different phases determined by changes in leadership, availability of funds and wider ­international and global transformations, particularly in the transnational sphere of international organizations. If – according to a classical ­periodization – 1945–1955 were the “years of western domination”, and 1955–1965 were “the age of decolonization” for the history of the UN,40 one might argue that the WVF’s trajectory was also shaped in this manner. ­ eneral In the first years of WVF activity under the leadership of Secretary G Elliot Newcomb (1950–1954), there were clear intentions to intervene in ­international issues related to war and peace. In other words, the WVF under American leadership was a sort of Cold War weapon. As ­Harold Stagg, editor of the influential Army Times, a newspaper for US Army personnel, transmitted to American President Harry Truman on 11 September 1951, the WVF was “making great progress in fighting communism in Europe”.41 However, some European and especially British veterans were not so keen to see the WVF advance in this direction. The British Foreign Office was happy for British veterans to join the WVF, but it was not pleased with their mingling in international affairs.42 The affiliation of a number of minor British associations to the WVF and the fact that the Third WVF General Assembly was held in London at the end of 1952, contributed to expanding the WVF’s focus on veterans’ rehabilitation, to the detriment of other political activities. Particularly under the leadership of Secretary General Curtis Campaigne (1954–1961), the WVF gained enormous prestige with regards to its international activities on the field of veterans’ rehabilitation during the mid-1950s and 1960s, not only in the West but also in Asia and Africa. Thus, rehabilitation was the focus of the second period in the history of the WVF. However, Cold War rivalries and important political processes such as decolonization deeply marked this phase. As the WVF lost much of its financial resources from the late 1960s, the organization entered a new period in which expensive projects in the field of veterans’ rehabilitation and development could not be funded. The interests of the organization refocussed on issues of disarmament and peace, thus contributing to the Cold War context of détente. In the last stages of the Cold War, the WVF took up the task of disseminating a global culture of peace and peacekeeping, embracing issues such as the defence of human rights. In short, focus on Cold War politics first; rehabilitation and development, second; and disarmament and global peace third, marked three overlapping periods in the history of the WVF. However, all these themes were always present to some extent in all periods of activity. The activities of the WVF can be seen in a different light when viewed in conjunction with processes of post-1945 globalization and the emergence of the so-called “global community” of international organizations.43 Similar to many other international non-governmental organizations, the WVF served as a forum for the exchange of information across borders and

42  Ángel Alcalde carried out projects in different parts of the world in order to fulfil its aims. In the public sphere, the WVF constantly tried to transmit the voice of veterans to leaders, policymakers and the wider public. WVF representatives spent a great deal of time on networking activities and liaising with other organizations. Periodically, the WVF held general assemblies. In the first years of existence, these assemblies were annual. From 1957, they were biannual, and from 1967, they were tri-annual (Table 3.2).44 In these international meetings, member organizations presented, ­debated and voted resolutions to be officially adopted by the WVF. Such resolutions were usually messages sent to the international community, to all governments, and to the UN, urging them to take measures on issues that veterans considered a threat to international peace. Other resolutions were policy decisions to be implemented by the WVF with its own resources for the benefit of the international community of veterans and victims of war. Negotiations within the WVF to agree on the resolutions’ content and wording usually were slow and lengthy. A great deal of time was spent discussing internal affairs, such as slight amendments to the federation’s statutes and regulations, the exact composition of committees and subcommittees, and the agendas of meetings. However, after reaching an agreement, certain projects were Table 3.2  W  VF general assemblies 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th 19th 20th 21st 22nd 23rd 24th 25th 26th 27th 28th

23–27 Nov. 1950 27–30 Nov. 1951 8–11 Nov. 1952 16–19 Nov. 1953 29 Nov. – 2 Dec. 1954 28 May – 1 June 1956 28 Oct. – 1 Nov. 1957 13–17 Apr. 1959 8–12 May 1961 6–10 May 1963 1–5 May 1965 9–13 Oct. 1967 31 Aug. – 4 Sept. 1970 26–30 Nov. 1973 11–15 Oct. 1976 13–16 Oct. 1979 24–27 Oct. 1982 18–22 Nov. 1985 7–11 Nov. 1988 20–24 Oct. 1991 2–6 Dec. 1994 10–15 Nov. 1997 4–8 Dec. 2000 1–5 Dec. 2003 2–7 Dec. 2006 19–23 Oct. 2009 18–22 Nov. 2012 31 Aug. – 4 Sept. 2015

Paris (France) Belgrade (Yugoslavia) London (United Kingdom) The Hague (the Netherlands) Vienna (Austria) Brussels (Belgium) Berlin (Germany) Rome (Italy) Paris (France) Copenhagen (Denmark) Lausanne (Switzerland) The Hague (the Netherlands) Vienna (Austria) Paris (France) Maastricht (the Netherlands) Florence (Italy) Nice (France) Rotterdam (the Netherlands) Manila (the Philippines) Helsinki (Finland) Bordeaux (France) Seoul (South Korea) Paris (France) Johannesburg (South Africa) Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) Copenhagen (Denmark) Dead Sea (Jordan) Sopot (Poland)

The World Veterans Federation  43 implemented with considerable rapidity and effectiveness. In the realm of disabled veterans’ rehabilitation, in which differences of opinion were less likely to emerge, the WVF was remarkably successful. Important conferences of experts in rehabilitation were held during the 1950s and 1960s. The organization published bulletins and publications on disabled veterans’ affairs, such as comparative studies of pension schemes, prosthetics, rehabilitation, etc. From the mid-1950s, the WVF made substantial efforts to bring technical improvements to veterans in Third World countries. Apart from the general assemblies, the WVF held extraordinary conferences on different topics and produced a large number of studies and publications. A complete list of the initiatives undertaken over six decades would be too long for the purposes of this chapter, but it is worth mentioning a few of them. In July 1951, for instance, an “emergency” conference on international security was held in Rome. This was a bold first action taken by WVF veterans on the international public stage. There, the veterans decided to create a WVF special “committee on the defence of peace” that would be entrusted to carry out “on-the-spot investigations” in regions of the world where there was a credible menace to international peace. This project, however, was a failure given the practical and political problems it involved.45 Later on, in 1955 in Paris, the WVF held a conference on European affairs, where a wide range of topics related to European integration were discussed. In November 1958, an international conference on veterans’ legislation was held in The Hague, the Netherlands. After this event, exhaustive comparative studies of legislation concerning veterans and victims of war were published.46 In 1959, in Aarhus, Denmark, the WVF organized a 20-day International Seminar on Prejudice and Discrimination, with the participation of students from 31 countries and different racial backgrounds.47 During the 1960s, the WVF held special conferences on East Asian and African affairs. Between 1964 and 1967, the WVF published the quarterly magazine Disarmament, which aimed to be the veterans’ international voice within wider debates on disarmament and proliferation. In the late 1960s, the WVF commissioned a wide study on the “peaceful uses of military forces” in the world, which can be seen as a steppingstone to the expansion and institutionalization of UN peacekeeping and disaster-­relief interventions.48 The principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the San Francisco Charter of the UN inspired these initiatives.

Cold War politics, decolonization, globalization The WVF’s long-standing allegiance to the UN, Human Rights and international peace, however noble, should not be misinterpreted as neutrality. Veterans’ “internationalism” should not simply be equated to “pacifism” and utopianism.49 Historians should not take the WVF’s motto, “None can speak more eloquently for peace than those who have fought in war”, at face value. During the interwar period, numerous actors put forward this

44  Ángel Alcalde very same argument to justify the veterans’ participation in international diplomacy, and the list of personalities that stated the same commonplace include conspicuous names such as Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess and Hermann Goering.50 In fact, the actual aims and purposes of employing the notion of “peace” in veterans’ politics varied widely. Since the interwar period, there existed several versions of veterans’ internationalism, and veterans as transnational actors displayed a variegated range of political and ideological positions regarding the problem of international peace.51 The same reality can be observed after the Second World War. The task of the historian is to analyse the complex historical processes and realities that lay behind the rosy public image of themselves offered by historical actors. Scholars have only recently started to critically approach the history of the UN and the constellation of international agencies and organizations that surround it.52 Contextualizing and dissecting the veterans’ transnational sphere remains crucial to transcending superficial perceptions of historical actors who represented a substantial sector of the population in Western countries after 1945. To this day, veterans are still an influential group in many countries around the world. Without proper contextualization and critical analysis of the WVF, we are left with a simply anecdotic and irrelevant account of an international organization with seemingly little historical impact. What was the historical significance of the WVF? The answer must refer to three large and deeply interrelated historical processes that characterized the second half of the twentieth century: the Cold War, decolonization and globalization.53 The transnational sphere under the UN umbrella to which the WVF belonged intersected with these three processes. Therefore, the history of the WVF was an integral part of this threefold macro-narrative of the long post-war after 1945. The exact role of the WVF in these three important historical processes that marked the second half of the twentieth century cannot yet be fully assessed here, but it is possible to offer a number of conclusions. I have pointed out above that the WVF operated under the hegemony of American veterans who shared a liberal internationalist ideology that strived to “contain” international communism. The political history of the WVF until the 1980s needs to be seen through this lens. There were several important moments that marked the evolution of the WVF as a reverberation of the Cold War. Most importantly, the history of the Fédération I­ nternationale des Résistants (FIR) should be examined in conjunction with the history of the WVF. Sometimes, the activities of one were partially a reaction to the moves of the other. In 1954, for instance, the WVF’s general assembly in ­Vienna was replicated by a “Cultural Congress” held by the International Federation of Resistance Fighters (FIR) in the same city. ­According to officials of the US State Department who observed these developments, the Kremlin was “impressed with the achievements, the growth and the truly democratic orientation of the WVF” and reacted accordingly.54 In the mid1950s, there were serious attempts by the Soviet Union to penetrate the WVF,

The World Veterans Federation  45 which ultimately proved unsuccessful.55 The leaders of the WVF managed to prevent the Italian communist Associazione N ­ azionale Partigiani d’Italia from joining the federation, although the association had complied with all the bureaucratic procedures to apply for membership. The inner political struggles for domination of the WVF were hidden from public view and cannot be analysed by using exclusively published sources. The archives of the WVF are rich in official internal documents, but often, the image they convey matches the official public version. Sources from the US State ­Department, the British Foreign Office and private archives allow us to observe the political intricacies and significance of the WVF activities in the Cold War context. It seems clear that during the 1950s and 1960s the great powers had an interest in the WVF as an important actor of the Cold War at the level of international civil society. However, it is also true that when the WVF became a truly international organization transcending Cold War divisions in the late 1970s and 1980s, during which time it established friendly contacts with FIR and with Soviet veterans, the Federation lost much political interest from state powers. As a British Foreign Office officer put it in 1982, the WVF was not withstanding “the blandishment of international front organisations” anymore and therefore it should be considered as “well-meaning but, politically, in most respects a broken reed”.56 It is important to highlight that Cold War struggles inside the veterans’ transnational sphere not only concerned Europe but also the rest of the world. As Odd Arne Westad compellingly demonstrated,57 the Cold War intersected with processes of decolonization in the Third World. Since the late 1950s, the economic “development” of Asian and African regions of the world became another field of confrontation between superpowers.58 The WVF is a crucial example of how not only government elites in the United States and other powers, but also transnational independent actors promoted new ways of maintaining and gaining Western influence in new postcolonial nation states during the 1960s. In turn, with the WVF, veterans from the Third World gained an outlet to promote their causes internationally. Given the political potential of international exchange programs for veterans, this kind of WVF project was the cause of intense manoeuvring within the organization. For instance, from the correspondence maintained in June 1962 between Gisbert H. Flanz, an employee of the WVF Department of UN Affairs based in New York, and Judge Hubert Will, an influential member of the American delegation to the WVF, we learn that a political struggle took place between the ­Yugoslav and American members of the WVF to attract the allegiance of new member countries at that time.59 According to Flanz, WVF council members from India, Ghana and Indonesia were “strongly committed to ‘neutralism’”, and veterans from Nigeria and Sierra Leona had been involved in the “neutralist manoeuvres” led by Yugoslavs.60 However, Americans were still interested in inviting member associations from Morocco and Mali “to participate in exchange programs” in the United States since such visits “might produce other beneficial effects” beyond the mere “technical (medical) exchange”.61

46  Ángel Alcalde As we can see through the case of the WVF, the global Cold War interacted with the “global community” of international organizations in more complex ways than historians have pointed out.62 The apparent global reach of the WVF is remarkable and deserves attention. A substantial amount of correspondence and other documents detailing international contacts between veterans bears testament to the global dimension of the WVF network. It is striking to observe how quickly the first initial contact between a few French and Belgian veterans in the late 1940s developed into a fully fledged global network of individuals, associations and institutions (mainly thanks to the power and money of A ­ merican veteran leaders). During the 1950s, the WVF leaders were able to fly regularly over the Atlantic, thus connecting the Paris headquarters with the Federation’s New York-based sources of power, money and influence. A fast-growing transnational sphere of international agencies led by the UN also allowed the WVF to expand. The veterans established numerous close contacts with UN agencies and other international non-governmental ­organizations based in Paris, Geneva and beyond. In this regard, the WVF amply surpassed the restricted and largely unsuccessful activities of international veterans’ organizations in the interwar period such as FIDAC and CIAMAC. Probably, a secret of the WVF’s success was transcending the old FIDAC and CIAMAC insistence on remembering the war experience and glorifying the fallen soldiers either as heroes or as victims. Maintaining the memory of war did not figure prominently among the aims of the WVF in the post-war era. Thus, the WVF was capable to develop a more widely shared culture of peace among veterans from very different countries. Most importantly, with its more pragmatic approach, the WVF transcended the European and North American boundaries to embrace veterans’ associations from the rest of the world. Undoubtedly, new technologies of telecommunication and transport allowed for such expansion and ever-growing interconnection. Globalization, however, did not mean homogenization, nor an equal distribution of power, resources and influence. Veterans from the Third World did not attain any substantial influence in the governing bodies of the WVF until the 1960s. It was not until the late 1980s that WVF general assemblies were held in non-European countries. In a sense, the history of the WVF thus parallels that of the UN. The inclusion of dozens of newly independent countries during the 1960s into the UN came at the price of the UN’s decreasing world influence and increasing bureaucratization. The history of the WVF seems to have gone through a similar process by which the ­organization lost much of its relevance in the West. Other factors, such as the impact of the Vietnam War on the Western countries’ popular perception of the symbol of the veteran probably contributed to the diminishing public presence of veterans as a respected group in international civil ­society. The globalization of international veterans’ affairs after 1945 was an uneven process whose precise contours still need to be discovered.

The World Veterans Federation  47

Notes 1 www.wvf-fmac.org/ (accessed 15 June 2017). Most of the official documents produced by the WVF in more than 60 years of history are kept in an archive in the WVF Paris headquarters (hereafter WVFA). I thank the personnel of the WVF headquarters for granting me access to this archive. 2 Akira Iriye, “A Century of NGOs”, Diplomatic History 23:3 (1999), 421–435. 3 In 2008, Mark Edele stated that “this organization still awaits its historian”, Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War. A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 162. 4 “Transnational sphere” means “the space where encounters across national borders took place”; the “transnational sphere materialized in a number of forms […] international organizations, gatherings of experts, international congresses, publications and journals”; see Davide Rodogno, Bernhard Struck and Jacob Vogel (eds.), Shaping the Transnational Sphere. Experts, Networks and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s (Oxford: Berghahn, 2014), 2. 5 James M. Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland: German Veterans after the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993). 6 Agostino Bistarelli, La storia del ritorno. I reduci italiani del secondo dopoguerra (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2007). 7 Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation. Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Jean-Paul Cointet, La Légion Française des Combattants. 1940–1944 La tentation du fascisme (Paris: Albin-Michel, 1995). 8 Michael D. Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home. The Veteran in American Society (College Station: Texas A&M University, 2005). 9 Robert S. Saxe, Settling Down. World War II Veterans’ Challenge to the Postwar Consensus (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 10 Edele, Soviet Veterans. 11 Joanna Wawrzyniak, Veterans, Victims, and Memory. The Politics of the Second World War in Communist Poland (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2015); Heike Karge, Steinerne Erinnerung – versteinerte Erinnerung? Kriegsgedenken in Jugoslawien (1947–1970) (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2010), 44–45. 12 FIAPP was the precursor of FIR; see Václav Smidrkal’s chapter in this volume. 13 On FIDAC and CIAMAC see Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman (eds.), The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 14 WVFA, Assamblée constitutive Paris 1950; WVFA, Dossier 58, folder “Foundation”. 15 Timothy Johnston, “Peace or Pacifism? The Soviet ‘Struggle for Peace in All the World’, 1948–54’”, The Slavonic and East European Review 86:2 (2008), 259–282; Weston Ullrich, “Preventing ‘peace’: The British government and the Second World Peace Congress”, Cold War History 11:3 (2011), 341–362. 16 Ilya V. Gaiduk, Divided Together. The United States and the Soviet Union in the United Nations, 1945–1965 (Washington/Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press, 2012). 17 This name was changed to WVF in 1951. See WVFA, General Assembly Belgrade 1951. 18 WVFA, Assamblée constitutive Paris 1950. 19 The New York Times (New York), 2 December 1950. 20 Sunday Herald (Bridgeport, CT), 31 December 1950; see too Toledo Blade (Toledo, OH), 26 December 1950. 21 WVFA, Docs 500–734, DOC/500/Jan 51 and DOC/501/Jan 51. 22 Organizational matters can be followed through the WVF Executive Committee sessions, for instance WVFA, Paris avril Rome juillet Bruxelles sept 1951.

48  Ángel Alcalde 23 Laszlo Hamori (NGO Section, ECOSOC Secretariat) to Y. Van Muydem (NGO Section) (12 December 1952), United Nations Archives (New York), AG-025, S-0441, box 27, folder 9. 24 Numerous examples in WVFA, Council Istanbul 1952; Council 1953; Council 1954; Executive Board 1955–1956; Council 1956–1957; Council 1957 1958 1959; Council Rome April 1959 Oslo May 1960. Author’s interview with Serge Wourgaft, Paris (19 September 2017). 25 La Voix du Combattant (Paris), 1153 (October 1951). 26 See Lorraine M. Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat. The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). 27 On the origins of NATO see Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO before the Korean War. April 1949-June 1950 (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2013). 28 United Nations Archives (New York), AG-025, S-0441, box 27, folder 9. 29 WVFA, multiple sources. 30 The New York Times, 16 December 1951. 31 Sunday Herald, 31 December 1950. 32 WVFA, Sixth General Assembly Bruxelles 1956. 33 WVFA, General Council 1953. 34 WVFA, Dossier 64 “Biographies membres FMAC”. 35 Gelman Library, George Washington University (Washington, DC), American Veterans Committee Records, box 232, folder 2 “World Veterans Fund”. 36 Gelman Library, AVC Records, box 230, folder 5 “Will, Hubert. Correspondence 1961–1962”. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Evan Luard, A History of the United Nations. Volume I: The Years of Western Domination, 1950–1955 (London: Macmillan, 1982); Ibid., A History of the United Nations. Volume II: The Age of Decolonization, 1955–1965 (London: Macmillan, 1989). 41 Truman Library (Independence, MO), Presidential Appointments Calendar (Matthew J. Connelly Files), 11 September 1951. 42 National Archives (Kew), FO 1110/548, Pr 145/3. 43 Akira Iriye, Global Community. The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 44 WVFA, various sources. 45 WVFA, Commission for the Defence of Peace 1950–1953. 46 Claude-Henry Petit (ed.), The Annals of Comparative Legislation Concerning Veterans and Victims of War (Paris: WVF, 1959). 47 Report of the International Seminar on Prejudice and Discrimination. Aarhus – 1959 (Paris: WVF, 1959). 48 Hugh Hanning, The Peaceful Uses of Military Forces (New York, 1967); Norrie Macqueen, The United Nations since 1945: Peacekeeping and the Cold War ­(London: Longman, 1999). 49 As is the case in Eichenberg and Newman, The Great War. 50 For instance, see Il Popolo d’Italia (Milan), 16 February 1937. 51 Ángel Alcalde, “War Veterans as Transnational Actors: Politics, Alliances and Networks in the Interwar Period”, European Review of History, forthcoming. 52 Jussi Hahnimäki, United Nations: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

The World Veterans Federation  49 53 Akira Iriye (ed.), Global Interdependence. The World after 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 54 Memorandum (14 December 1954), in National Archives and Records Administration, College Park (NARA), RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, Subject Files of the Policy Plans and Guidance Staff 1946–1962, folder “World Veteran’s Federation, 1953–1954”. 55 Edele, Soviet Veterans, 162–164. 56 National Archives (Kew), FCO 26/2289. 57 Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 58 David C. Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haefele and Michael E. Latham (eds.), Staging Growth. Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003). 59 Gelman Library, AVC Records, box 223, folder 10 “Conference on European Affairs”. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Cf. Iriye, Global Community, 65.

Part II

Race and Decolonization

4 South African veterans and the institutionalization of apartheid in South Africa Jonathan Fennell

It is a recurring theme of this book that combatants are affected by war in profound and long-lasting ways.1 Veterans form distinct cohorts in post-war polities, and as such, they warrant attention as discreet historical ­actors. This chapter, by focussing on the attitudes and voting behaviours of ­veterans of the Second World War, explores how they shaped the post-war sociopolitical construct in South Africa. The Union of South Africa – a dominion of the British Empire until 1961 – entered the Second World War in 1939 in support of The British and Commonwealth war effort. A total of 186,218 white South Africans volunteered for the armed forces during the war, while the participation of black, coloured and Indian South Africans was more limited: Although the non-white population was four times bigger than that of white South ­Africa, only 122,254 non-white men volunteered.2 These soldiers were usually deployed in auxiliary roles. By making use of new sources, in particular 234 reports based on the censorship of mail sent between the battle and home fronts during the Second World War,3 this chapter argues that a coincidence of interest and attitudes emerged as a consequence of the conflict. I argue that this convergence led white veterans to vote for the Herenigde Nasionale Party (­Reunited National Party, HNP), an Afrikaner led nationalist platform, in the 1948 general ­election. The unexpected Nationalist victory was dependent on narrow majorities in key districts,4 but it had long-lasting consequences in South Africa. The HNP’s victory ushered in formalized apartheid under Prime Minister ­Daniel François Malan, the nationalist Afrikaner leader of the HNP. The system of apartheid institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa until its demise in 1991. It is likely that the veterans’ franchise proved decisive in the epoch-defining election of 1948. This chapter explores a number of dynamics that radicalized and politicalized white soldiers during the war. The censorship reports show, for example, that white soldiers were deeply affected by their shared experience of the front line, leading to the development of a new spirit of social solidarity among white South Africans, a sentiment coined “South Africanism” by some scholars.5 Another set of dynamics, however, negatively affected the relationship between white and black and

54  Jonathan Fennell coloured South Africans. On the home front, the government’s inability to ensure anything close to equality of sacrifice meant that ­working-class and ­m iddle-class whites found themselves squeezed from the top by ­i ndustrialists and from the bottom by black labour. On the battlefront, “attempts to augment white fighting units by arming black soldiers ­faltered in the face of white South African racial sensitivities”.6 The powerful forces of combat cohesion did not play out for white and black and coloured servicemen. In these circumstances, dissatisfaction with the way the war was m ­ anaged took on a racial element, while, paradoxically, there was an urgent desire to be rid of “racialism” between English- and ­A frikaans-speaking segments of society. Thus, the conditions for institutionalized apartheid were substantially shaped by the experience of the war.

The 1943 general election At first glance, the suggestion that South African veterans voted for the Nationalists in 1948 does not seem convincing. While detailed statistics of how ex-soldiers voted in 1948 are not available, they are available for the 1943 general election. They show that soldiers voted overwhelmingly for the United Party (UP), led by General Jan Smuts, the South African Prime Minister. The UP was the main opponent of the Nationalists in 1948 (see Table 4.1). A total of 83,131 ballots were cast by service personnel in June and July 1943, 9.39 per cent of all votes counted (885, 623). The results showed overwhelming support among soldiers for the pro-war government parties (the UP, the Labour Party and the Dominion Party);7 no less than 92 per cent of soldiers voted for government parties as compared to 54 per cent of civilians. In contrast, the two main opposition parties, the HNP and the Afrikaner Party, together polled a paltry 4.1 per cent of the soldiers’ vote, while they won a more impressive 41 per cent of the civilian franchise.8 Table 4.1  Percentages of party votes in the South African General Election of 1943: the civilian and forces vote.9 Party

Civilian vote

Forces vote

Total

United Party (UP) Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP) Labour Party (LP) Dominion Party (DP) Afrikaner Party (AP) Socialist Party (SP) Independent Labour Independent (including Volksensheeid) Government parties (UP, LP, DP)

46.4 39.2 4.5 3.1 1.8 0.8 0.1 4.2 54

78.1 3.6 8.2 5.8 0.5 0.9 0.2 2.7 92

49.3 36.0 4.8 3.3 1.7 0.8 0.1 4.0 57

South African veterans and the institutionalization of apartheid  55 The HNP’s appalling set of results in the soldiers’ vote in 1943 is all the more perplexing considering that the experience of the war had clearly, ­according to a wide range of sources, stirred “left-wing” and communitarian tendencies among British and Commonwealth troops; the HNP had a largely “left leaning” manifesto. The South African Military Censorship Summary for the ­period 1 to 20 August 1942, for example, pointed to a “growing Leftist leaning among soldiers”, especially among members of the Springbok Legion. Calls to win the war were “coupled with cries for Governmental reform”. The Directorate of Military Intelligence, which commissioned a Gallop Poll on “Soldiers’ Grievances” in September 1942, pointed to “distinct Leftist tendencies amongst our troops”, many of whom were “looking for a ‘New Order’”. These feelings, or “the political bias of the troops”, appeared to emerge from “dissatisfaction with service conditions and the general prosecution of the war effort”.10 The HNP manifesto played to many of these perspectives. “We are ­anti-imperialistic”, read the manifesto released to the soldiers’ newspaper Springbok on 17 June, but “also anti-capitalistic… We regard the continuance of the pre-war conditions of poverty and want… as an infinitely greater disaster than the war itself”.11 The HNP’s social-economic programme had four “cornerstones”. The first pointed out that the State had the “obligation of creating humane and secure living conditions” for its people, including “social security”, “proper housing”, “health services”, “employment” and “wages”. The second “cornerstone” held that “the Exchequer is there for the people and not the people for the Exchequer”. The third addressed the need for the “distribution of wealth with greater justice” and included the regulation of prices, profits and wages as well as the nationalization of key industries, such as gold mines and banks. The fourth “cornerstone” clearly marked the road to formalized apartheid and the maintenance of what the manifesto referred to as a “white man’s country”. It promised to take steps to “protect European employment and wages against deadening competition, which is now filling our urban slums with white poverty and misery”. From the HNP’s perspective, social solidarity for the white races could only be achieved through the social exclusion of black and coloured South ­Africans; one could not exist without the other.12 The political preferences of ordinary white South African citizen s­ oldiers clearly resonated, to a significant degree, with the policies of the HNP. The soldiers’ vote in the 1943 general election, however, was not shaped by ­socio-economic considerations. The election was fought, as General Jan Smuts hoped and anticipated, over one key issue, the great question of the day: South Africa’s continued involvement in the war. By 1943, the home front in South Africa was tearing itself apart. The continuing controversy over the decision to take the country to war had led to widespread disillusionment among Afrikaners and a protracted campaign of civil disobedience and even terrorism by dissident Afrikaner organizations, such as the Ossawa Brandwag. It was clear to Smuts that he had little option but to hold an election and seek a mandate from the people to continue with the war policy.13

56  Jonathan Fennell The UP explicitly warned in its manifesto published in Springbok that any votes for non-government parties would “assist the anti-war parties and subversive elements” in the country. The Dominion Party, in the very first line of its manifesto, made a similar statement: “Nothing can be allowed to ­divert the country’s energies from the supreme object of winning the war. This is vital: nothing else matters”. The Labour Party chimed to the same tune: “in this General Election the paramount issue is the war issue”. In ­contrast, the opposition parties were clearly and vehemently opposed to continued participation in the war. The Afrikaner Party stated that its election aims were The immediate cessation of the… present Government[‘s]… slavish obedience to overseas decisions dictated by overseas considerations and interests, as well as the immediate cessation of the exhaustion of South African resources and assets in a war which is being fought in Europe and will be decided in Europe.14 The HNP, although they promised to maintain the pensions and other privileges granted to European soldiers and their dependents, were similarly “opposed to our country being dragged deeper into the war”. They wanted to bring back troops within the borders of South Africa and demobilize the non-European elements on active service.15 The overwhelming impression from the censorship summaries is that it was the continued involvement in the war that dominated soldiers’ deliberations. Having volunteered to fight, the vast majority, perhaps unsurprisingly, supported the war. They also realized “the need for a powerful Government” if the conflict was to be prosecuted effectively. Thus, it was estimated in the summaries before the election that 95 per cent of the troops would vote for the government, a pretty accurate assessment as it turned out.16 “The vital necessity” to keep the government, and particularly Smuts, in power during the war was the “outstanding factor” motivating how the troops would vote. After the war was over and done with, many soldiers said, “it will be time enough to view each of the parties through party lines alone”.17 The soldiers’ newspaper Springbok certainly seemed to have seen the election in this light. It announced the results on 30 July as an “overwhelming vindication” of the “war policy of the government since September 1939”.18

The disenchanted soldier The 1943 election, therefore, gave a misleading impression of strength to the UP and of weakness to the HNP. Ten of the 132 contested districts were decided by the military franchise, all ten going to the government rather than the HNP. In just about all the other districts, the UP performed better due to the soldiers’ vote. This fostered overconfidence and complacency in

South African veterans and the institutionalization of apartheid  57 spite of the soldiers’ deep developing dissatisfaction with the status quo.19 The government’s inability to arbitrate between competing interests in South ­African society, and, particularly, to ensure equality of sacrifice, ­increasingly undermined its popularity. It appeared to many that the “stayat-homes and the disloyal” had not only saved their own skins but also ­benefitted materially from the war.20 By August 1944, the censors were reporting that domestic morale had “fallen to a very low ebb”. The war had faded into insignificance and been replaced by “political and social matters” in the Union. “Numerous extracts” revealed that citizens were “distrustful and ANGRY”, especially in thickly populated areas, and that they fully expected a “sweeping victory for Dr. Malan at the next election”. The censors were concerned that these attitudes would “undermine the confidence of our troops” and that they could ­ eneral Hertzog lead to Malan’s assuming power in much the same way that G took over shortly after the First World War.21 In Durban, two interlinked issues in particular appeared to be key: first, the shortage and unequal distribution of foodstuffs and “profiteering” by segments of the Indian community.22 By the middle of 1944, the censors were pointing to the extreme hardships being suffered by servicemen’s families. They commented that “for the unfortunate wives of servicemen and poor people also, who have young children to provide for, the position is ­desperate”.23 By August, the censors reported that “under the present ­system there are complaints of malnutrition and in some cases starvation from the lower paid workers and soldiers’ families”. In September, the ­c ensors commented that some letters were “distressing for even censorship examiners to read”.24 It is not surprising, therefore, that by March 1945, the censors were noting that “the flame of duty and sacrifice” in service families “seems to have been quenched”. The report for July outlined how “personal readjustment during the coming decade, rather than communal or national, seems to be the first and only consideration”.25 Having suffered so much for so long, service ­families wanted to see their quality of life improve and improve quickly. As the end of the war drew near, it became increasingly clear that a “vast number of people” were hoping for the introduction of “social s­ ecurity and reforms” in South Africa: “In other words they are expecting many of the ­wartime undertakings to be implemented and it will not be so easy for Governments to pigeon hole wartime promises as it was after the last Great War”.26 The apparent lack of progress in this regard left people ­disenchanted.27 In July 1945, the Durban censors reported that 60 per cent of letters sent from home were “petulant or complaining and recorded ­domestic unhappiness, family quarrels, sickness” and dissatisfaction with the state of South Africa. With regards to housing and accommodation, letters were unfavourable in a ratio of 32:1; in terms of cost of living, they were unfavourable in a ratio of 11:1; writers were negative about the cost and shortage of food in a ratio of 10:1.28

58  Jonathan Fennell The censors fretted that it was “impossible to prevent” such “bitter c­ omplaints” from reaching the troops abroad, and it was “feared” that the men would become apprehensive, alarmed and despondent, and “not thank South Africa for permitting their families to suffer such hardships during their absence”. Indeed, censorship showed that these matters were “uppermost in the minds of our Troops serving abroad”.29 The summaries from Italy, in 1944 and 1945, were highly critical of matters on the home front. Concern was “evinced by the troops” at reports of food shortages in the country, blaming it on “mismanagement on the part of the authorities, who are also accused by some of allowing their homeland to slump into a state of general disorder”. The censors noted that “disgust at the alleged flourishing state of the black market” was a “common feature of the mail, and the a­ uthorities are indicted for ‘sitting back and allowing it’”. The men were “not very happy about the general position” with regards to housing either.30 By 1945, they were so dismayed that the censors referred to “an anti-Smuts movement” that seemed to have formed in the Central Mediterranean Force and Middle East Force;31 “Many men in the field” wanted “to experiment along new lines rather than follow existing theories which have not proved infallible”.32

Demobilization The cessation of hostilities in May 1945 did not lead to any great change in the perspectives of the troops, despite plans for soldier-friendly demobilization. The “cornerstone” of the demobilization scheme was the recognition of the white male veteran’s right to employment.33 Those that had given up employment prior to joining were guaranteed work “under conditions no less favourable” than those existing at the time of their enlistment. Volunteers with no employment to return to were retained on military strength with full pay and allowances until suitable employment could be found. If the ex-soldier lost employment through no fault of his own within a year, he could also return to the Army until another suitable position was found. No person other than an ex-soldier could be appointed to a post unless the ­D epartment of Labour could provide a certificate confirming that no suitable ex-soldier was available for the post in question.34 As enlightened as government policy towards the return of the Union ­Defence Force (UDF) to the Union appeared to be, it was “worlds apart from the way the soldiers experienced it at first hand”.35 Matters did not start well when delays in repatriation led to “much adverse criticism of the authorities on the grounds of ‘muddle’ and ‘broken promises’”,36 which culminated in a riot in Helwan camp in August 1945.37 The South ­A frican economy was not ready to receive the ex-soldiers. Unlike the United ­K ingdom, the discharge of soldiers was not controlled in accordance with the conversion of industry from a war to a peacetime setting. Thus, there

South African veterans and the institutionalization of apartheid  59 was no guarantee that ­demobilized men had employment to which to return immediately; according to the Directorate of Demobilization, by August 1945, there were 46,475 servicemen looking for employment but only 20,944 vacancies in industry.38 Moreover, on getting home, the soldiers found that their standard of living was no better than it had been before they joined the Army. For some, especially those in lower income groups, it dropped considerably. The increased cost of living, which had caused so much havoc on the home front during the war, now impacted on the demobilized soldier. The post-war world was for some “a cold hard place where everyone was out for himself”.39 The state’s inability to provide work and housing for returning servicemen challenged their sense of social justice. As Neil Roos has shown, white working-class veterans felt socio-economically vulnerable and at a relative disadvantage to those who had not fought the war.40 The impacts of a challenging job market were exacerbated by a shortage of housing. By 1945, it was estimated that 130,000 houses were needed ­nationally for whites alone. In the circumstances, the State facilitated the provision of land to white ex-servicemen who could then build homes of their own. The government guaranteed a building society loan to help the soldier with these costs but even with this support the costs of this buy-build scheme “were beyond the means of poor white ex-servicemen”.41

The issue of race It is difficult to disassociate these issues and dynamics from the direction South African politics took post 1948. While the economic position of many whites deteriorated during the war, that of black South Africans noticeably improved; for example, the wages of black workers rose dramatically faster than those of white workers. Faced with labour shortages, not least due to the fact that a significant proportion of the white male working population were serving in the armed forces, the wartime administration authorized a greater number of black South Africans to work in skilled positions. This problem (from the perspective of some whites) was compounded after the fall of Tobruk in June 1942, after which a greater proportion of recruits were drawn from more prosperous urban areas, thus increasing again the demand for black labour in skilled positions. Moreover, when the compulsory arbitration of industrial disputes was introduced in 1942, the Wage Boards were often the arbitrator, resolving most disputes in favour of black workers.42 At the same time, South Africa experienced “a mass migration” of black workers to the cities.43 On a conservative estimate, during the war the urban black population increased by about half a million to 1,689,000.44 The number of Africans employed in manufacturing rose from 151,889 ­b efore the war to 369,055 in 1949/1950. African employment in private industry during roughly the same period increased by 111 per cent in the Southern Transvaal, 190 per cent

60  Jonathan Fennell around Durban and more than 240 per cent in the Cape. The Eastern Cape, site of the country’s ­r udimentary ­automobile ­i ndustry, witnessed the high­ verall, black u ­ rbanization increased from est increase (of 287 per cent). O 18.9 per cent in 1936 to 27.1 per cent in 1951.45 These dynamics had a direct effect on white South Africans. As the war drew to a close, the censors described “grave forebodings of impending trouble”, even to the possibility of “rebellion… unrest, revolution, bloodshed and civil war”. It was generally felt that the government’s policies had “failed lamentably” and not prevented “rackets, ramps and profiteering”. They were blamed for “every short supply of any commodity, for the alleged ‘mess’ and ‘muddle’ in providing houses” and for the “outrageous retail prices”. People felt deeply aggrieved as they had been promised that “THIS TIME there would be No profiteering” and much of this anger was focussed on “Jews and Coolies”. Whites in Durban could not reconcile profiteering by Indian shopkeepers with their desire to “live amongst us as equals” after the war. Indeed, “Indian encroachment” and demands for “equal rights” were “definitely regarded as a menace and [were] feared accordingly”. By February 1945, there were growing concerns that the Indians might “succeed in linking up with the native… Cape Malay and Coloured elements”. The high cost of black labour (relative to what it had been) was now being felt and non-European troops that had returned from “Up North” were considered “most disrespectful… quarrelsome and insolent”.46 These issues placed much pressure on the returned white serviceman who lacked artisan skills and “were particularly vulnerable since it was far cheaper to employ black men”.47 Additionally, as one serviceman stated in 1943, a large amount of surplus money was in circulation “due to the G ­ overnment paying unskilled and semi-skilled labourers excessive wages”.48 This caused inflation, which, in turn, squeezed standards of living. In the prevailing circumstances, dissatisfaction with the government took on a racial element,49 a dynamic made more problematic by the fact that the war had hardened white servicemen’s racial prejudices and encouraged many to seek extreme solutions to the “colour problem”. While there is some evidence to suggest that white and black troops served together harmoniously in the Second World War,50 the dominant impression that emerges from censorship and intelligence reports is that the war exacerbated rather than ameliorated racial tensions between white and black South Africans. Throughout the war, attempts to augment white fighting units by arming black soldiers failed.51 Thus, the powerful forces of combat cohesion did not play out for white and black South African soldiers. In March 1941, for example, one man wrote from East Africa, It makes my blood boil to sit next to coloureds – especially Indians, and that’s what we had to do on Sunday (in a cinema). They were the only seats we could get. Most of the shops here are owned by Indians and they certainly know how to profiteer.52

South African veterans and the institutionalization of apartheid  61 Many South Africans could not accept that they had “instructions to treat niggers as our pals”. Can you imagine any European with some self-respect doing that? I’m dashed if I can, and I’m dammed if I’m going to treat one of them on equal footing. What the devil is it going to be like when we get back to the Union? Personally I’ll lay the first one out that sits on a seat next to me.53 Censorship in the Middle East, in 1942 and 1943, regularly noted “expressions of regret that S.A. Natives were brought to the M.E.”. Writers claimed that contact with white servicemen and civilians had made black troops “insubordinate and unmanageable and they are expected to foment trouble on their return to the Union as in their present frame of mind they are totally unsuited to S.A. conditions”.54 In February 1943, the censors remarked that “concern is shown over the consequences of their mixing with whites as equals, and their eventual demand for equal treatment after the war”. A trooper wrote, Such matters, “post war problems”, are being widely debated amongst ourselves… The native problem is going to be one of the most urgent matters to be settled. Do you know that up here, there is practically no distinction between European and Native soldiers? They frequent the same NAAFI canteens, using the same crockery and furniture, and in many other respects, they rub shoulders with one another [sic] day by day. This is chiefly because they are under Imperial Command… There is nothing we can do about it, and we fully realise that the native soldier is doing his bit in this war. But what is going to happen when we are all out of uniform, and demanding the fulfilment of all the solemn promises, being made by responsible people, to men who had joined up.55 Attitudes did not change as the war wore on. White South African troops in Italy in 1944 and 1945 recurrently “expressed concern” regarding the “­possible effect upon SA coloured personnel” with regards to “social ­equality… fear being expressed that there will be unfortunate repercussions in the Union on the return home of these men”. The “Indian question” and “post-war Native Policy” were clearly, therefore, “sources of concern” that would require action on the cessation of hostilities.56 In South Africa, where the “colour bar” did function during the war, white servicemen were particularly keen to ensure that black citizens and soldiers “knew their place” and would not be “contaminated” by the war experience. For example, “loyal” white soldiers were involved in the brutal suppression of riots by black labourers and soldiers protesting against their discriminatory treatment at the hands of the South African State. One of the better-known examples is the Marabastad Riot of 28 December 1942.

62  Jonathan Fennell On that evening, a violent standoff developed between local law enforcement officers and a few hundred black workers, who were in dispute with the Marabastad, Pretoria, municipal council over pay. As the situation deteriorated, an alarmed white civilian rushed to the Central Army Transit Depot (CADT), less than a kilometre away, to ask for help. A force of four officers and 80 armed men were dispatched to the scene, but upon their ­arrival, ­matters got out of hand. Corporal J.P. Coetzee, who belonged to the CATD but was off duty and coincidentally on the scene, attached himself to the military force and began attacking a group of rioters with a stick. The rioters fought back and two officers opened fire to protect Coetzee, who himself fell to the ground. General firing then commenced.57 The censors summarized what one Staff Sergeant wrote after the event, that South ­African troops had “opened fire and shot indiscriminately”. The poor nigs got jammed in the compound gate and were badly shot up. The natives continuously tried to break out of the gates and storm us but they were not dealing with the police but the Army, and when they rushed to stab one of our soldiers the first one dropped dead as a chap shot him through the heart. The order came “fire” and their dead piled up three feet high.58 A Corporal, who was at the scene, wrote that the “soldiers got out of hand – the men just went mad and fired right into them and also charged them with fixed bayonets”. Another recalled how “one man continued firing until his rifle was taken from him”.59 By the time the fighting had calmed down, 16 black workers were dead and at least another 59 were wounded, of whom 29 were treated in hospital. One white man, Coetzee, was killed, ironically by a bullet from an officer’s service revolver. One soldier and about seven policemen received minor wounds.60 In reviewing the riot, the censors were struck by the “surprisingly large number” that “enjoyed themselves thoroughly, and were by no means averse to shooting down natives”. Many saw the riot as a welcome “break from the monotony of camp routine” and at least one writer regretted that they had not been allowed to “wipe the whole lot out”.61 It was clear from the judicial commission of inquiry that took place after the event that the black workers had made use of a variety of weapons, but no firearms, and of the 16 blacks killed, ten had received their fatal wounds in the back.62 Another incident took place a few days later at Sonderwater, on the night of 31 December 1942. This time, however, the rioters were men of the 4th Cape Corps Battalion. Although no men were killed, physical force was again used and 25 “ringleaders” were arrested. Much like the conflagration at Marabastad, but apparently not linked to it, the immediate cause of the problem was pay. A staff sergeant in the Cape Corp wrote that the officers were “bringing ladies into camp in the evening for a dance, and fearing that if the men were paid they would drink themselves drunk and

South African veterans and the institutionalization of apartheid  63 cause disturbances” refused to give them their dues. However, as the censors reviewed the causes of the conflagration in the men’s letters, It became quite clear that the course of the riot was determined largely by colour prejudice. It would appear that the minor issues were submerged in the far greater problem of colour, and the riot culminated in an out and out clash between the N.E.’s [Non-Europeans] and ­Europeans, a clash where the righting of social injustices became the determining factor for the N.E.’s. The riot apparently served as an outlet for pent up feelings. “Here happened a revolution with us against the Europeans. It’s a long time that we suffer and always through the Europeans, not only in civilian time but all over, and we also ought to get victory over them”.63 The censors found that “the Cape Coloureds” were “more tolerant than the Europeans” and, on the whole, accepted blame for the outburst. On the other hand, “the hatred of the Europeans for the coloureds is much more freely expressed. ‘Black swine’, ‘pests’, ‘drunken black rats’, ‘vuil honde’ [filthy dogs], are some of the phrases used”. Accounts of the riot were given “with relish” by European soldiers and “wishes for a recurrence of riots” were “freely expressed”. However, the censors also pointed to the “quite interesting” detail that “invariably all English-speaking correspondents advocate the use of force, whereas Afrikaans-speaking writers concentrate more on the fear of revolt and fear of the coloureds being given social equality”. There were also strong criticisms of the government, which were accused of “appeasement” and “being far too lenient”. One trooper wrote that “our declared policy of dithering effeminacy prevented the coloureds from receiving a sharp enough lesson”. A very large number of writers advocated immediate action by the Smuts government; many demanded “subjugation by force” of the non-­European community in the country. The censors continued pessimistically that In discussing post-war conditions, writers invariably forecast more trouble and call these riots and strikes “the forerunners of what is coming all over the world”. South Africa’s future from this particular aspect is viewed with alarm by many and it appears to be generally accepted that “much bloodshed will result after the war”.64 Following the riot at Sonderwater, the 4th Cape Corps Battalion was transferred to the Dutoitspan Training Camp near Kimberley. However, here, again, on 6 February 1943, about 80–100 men rioted. Many members of the unit were put in detention and 67 rioters were arrested. There were no serious casualties, but 17 men did suffer minor injuries and lacerations. Again, the censors pointed out that “these riots have led to an increase in the expression of colour antipathy. The Europeans are the more bitter, and their comments often disclose violent hatred”.65

64  Jonathan Fennell

The 1948 general election In some ways, the war was a unifying experience for South Africa, in that the shared experience of the front line brought English and Afrikaans speakers together.66 Throughout the war, censorship of soldiers’ letters revealed much “evidence of complete harmony between speakers of English and of Afrikaans, respectively, within the Union Forces”. As a soldier in the 6th South African Armoured Division wrote in December 1944, “it is very pleasant to see that here… [in Italy] there is no racial hatred. If a man speaks to you in Afrikaans, you answer him in Afrikaans”.67 However, the manner in which the war was managed dramatically deepened other divisions in South African society, divisions based on race and class. There was widespread feeling that, This is simply a war where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The poor man is forced to join up – he had no option, otherwise he starves – but the rich have sufficient money to stay at home and live on the fat of the land and make yet more money.68 In the prevailing circumstances, dissatisfaction with the government took on a racial element,69 while, paradoxically, there was an “urgent desire” to be rid of “racialism” between English- and A ­ frikaans-speaking segments of society.70 Irrespective of ethnicity, all white men were understood to have the right to “social justice” and a reasonable quality of life. Social cohesion and solidarity among whites, however, was seen, in the peculiar and racialized environment of the Union, to be threatened by the economic and political aspirations of black and coloured South Africans, many of whom were radicalized by the experience of the war.71 Thus, the belief grew that, for whites to prosper, black and coloured South Africans would have to be excluded from sharing equally in South African society. The conditions for institutionalized apartheid in South Africa had been substantially shaped by the soldiers’ experience of the war. It would, of course, as Neil Roos has put it, “make a neat argument” if historians could prove that these attitudes directly encouraged white veterans to vote for the HNP in 1948 and that their votes proved decisive in what ended up being a very closely fought election.72 The Nationalists won an outright majority with only 39.4 per cent of the votes73 and the “critical Nationalist gains” were generally won “with only narrow majorities”.74 William Beinart has estimated that the Nationalist victory was probably dependent on no more than a “protest vote of perhaps 20 per cent of English-speakers”.75 For these reasons, historians such as Albert Grundlingh, Rodney Davenport, Christopher Saunders and Beinart have speculated that the ex-military vote may have played an important role in 1948.76 Grundlingh has certainly intimated that Afrikaner veterans voted for the HNP. He has argued that the

South African veterans and the institutionalization of apartheid  65 disenchantment of Afrikaans speakers with Smuts and the military “coincided with attempts” by organizations like the Ossawa Brandwag (OB) “not only to temper their criticisms of Afrikaners who had enlisted but also actively to woo them back into the fold”. When it became clear that the Allies had a better chance of winning the war, Afrikaner nationalists abandoned their former anti-war policy; thus generating a greater degree of Afrikaner unity and a more conciliatory attitude towards those serving in the armed forces. While different factors allowed for the Afrikaner victory in the 1948 elections, it is apparent that the social transformation generated by A ­ frikaners’ participation in the war effort was fundamental: Afrikaner soldiers returned from war more disgruntled with the government of Jan Smut’s UP than they were before their enlistment.77 There are, unfortunately, no known documentary or other sources that can definitively prove or disprove whether English-speaking and ­Afrikaans-speaking white veterans voted for Malan in 1948. However, it certainly was the case that the Nationalists promised to honour all obligations entered into by the Smuts government towards ex-servicemen.78 It is also clear, from the large body of new evidence explored here, that attitudes developed during the war resonated with the Nationalist vision for South Africa. In this context, it does appear reasonable to conclude that this coincidence of interest and attitudes, made possible by the men’s experience as part of the UDF in the Second World War, must have at least implicitly underpinned the ex-military vote in the epoch-defining election of 1948.

Notes 1 The idea that the war was a transformative event for South African soldiers is not a new one. See Neil Roos, Ordinary Springboks: White Servicemen and Social Justice in South Africa, 1939–1961 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Jennifer ­Crwys-Williams, A Country at War: The Mood of a Nation, 1939–1945 (­Rivonia: Ashanti, 1992), 34; Francois Oosthuizen, “Demobilization and the Post War Employment of the White Union Defence Force Soldiers”, Scientia Militaria 23:4 (1993), 32–38; François Oosthuizen, “Soldiers and Politics: The Political Ramification of the White Union Defence Forces Soldiers’ Demobilisation Experience after the Second World War”, South African Journal of Military Studies 24:1 (1994), 20–27; Albert Grundlingh, “The King’s Afrikaners? Enlistment and Ethnic Identity in the Union of South Africa’s Defence Force during the Second World War, 1939–45”, The Journal of African History 40:3 (1999), 351–365; Louis Grundlingh, “Soldiers and Politics: A Study of the Political Consciousness of Black South African Soldiers during and after the Second World War”, Historia 36:2 (1991); Ian Van der Waag, A Military History of Modern South Africa (­Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2015). 2 These figures in Jonathan Fennell, Fighting the Peoples’ War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), Chapter 2. 3 The censorship reports, which form the backbone of this study, were typically compiled from the examination of about 7 per cent of the total number of letters sent by soldiers in any period. They described in detail the attitudes and state

66  Jonathan Fennell of morale of the troops and their families and friends at home; they covered a broad range of issues and tended to focus on views that represented a considerable body of opinion among cohorts rather than on isolated instances of over-­exuberance or ill-temper. They, therefore, provide a reliable documented insight into the concerns of a people at war and can be considered analogous to sources such as Gallop Polls and Mass Observation studies in terms of their significance for historians of social and political change in the twentieth century. See ­A rchives New Zealand (ANZ), WAII/1/DA, 302/15/1–31, History 1 and 2 NZ Field Censor Sections, pages 35–54; ANZ, WAII/1/DA508/3, 1 and 2 NZ Field Censor Section Weekly Reports, 1943, 1944, 1945; Australian War Memorial (AWM), 54 883/2/97, Middle East Field Censorship Weekly Summary, (MEFCWS), No. I (12 to 18 Nov. 1941), page 1. 4 Kenneth A. Heard, General Elections in South Africa, 1943–1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 46. 5 Saul Dubow, “Scientism, Social Research and the Limits of ‘South Africanism’: The Case of Ernst Gideon Malherbe”, South African Historical Journal 44 (2001), 100; John Lambert, “An Identity Threatened: White English-Speaking South Africans, Britishness and Dominion South Africanism, 1934–1939”, Kleio 37:1 (2010), 50–70; John Lambert, “‘The Finest Hour?’ English-Speaking South Africans and World War II”, South African Historical Journal 60:1 (2008), 76–77. 6 Roos, Ordinary Springboks, 34. 7 Ibid., 80–88. 8 University of South Africa United Party Archives (UNISA UP), Kleyntons Poster Collection, Poster Number 416; South African National Defence Force Documentation Centre (SANDF, DOC) Adjutant General Files (AG) 3/154 Box 78 General Election, 1943. 9 UNISA UP, Kleyntons Poster Collection, Poster Number 416; SANDF, DOC, AG 3/154 Box 78 General Election, 1943. 10 SANDF, DOC, Army Intelligence (AI) Gp 1 Box 81/I/71/B South African Military Censorship Summary (SAMCS) No. 11, 1 to 20 August 1942, pp. 3–4 and No. 13, 1 to 29 September 1942, p. 3. The poll was based on 10,164 censored letters. See also, Jonathan Fennell, “Soldiers and Social Change: The Forces Vote in the Second World War and New Zealand’s Great Experiment in Social Citizenship”, English Historical Review 132:554 (2017), 73–100. 11 SANDF, DOC, War Diaries (WD) Box 314 Springbok, “Election Supplement”, 17 June 1943. 12 Ibid. 13 F. D. Tothill, “The Soldiers’ Vote and Its Effect on the Outcome of the South African General Election of 1943”, South African Historical Journal 21 (1989), 73–74. 14 SANDF, DOC, WD Box 314 Springbok, “Election Supplement”, 17 June 1943. 15 Ibid. 16 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 81/I/71/B South African Military Censorship (SAMC), Special Report No. 12, “Reactions to General Election in the Cape Fortress Area”, 1 to 14 June 1943, p. 1. 17 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 81/I/71/B SAMCS No. 21, “Post Election Repercussions”, 20 June to 10 July 1943. 18 SANDF, DOC, WD Box 314 Springbok, “Election Supplement”, 30 July 1943. 19 Tothill, “The Soldiers’ Vote”, 84. 20 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37 Durban Military Censorship Summary (DMCS) No. 86, July 1944. 21 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37 Durban Forces Mail Summary (DFMS) No. 87, August 1944. 22 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37/B DMCS No. 85 and 86, June and July 1944. 23 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37/B DMCS No. 85, June 1944.

South African veterans and the institutionalization of apartheid  67 24 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37 DFMS Nos. 87 and 88, August, September 1944. 25 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37 DFMS Nos. 94 and 98, March and July 1945. 26 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp Box 42/I/37 DFMS No. 93, February 1945. 27 See, e.g., Roos, Ordinary Springboks, 11. 28 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37 Forces Mail Censorship Durban Summary No. 98, July 1945. 29 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37/B DMCS No. 85, June 1944; SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37 DFMS, Nos. 87,88, 96, 98, August and September 1944 and May and July 1945. 30 National Archives of the United Kingdom (NA) War Office Files (WO) 204/10382 Central Mediterranean Force Appreciation and Censorship Report (CMFACR) Nos. 57, 58, 63 and 67, 16 to 30 November 1944, p. D2, 1 to 15 December 1944, p. D2, 15 to 28 February 1945, p. D2, 16 to 30 April 1945, p. C2. 31 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37 DFMS No. 96 and 98, May and July 1945. 32 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37 DFMS Nos. 88 and 93, September 1944 and February 1945. 33 Roos, Ordinary Springboks, 111. 34 Oosthuizen, “Demobilisation”, 33–34. 35 Ibid., 32–36; K. J. Gibbs, “Demobilisation after World War II: The Process and Politics of Reinstating Union Defence Force Volunteers into Civilian Life, 1943–1948”, University of South Africa Paper (1990), 31. 36 NA WO 204/10382 CMFACR No. 70, 1 to 15 June 1945, p. C1. 37 Roos, Ordinary Springboks, 97. 38 Oosthuizen, “Demobilisation”, 32–36; Gibbs, “Demobilisation”, 31. 39 Oosthuizen, “Soldiers and Politics”, 21. 40 Roos, Ordinary Springboks, 114–116. 41 Ibid., 116–117. 42 Jeremy Seeking and Nicoli Nattrass, Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 88–89; Roos, Ordinary Springboks, 35. 43 Annette Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa (London: IB Tauris, 1996), 73. 44 Roos, Ordinary Springboks, 107. 45 Seegers, The Military, 73. 46 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37 DFMS No. 88, 89, 93, 95, 96, September, October 1944, February, April, May 1945; SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 42/I/37 DMCS No. 86, July 1944. 47 Roos, Ordinary Springboks, 106. 48 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 81/I/71/B SAMCS No. 27, “A General Survey on Morale in the Army”, 22 February to 21 July 1943, p. 7. 49 Dubow, “Scientism, Social Research”, 112. 50 Grundlingh, “Soldiers and Politics”, 60. 51 Roos, Ordinary Springboks, 34. 52 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 43/I/38/D Military Censorship Summary No. 10, East African Force Headquarters, 6 to 20 March 1941, p. 3. 53 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 40 I/35, Intelligence Corps to Administrative H.Q., U.D.F., M.E.F., 23 May 1942. 54 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 43 I/38(I) MEMCFS No. LIV, 30 December 1942 to 12 January 1943, p. 20. 55 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 43 I/38(I) MEMCFS No. LVII, 10 to 23 February 1943, p. 20. 56 NA WO 204/10382 CMFACR Nos. 60, 63 and 71, 1 to 15 January 1945, p. D2, 15 to 28 February 1945, p. D2 and 16 to 30 June 1945, p. C2.

68  Jonathan Fennell 57 J. E. H. Grobler, “The Marabastad Riot, 1942”, Contree 32 (1992), 27. 58 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 81/I/71/B SAMC, Special Report No. 3, “The C.A.T.D. and the Marabastad Compound Riot”, 28 December 1942. 59 Ibid. 60 Grobler, “The Marabastad Riot”, 28. 61 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 81/I/71/B “The C.A.T.D. and the Marabastad Compound Riot”. 62 Grobler, “The Marabastad Riot”, 28. 63 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 81/I/71/B SAMC, Special Report No. 4, “Disturbance at Sonderwater”, 31 December 1942. 64 Ibid. 65 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 81/I/71/B SAMC, Special Report No. 7, “The Riot at Kimberley”, 9 to 25 February 1943. 66 For more on this dynamic, see Jonathan Fennell, The Peoples’ Armies. 67 NA WO 204/10382 CMFACR No. 59, 16 to 31 December 1944, p. D2. 68 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp 1 Box 81/I/71/B “A General Survey on Morale in the Army”, 22 February to 21 July 1943, p. 6. 69 Dubow, “Scientism, Social Research”, 112. 70 SANDF, DOC, AI Gp Box 42/I/37 DFMS No. 93, February 1945. 71 For more on this dynamic see Dubow, “Scientism, Social Research”, 99–101; Grundlingh, “Soldiers and Politics”. 72 Roos, Ordinary Springboks, 121. 73 Rodney Davenport and Christopher Saunders, South Africa: A Modern History, Fifth Edition (London: Macmillan, 2000), 372. 74 Heard, General Elections in South Africa, 46. 75 William Beinart, Twentieth Century South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 138. 76 Grundlingh, “The King’s Afrikaners?”; Davenport and Saunders, South Africa, 370; Beinart, Twentieth Century South Africa, 138. Other historians have differed from this view. Roos argues that white veterans did not shift their allegiance to the National Party in 1948 due to the fact that they were still too closely associated with fascism and Nazism (Roos, Ordinary Springboks, 11). Oosthuizen argues that while many might not have supported UP policies most still voted UP, “if only as a vague symbol of an ideal once considered worth fighting for” (Oosthuizen, “Soldiers and Politics”, 27). 77 Grundlingh, “The King’s Afrikaners?”, 364–365. 78 Davenport and Saunders, South Africa, 371.

5 Enforcing conformity Race in the American Legion, 1940–1960 Olivier Burtin

Introduction The history of African American military veterans is a well-developed subfield. Historians have shown the trailblazing role that these men and women have played in civil rights struggles since the Civil War, fighting not only for the right to vote but for an end to racial discrimination more broadly.1 Thanks to the privileges historically attached to the status of military veteran in the United States – either intangible (such as manhood and social prestige) or more concrete (like pensions or healthcare) – black veterans have often been leaders in their own communities. For the same reasons, they have also been regarded as a threat by white supremacists who feared that they would refuse a return to living under a Jim Crow regime of racial segregation. To a large extent, the history of black veterans in the United States is the history of how war has shaped the struggle for civil rights. But one can also approach the problem of race and military veterans from a different and less well-trodden angle. Instead of focussing on black veterans’ role as champions of the larger civil rights movement, this chapter shifts the focus to the groups on the other side of this struggle, more specifically to the American Legion, the largest and most influential veterans’ organization in the twentieth-century United States. With 3.3 million members at its peak in 1946, the Legion counted roughly twice as many members as the ­second-most important veterans’ group, the Veterans of Foreign Wars.2 Though it always claimed to represent a cross section of America and to speak for all its veterans, the membership of the group was in fact overwhelmingly white, male and middle class.3 Not only were ­African ­A mericans and other minorities a mere fraction of all members, but their concerns were largely ignored by the leadership, which refused to get involved in i­ ssues related to civil rights on the grounds that they were not “veterans’ issues”. To examine the history of black Legionnaires, then, is to explore the role of a small group of men and women with little or no influence in an organization whose politics can be described as conservative and unfriendly to civil rights.

70  Olivier Burtin This is not to say, however, that the history of race in the American ­ egion does not speak to larger themes in African American history. For if L this group was never a major actor in the civil rights struggle, it undeniably played a key role in restraining the access of non-white veterans to their benefits. Not only was lobbying for veterans’ benefits the Legion’s core mission, but it was also arguably more successful at this than any other organization of former soldiers. To cite only one example, the landmark “G.I. Bill of Rights” of 1944, which provided returning Second World War veterans with a wide range of generous benefits, such as educational and job-training assistance, loan guaranties and unemployment compensation, was largely the invention of the Legion. This is why the position of the group on issues of race mattered. By refusing to pay attention to the specific concerns of minority veterans, the Legion helped embed racist practices into the very structure of veterans’ welfare state. As a result, it made it more difficult, if not impossible, for non-white veterans everywhere in the United States to claim their benefits. In this sense, the internal dynamics of race in the ­Legion had national repercussions.

The interwar period and the Second World War The Legion was created in February 1919, towards the end of a period that has often been described as the “nadir” of race relations in the United States.4 In this context of heightened animosity towards racial minorities, white veterans of the Great War grappled with the question of whether to admit African Americans into their newly formed group. Some of their leaders insisted that black veterans had served under the same flag and therefore deserved to be treated as equals. In the end, however, Southern white Legionnaires managed to ensure the perpetuation of a Jim Crow regime of racial segregation and discrimination by making membership policy a strictly local matter to be decided at the Post level – thereby guaranteeing that no black veterans would be admitted to white Posts in the South. Even in the North, most blacks showed little interest in a group that “had no greater commitment to equality than American society as a whole”, which is to say very little.5 In places like the Midwest, the Legion’s membership overlapped substantially with that of openly racist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. Because the leadership was afraid of antagonizing its rank and file, the Legion never spoke out forcefully against the Klan throughout the interwar period.6 In the interwar period, racial exclusion or segregation was the rule in the Legion across the South (as it was, it should be noted, in most other mass-membership groups during these years).7 In Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi, blacks were not admitted as members. In Alabama, only one black Post existed in the whole state (in ­Tuskegee). In Upper South and border states, such as Washington DC, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia, the Legion was segregated.8

Enforcing conformity  71 In Florida and Texas, black veterans were accepted into a subsidiary organization called the Colored Veterans of the World War.9 In the North, the situation varied widely, not only from state to state but within each state. A survey carried out in mid-1944 by Thurgood Marshall of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), for instance, found that while black Legionnaires in Stockton, California, were admitted on an “equal basis”, Posts in San Diego were segregated, and African Americans were discriminated against.10 As of May 1944, there were only 311 allblack Legion Posts, or 2.6 per cent out of a total of 12,004.11 Things changed very little after the outbreak of the Second World War. Not only did the national leadership of the group continue to ignore the protests of African American members, but it actively hurt their interests when crafting the most important piece of legislation of the war: the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of June 1944, also known as the G. I. Bill. Though officially colour-blind, this bill was designed to be administered by local and state institutions in order to ensure that it would not challenge racist practices. Title III of the bill, for instance, allowed the federal government to guarantee up to half of a loan taken by a veteran for the purchase of a home, business or farm. Yet veterans had to get the approval of a local bank before the Veterans Administration (VA) could provide the guaranty, and since most Southern banks routinely refused to lend to African Americans, the latter were largely unable to take advantage of this provision of the law. The same discriminatory practices applied to other sections of the bill. Black veterans were largely unable to draw on the job search and unemployment compensation provisions or to fully use their educational or job training benefits.12 Far from an oversight, this was exactly what the designers of the G. I. Bill intended. With racist Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans dominating the US Congress during the war, a bill guaranteeing black veterans equal access to their benefits would have been dead on arrival. John E. Rankin of Mississippi, the chairman of the House Committee in charge of veterans’ benefits, understood that granting black veterans lavish advantages would threaten the South’s Jim Crow system, which relied on the economic and political marginalization of non-whites.13 In this process, the Legion was a willing accomplice: When faced with Rankin’s attempts to torpedo the bill out of fear that it would undermine white supremacy, its National Commander, William Atherton, did not defend black veterans’ rights to equal benefits but instead argued that Rankin underestimated the degree to which “states’ rights” were embedded into the law. “[C]ontrol of many of the features of the bill”, Atherton assured Rankin, “will still rest with the individual states”.14 In other words, though the law was nominally colour-blind, Atherton was confident that states would still be able to determine who would or would not access it. It was not until the very last months of the war that the Legion leadership began to show the first signs of change on this issue, as illustrated by a memo

72  Olivier Burtin written in March 1945 by its chief administrative officer Donald Glascoff on the topic of “Negro Membership after World War II”. Anticipating that his group would be placed under “great pressure” to accept non-white members after the end of the war, Glascoff outlined the reasons for which he thought the policy would need to be revised. Not only was it likely that “our hand could be forced by lawful action”, but he also recognized that “our little token of 300 negro posts with a membership of 30,000 to 40,000” would never be enough to welcome the 1 million or so black ex-service members who would return from the war. In addition, he feared that black veterans rejected by the Legion might instead “gravitate toward radical veterans’ groups formed especially to exploit them and to use the negro veteran as a weapon in outright attack upon our form of government and mode of democratic life”. “Unless there is strong influence among Negro veterans exercised by the Legion and other patriotic groups”, he wrote, “Communism, Black Dragonism,15 and other isms will flourish among this race here. We can do little about controlling and defeating tendencies of this nature, if the negro veteran is kept outside the Legion”. In essence, he was making the conservative case for change, presenting the acceptance of black members (even if still in separate facilities) as the only way to prevent the even greater evil of being engulfed in a major scandal or facilitating the rise of radical groups.16 Yet as Glascoff himself would surely have known, his own thoughts on this issue mattered little. Ultimately, this was a problem that could be decided only by Southern white Legionnaires themselves. The national leadership could encourage change but not set it into motion.

The post-Second World War period Just as Glascoff had expected, the influx of Second World War veterans brought renewed urgency to the calls for racial integration. At the National Convention of the group in November 1945, three resolutions to abolish racial segregation in the group were “deferred or brushed aside, until next ­ frican year”, according to the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s leading A American newspapers. “A ‘hush-hush’ atmosphere prevailed whenever the racial or religious issue was projected”, the paper reported, “and extreme care was taken to block publicity about committee meetings where racial and religious issues were discussed”. Only about 200 black Legionnaires attended the meeting.17 At the next National Convention, in San Francisco a year later, a group of some 30 black veterans of the First and Second World Wars picketed the meeting to ask that “open membership in all American Legion posts, North and South, be made available to one million Negro war veterans on the basis of equality of sacrifice—not race or color”. They were beaten up and dispersed by white Legionnaires, who told them, “Get out of here – we don’t want you”.18 Joining forces with liberal white allies, black veterans also tried to form a number of racially integrated Posts – such as

Enforcing conformity  73 the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Post in Washington, DC or the New York Collegiate Post and the Duncan-Paris Post in New York City – but their efforts were met with the firm opposition of the Legion leaders.19 The publicity generated by these efforts was exactly what Glascoff had feared, and it certainly played a role in prompting Legion leaders to accept black members. As importantly, though, many Southern Legion officials were also motivated by the more self-interested realization that this move was necessary to “forestall the organizational efforts of the [American Veterans Committee] and other liberal veterans’ organizations which accept all ex-service men on an equal basis”.20 For all these reasons, Southern Departments slowly but surely moved to abandon their exclusionary policies. Between 1945 and 1947, first Texas, then North and South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and, finally, Alabama moved to accept black veterans – though always in separate, all-black districts and Posts, with their own commander and delegates.21 Partly as a result of this policy change – but also as a reflection of the higher numbers of African American soldiers who had fought in this war – the number of “colored” Legion Posts (as they were often known) more than tripled after the war, from 311 in 1944 to 943 in 1950.22 However, power continued to reside in the hands of white Legionnaires. In most states, the approval of existing white Posts was required before the creation of a black one in the same community.23 Black Legionnaires tended to wield little power within their own states and were often absent from the major national committees.24 In Virginia, African American members were not allowed to take part in Legion activities such as oratorical contests, junior baseball or child welfare.25 The absence of a comprehensive list of all black Posts meant that their members were unable to coordinate beyond state lines in any systematic fashion; as one black Legionnaire wrote in October 1945 in a request for help to the NAACP, “There is no way for members of our group to reach other Negro Legionnaires unless we have assistance from the nationally active Negro organizations”.26 In addition, the Legion leadership continued to pay little attention to the specific problems of black veterans, such as lynching. Because they were seen as threats to the status quo by racist white Southerners, several dozen black veterans were lynched upon their return to the United States.27 There were so many cases of racial violence against black service members or veterans, in fact, that Earl Conrad wrote in the Chicago Defender in March 1946 that “as the war ended…the rate of at-home violence involving the Negro arose…The Negro press still reads like war”.28 And yet, the Legion never forcefully spoke out on the issue of civil rights and racial violence. Black Legionnaires themselves submitted resolutions on issues such as the Federal Employment Practices Commission – an agency created during the war to eliminate racial discrimination in hiring practices – the poll tax, and lynching, but they never passed the National Convention.29

74  Olivier Burtin The standard defence of the Legion leadership when asked to take a position on such issues was as simple as it was incomplete. Their hands were bound, they argued, either by the fact that they lacked an official mandate from the National Convention or by the independence of state chapters in membership matters.30 While this was technically true, it is also remarkable that Legion officials insisted on such a narrow reading of their authority only on issues of race, while being much less hesitant to act of their own initiative on issues more relevant to the majority of their white members, such as the post-war housing crisis. The few actions that the group did take were largely symbolic. The 1948 National Convention, for instance, passed a resolution stating its “belief in the inherent constitutional and equal rights of all Americans, irrespective of race, creed or color”, which also noted somewhat ironically that “great progress has actually been made and is constantly being made in this vital and important field [civil rights]…and also…that the AL has contributed in no small measure to this progress”.31 The definition of “progress” held by white Legion officials, however, was decidedly limited: In 1947, newly elected National Commander James F. O’Neil declared that the policy of segregating chapters in the South “met with his approval”.32 Not only did the Legion not recognize the relevance of civil rights issues for black veterans, but its tolerance of Jim Crow continued to have consequences for their access to their own benefits. In March 1946, for instance, the results of a survey of 21 cities conducted by the American Council on Race Relations showed “failure of the Federal Government to implement the GI Bill of Rights, especially with regard to the Negro, Japanese, ­Mexican-American and other minority veterans”. Many of the benefits ­provided by the bill, from educational assistance to loan guaranties to unemployment compensation, were out of reach for non-white veterans.33 The Council found “discrimination as usual” to be the norm from federal agencies all the way down and called the phenomenon a “national disgrace”.34 Despite the fact that the Legion proudly claimed to be the sole author of the G.I. Bill, it was conspicuously missing from the list of veterans’ groups that participated in the National Action Conference on Minority Veterans Problems called by the Council later that year and followed by a petition to the president.35 According to ex-Legion official Justin Gray, the Legion also made no effort to help those Southern black veterans who lived in rural, isolated areas apply for their terminal leave pay.36 Likewise, the Legion’s opposition to government intervention in the realm of housing was especially detrimental to black veterans, who relied much more than whites on public housing.37 In the first few years after the war, the conservative Second World War leadership of the Legion remained adamantly opposed to the public housing bill supported by Robert Wagner, Robert Taft and Allen Ellender in the US Senate. As P. L. Prattis wrote in the Courier, “[h]ousing is almost the special and peculiar need of ­Negroes wherever you find them. By opposing liberal housing programs, the ­Legion places its seal of approval on every Negro slum ghetto in the

Enforcing conformity  75 38

United States”. Some black Legionnaires tried to draw attention to this ­problem: The ­Commander of a black Legion Post in Chicago’s South Side, for instance, expressed “keen disappointment at the existing [housing] conditions” in his neighbourhood. Black veterans, he argued, “feel discontented because on returning home, they could find no adequate housing” due to “restrictive covenants and obdurate owners who want to sell at exorbitant prices or who refuse to sell to colored citizens”.39 Just as it failed to heed the material concerns of its black members, the Legion also made little effort to integrate them in its discourse. An outside observer reading Legion publications during the post-war years would have been hard-pressed to know that there were non-white veterans in the group. Despite its frequent claims that it was “truly representative of America”, with “no lines of distinction drawn between race, creed or color”, the facts told a different story.40 Legion cartoons and magazines depicted a veteran who was almost always a white, heterosexual and breadwinner man with a stay-at-home, child-rearing wife. The fact that this portrayal was not representative of the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Legionnaires did not go unnoticed. As a veteran from Philadelphia wrote to the Legion ­Magazine in 1946, [i]t looks to me and many other negro servicemen that the National Headquarters of the American Legion thinks the war was fought and won by only the white man in khaki. We would like to see more of ourselves in your paper.41 The situation remained the same almost ten years later, when that same Magazine published a short letter from Sidney Sasson of New York in which he wrote that he “would like to see a cover piece depicting the American Negro in any of the typical American scenes such as watching a parade, celebrating the Fourth of July, taking part in a college rally etc. No treatment with condescension”.42 Clearly, the Legion was not paying equal attention to the concerns of all of its members.

Race, anti-communism and civil rights The late 1940s also witnessed the growing involvement of the American Legion in the Second Red Scare, the period of intense anti-communist fever that gripped the United States until the early 1950s. As it became increasingly involved in the anti-communist movement both at home and overseas, the Legion aligned itself with groups whose politics ran counter to those of most of its non-white members. For instance, it maintained close ties with J. Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and staunchly supported all congressional committees in charge of investigating communism, especially the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).43 Both the FBI and HUAC relentlessly harassed civil rights activists throughout the

76  Olivier Burtin 1940s and 1950s: for instance, by holding hearings or conducting investigations on alleged communist influences. The Legion also attacked the ­A merican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a left-leaning organization focussed on the defence of freedom of speech. In 1952, Legionnaires officially called for a ­federal investigation of the ACLU to “ascertain whether…[it] may be properly classified as a Communist or Communist-front organization”.44 It was hardly a surprise, then, that when the Legion invited several organizations to an “All-American Conference to Combat Communism” in January 1950 in New York City, the NAACP turned down the offer on the grounds that the other groups on the guest list – among which were the American Heritage Foundation, the US Chamber of Commerce and the Daughters of the American Revolution – were pro-segregation. Its board declared that they “will not collaborate with those who would maintain the inequalities of the color bar”.45 The Legion’s anti-communist discourse typically portrayed African Americans as easy targets of Communist persuasion. For instance, the ­Legion-sponsored radio broadcast Decision Now, which aired from 1947 to 1949, described blacks as a gullible group whom Communists could easily manipulate by whipping up their resentment of racial discrimination.46 As one speaker mentioned during a Legion seminar on anticommunism in 1947, “Negro groups…are especially subject to Communist poison...”. “We might as well face it”, he added, “the Negro is discriminated against, he is not given a fair shake in many respects. The wonder to me is that more of them don’t swallow the Commie line”.47 It is worth stressing that this view of African Americans as easy and passive targets for left-wing activists was not unique to the Legion: During this period, it was common for white supremacists across the United States to argue that blacks’ complaints of mistreatment were the product not of actual racial discrimination but of the manipulations of left-wing “outside agitators” who set one race against another for purely political gain. As historians have shown, anti-communism offered a powerful political repertoire to defenders of Jim Crow who sought to undermine the legitimacy of the civil rights movement: The frequency of red-baiting attacks rose and fell “largely in rhythm with southern efforts to counter the struggle for black equality”.48 The relationship between African Americans and the Legion only ­further deteriorated with the rise of the civil rights movement. The “massive resistance” of Southern whites to the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to ban racial segregation in schools left as deep a mark on the Legion as it did on the country as a whole. Until then, the group had been able to avoid directly addressing the issue of race. Starting in the ­m id-1950s, however, it became increasingly entangled in this ­debate at both the national and local levels. During these years, the Supreme Court emerged as a favourite target for Legionnaires who opposed its efforts ­either to rein in the anti-communist crusade or to undermine white supremacy (or both).

Enforcing conformity  77 After the civil rights movement’s next major victory, the 1955–1956 Montgomery bus boycott, the Legion began to criticize these groups more openly. Building on its longstanding amalgamation of civil rights activism and communist subversion, the group called for an investigation of the NAACP “to ascertain the truth or falsity of the charges that this organization is influenced by communists or their fellow travelers”.49 It also voted a resolution deploring “the continued usurption [sic] of States Rights by the federal government, specifically in those matters so clearly spelled out by our founding fathers and in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution”, which it believed “will eventually result in a socialistic or dictatorial form of government”.50 In 1958, the National Convention of the Legion adopted a lengthy resolution “vigorously” opposing “all legislation” encouraging the federal government to infringe upon what they saw as the rightful control of educational affairs by states and local communities.51 At the same convention, National Commander W. C. “Dan” Daniel (a Virginian) directly challenged the legitimacy of the highest court of the land in a speech where he decried “the increasing danger of centralized oppressive government…of judicial attacks upon the sovereignty of our respective states…of arbitrary decrees which challenge the purpose and heretofore sacred guarantees of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence”. The speech directly referred to some of the recent decisions of the Court regarding communism, but it was clearly an attack on Brown as well.52 To be sure, the Legion leadership steadfastly denied that these resolutions had anything to do with racial segregation and always pointed to the fact that they never mentioned race. However, any defence of states’ rights had unavoidable racial undertones in the political context of the mid- to late1950s. In addition, a series of embarrassing public statements made it clear where the real sympathies of top Legion officials lay. In early 1955, ­National Commander Seaborn Collins reportedly commented that he did not “­regard Negroes as his equal”, though he claimed to have been misquoted; this ­comment led several black Posts to ask for his resignation.53 The following year, one of the Legion’s (white) National Vice-Commanders said during a speech in Mississippi that he had decided not to attend the Democratic National Convention in protest against the fact that his state delegation also included what he called three “super-sunburned d ­ elegates”, including an NAACP attorney.54 Responding to outraged letters, the N ­ ational ­Commander argued that his subordinate’s comments had been misunderstood and dismissed it as merely an “unfortunate incident”.55 Finally, in January 1957, National Commander Daniel himself told a cheering Georgia House of Representatives that he would be “glad to fight to uphold the traditions of the great state of Georgia”, adding that “the Legion, too, believes in states’ rights”.56 “Arrogation of power by a central government was fast reducing the states to municipal dependencies”, he claimed, and “[a]n all-­ powerful central government is the vehicle that the Kremlin hopes to ride in conquering our free land, as was the case in so many of the countries in

78  Olivier Burtin East and Central Europe”.57 Once again, the comment provoked a series of denunciations, to which the Legion merely replied that Daniel’s speech had never mentioned “the matter of segregation”, which had been “inserted” into his remarks “by a zealous reporter”.58 Beyond these declarations by the national leadership, white Legionnaires all across the South actively fought civil rights at the local or state level. In 1956, the Commander of the Georgia Legion publicly endorsed the Gray Amendment to the Virginia state Constitution, which sought to enforce school segregation despite the Brown decision.59 In Coushatta, Louisiana, the Red River Post censured both Congress and the Supreme Court for their role in promoting “socialism” and “destroying basic constitutional principles”.60 After denouncing two white Legion Posts in Mississippi for co-sponsoring a meeting with a White Citizens’ Council (the respectable, middle-class equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan) in the spring of 1957, the black William Walker Post 214 in Jackson saw its charter cancelled. The Department Commander threatened to expel black Mississippi Legionnaires if they did not rid their posts of “racial agitators” and stopped “dabbling in partisan politics”. The fact that the William Walker Post had ties to the civil rights movement – its Service Officer was none other than NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers – and that it tried to register black voters to vote was certainly not a coincidence. Post members appealed the decision but without success.61 Finally, when President Eisenhower later used the National Guard to force the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the early fall of 1957, his move was met with the intense opposition of many Legion Posts across the South, who decried what they saw as an overt assault on states’ rights. In New Orleans, for instance, white Legionnaires invited the anti-­ integration Arkansas Governor Orval ­Faubus to speak at their Veterans’ Day ceremony that year. In January 1958, the ­Arkansas Legion presented him with its Americanism Award, in the presence of a slew of top Legion officials (including former National Commander Erle Cocke) from the South.62

Conclusion The presentation of this award captured the attitude of the American ­Legion on matters of race throughout this period: Generally insensitive to the concerns of its non-white members, the group acted in their favour only when legal pressure and the risk of more radical change made its leaders feel that they had no other choice. Even then, change remained very limited and slow, with consequences felt far and wide. By characterizing the complaints of its non-white members as falling outside the purview of “veterans’ issues”, the Legion actively contributed to their marginalization. Racial discrimination had certainly been a longstanding feature of veterans’ benefits, but Legion leaders helped embed it even further into the structure of the law. Instead of helping make veterans’ benefits accessible to all former soldiers, they played a key role in enforcing conformity to their own model of who counted as a veteran.

Enforcing conformity  79

Notes 1 See, for instance, Chad Louis Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Christopher S. Parker, Fighting for Democracy: Black Veterans and the Struggle against White Supremacy in the Postwar South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); Kimberley L. Phillips, War! What Is It Good For? Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Christine Knauer, Let Us Fight as Free Men: Black Soldiers and Civil Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Steven L. Schlossman and Sherie Mershon, Foxholes & Color Lines: Desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Barbara A. Gannon, The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). 2 In October 1946, the membership of the Veterans of Foreign Wars stood at 1.5 million, see Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr., VFW: Our First Century, 1899–1999 (Lenexa, KS: Addax, 1999), 115. 3 For an internal survey of Legion membership, see American Legion Membership Survey Winter 1954–1955 (Reel No. 96–10), American Legion Archives (ALA), Indianapolis, Indiana. 4 Rayford Whittingham Logan, The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901 (New York: Dial Press, 1954). 5 William Pencak, For God & Country: The American Legion, 1919–1941 (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1989), 68–69. 6 Pencak, For God & Country, 137–143. 7 Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life, The Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series, vol. 8 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 179–182. 8 “Remarks of Past Commander, L.T. Kendrick of Lindley DeGarmo Post No.70 on ‘The Negro Veterans appeal to organize their own Posts within The Department of Florida, American Legion’”, ALA, Administration & Organization, Organization, Post, “Class” Posts, Black Veterans (hereafter Black Veterans). 9 On Texas, see Harry E. Rather to Henry H. Dudley (3 November 1944), ALA, Black Veterans. On Florida, see “Constitution and By-Laws of the Department of the Colored Veterans of the World War in Florida”, ALA, Black Veterans. 10 Thurgood Marshall to Messrs. White and Wilkins, “Memorandum on the American Legion”, (31 July 1944), Records of the NAACP, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (NAACP), Washington, DC, Part II, Box 2, Folder: Chapman v. American Legion, 1942–1943. 11 Progress Report, Colored Posts (15 May 1944), ALA, Black Veterans. 12 David H. Onkst, “‘First a Negro... Incidentally a Veteran’: Black World War Two Veterans and the G. I. Bill of Rights in the Deep South, 1944–1948”, Journal of Social History, 31:3 (1998), 517–543. 13 Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White, Chap. 5. 14 Quoted in Kathleen Frydl, The GI Bill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 137. 15 The Black Dragon Society was a Japanese paramilitary group that sent spies to the US prior to Pearl Harbor, reportedly in an attempt to harness discontent among African Americans in order to undermine the US war effort. In October 1942, over 80 African Americans were arrested by the FBI on charges of sedition, pro-Japanese activities and draft-dodging. See “Takcihashi’s Blacks”, Time, 5 October 1942. 16 Donald G. Glascoff, “Memo to: Edw. N. Scheiberling—Subject: Negro Membership after World War II”, (20 March 1945), ALA, Black Veterans.

80  Olivier Burtin 17 “Legion Refuses to Lower Color Bar: Vets Denied Membership Resolutions”, The Baltimore Afro-American, 1 December 1945. 18 Fred Atwater, “Legionnaires Beat Negro Vets”, The Chicago Defender, 12 October 1946. 19 Major Robinson, “Legion Denies Charters to Interracial Posts”, The Chicago Defender, 21 September 1946. 20 “Florida Legion Sets Up JC Posts: Formerly Lily-White Group Changes Policy”, The Baltimore Afro-American, 28 September 1946. 21 “Negro Legion Posts”, Greenville (TX) Banner, 29 September 1945, Black, ALA; “Legion Lifts Ban In South: Rule Covers Georgia, Alabama, Carolinas”, The Chicago Defender, 13 April 1946; “Dixie Drops Bar: La., Florida L ­ egions ­Absorb Negro Posts”, The Pittsburgh Courier, 3 August 1946; “­A merican ­L egion Approves Race Groups: Vote Is Overwhelming, but Negroes Will Function in Separate District”, The Pittsburgh Courier, 9 August 1947. It is unclear exactly when Mississippi dropped its ban, but the state is mentioned as having done so in Henry H. Dudley to A.B. Kapplin, (4 September 1946), ALA, Black Veterans. 22 Progress Report, Colored Posts, 15 May 1944, Black Veterans, ALA; George N. Craig to Laddell Washington (2 February 1950), ALA, Black Veterans. 23 Headquarters Georgia Department, “Bulletin No.1 – Colored Legion Posts” (25 July 1946), ALA, Black Veterans. 24 “Demands Complete Legion Integration”, The Baltimore Afro-American, 22 October 1955; “Equal Vote Fight Waged in Legion: Vets Denied Weighty Committee Privileges”, The Baltimore Afro-American, 12 October 1946. 25 L. S. Henry to Donald R. Wilson (8 December 1951), ALA, Black Veterans. 26 Johnny Baker Post No. 291 Americanism Committee Chairman Ben Peery to NAACP National Secretary Walter White (22 October 1945), NAACP, Box A362, Folder: American Legion, 1949–1949. 27 On the lynching of returning Second World War veterans, see Equal Justice Initiative, “Lynching in America: Targeting Black Veterans”, 2017, available at: http://eji.org/reports/online/lynching-in-america-targeting-black-veterans (accessed 11 April 2017); Kimberley L. Phillips, War! What Is It Good for?: Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 86–99. 28 Earl Conrad, “Yesterday And Today: The Negro Press Fights On”, The Chicago Defender, 2 March 1946. 29 “FEPC, Poll Tax Petitions Offered at Legion Sessions”, The Baltimore AfroAmerican, 10 August 1946. 30 See for instance Paul H. Griffith to Linwood G. Koger, n.d. (ca. 9 May 1947) and Donald R. Wilson to L. S. Henry (17 December 1951), ALA, Black Veterans. 31 Proceedings of the 30th National Convention of the American Legion (Miami, 1948), 74–75. 32 “Legion Commander OKs Jim Crow Posts”, The Chicago Defender, 4 October 1947. 33 Quoted in Justin Gray and Victor H. Bernstein, The Inside Story of the Legion (New York: Boni & Gaer, 1948), 201. On the release of the survey, see “American Council Calls Emergency Veterans Conference: More Than 50 Organizations To Join Confab”, Cleveland Call and Post, 30 March 1946. 34 American Council on Race Relations, “Veterans Are Finding ‘Discrimination As Usual,’” New Journal and Guide, 20 July 1946. 35 Five veterans’ groups participated: the Catholic War Veterans, the Jewish War Veterans, the Veterans League of America, the UNAVA and the American Veterans Committee. See “Veterans Groups To Protest To Pres. Truman About

Enforcing conformity  81

36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54

Bias: President to Get Proposals Of Vet Groups”, Cleveland Call and Post, 27 July 1946. Gray and Bernstein, The Inside Story of the Legion, 201–203. James L. Hicks, “Veterans Whirl”, The Baltimore Afro-American, 12 December 1947; P. L. Prattis, “The Horizon: Instead of Waiting to Be Kicked Out by ­Legion, Negro Posts Should Seek New Home”, The Pittsburgh Courier, 13 September 1947; “Raise in Rent Ceilings Looms In Washington: Low Cost Housing Program ­under Fire From Legion”, The Chicago Defender, 16 November 1946. P. L. Prattis, “The Horizon: Instead of Waiting to Be Kicked Out by Legion, Negro Posts Should Seek New Home”, The Pittsburgh Courier, 13 September 1947. Alonzo Mead, “Legion Post To Get Action”, The Chicago Defender, 15 February 1947. The American Legion, The Crusades of ’50: A Plan of Action! (1949), 21, Wisconsin Veterans Museum, Madison, WI. Willie Cheny to National Commander Office (25 January 1946), ALA, Black Veterans. “Sound Off: Blind Spot”, American Legion Magazine, December 1955, 4. For an example of a resolution of support for the FBI, see Proceedings of the 32nd National Convention of the American Legion (Los Angeles, 1950), 28. On the FBI’s Legion Contact Program, see Matthew Cecil, Branding Hoover’s FBI: How the Boss’s PR Men Sold the Bureau to America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016), 73–94; Athan Theoharis, “The FBI and the American Legion Contact Program, 1940–1966”, Political Science Quarterly 100:2 (1985), 271–286; Joanne M. Hepp, “Administrative Insubordination and Bureaucratic Principles: The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s American Legion Contact Program” (M.A., Marquette University, 1985). For an example of the resolutions of support for HUAC, see Proceedings of the 31st National Convention of the American Legion (Philadelphia, 1949), 75; Eugene Lyons, “The Men the Commies Hate Most”, ALM, October 1950. Proceedings of the 34th National Convention of the American Legion, 29. James L. Hicks, “NAACP Board Rejects 2 Branch Protests on Wilkins; Passes ‘Confidence’ Vote”, The Baltimore Afro-American, 25 February 1950. See the scripts of episodes 74 and 77 of the show (respectively 27 June and 18 July 1948) in ALA, Radio Scripts. National Americanism Commission, The American Legion, Addresses: CounterSubversion Seminar, 1948, 229. Emphasis original. Jeff Woods, Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948–1968 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 5; George Lewis, The White South and the Red Menace: Segregationists, Anticommunism, and Massive Resistance, 1945–1965 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004). Resolution no. 421 in Proceedings of the 38th National Convention (Los Angeles, CA, 1956), 49. Resolution no. 75 in Proceedings of the 38th National Convention of the American Legion (Los Angeles, CA, 1956), 51. Proceedings of the 40th National Convention of the American Legion (Chicago, 1958), 61–62. Ibid., 5–6. “Legion Head on Spot: Resignation Asked by Harlemites”, The Baltimore Afro-American, 30 April 1955; “Negro Legionnaires in 5 States Protest Commander Race Slur”, n.d., ALA, Black Veterans. “Biloxi, Miss., July 10 (AP)…”, ALA, Americanism, Tolerance, Segregation (hereafter Segregation).

82  Olivier Burtin 55 J. Addington Wagner to Honorable Charles C. Diggs, Jr. (18 July 1956); J. Addington Wagner to Frank P. Lynch, Jr. (18 July 1956), ALA, Segregation. 56 “Legion Head Lauds Stand of Georgia”, The Washington Post (Washington, DC), 26 January 1957. 57 Charles W. Geile to David C. Leach, n.d. (ca. February 1957), ALA, Segregation. 58 Robert E. Lyngh to George H. Simmons (19 February 1957), ALA, Segregation. 59 Irving Breakstone to Robert Maynard Hutchins (16 March 1956), Princeton University, Mudd Library, Fund for the Republic Papers, Box 16, folder 5. 60 Quoted in Lewis, The White South and the Red Menace, 53. 61 Peter D. Hoefer, “A David against Goliath: The American Veteran Committee’s Challenge to the American Legion in the 1950s” (PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 2010), 180–191. 62 Ibid., 196–211.

6 “Fighting for Their Freedom At Home” Native American Vietnam veterans in the Red Power Movement, 1969–1973 Matthias Voigt Introduction During the 1960s and 1970s, a large number of returning Native American veterans of the Vietnam War became active in the Red Power Movement (RPM) in the United States. Scholars have firmly established the significance of the RPM within Native American history. It profoundly altered Native Americans’ own self-perception, provoked dramatic transformations across Indian Country and fundamentally revised Indigenous-white ­relations, leading to increased self-determination. The American Indian Movement (AIM), a Pan-Indian protest organization founded in 1968 in the Twin ­Cities of ­Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, was present during all major events of that era and played a significant role in mobilizing protest, shaping protest tactics, attracting media coverage and influencing the movement’s agenda in general. AIM only represented one part of the RPM, yet the organization became synonymous with Native militancy. By the early 1970s, as the organization expanded nationally and began to reach out to reservation communities, it shifted its focus towards treaty rights, sovereignty, land reform and tribal governance. Historian Troy Johnson has convincingly contextualized Native protest activism within a 9-year time frame from 1969 to 1978, establishing the 19-month seizure of Alcatraz Island in 1969 as a starting point of a series of protests, demonstrations and takeovers that lasted well into the late 1970s.1 AIM took part in or initiated numerous protest events that involved the seizure of federal property.2 There were more than 70 major demonstrations during this period.3 Native American activists demanded recognition of both their civil rights and treaty rights, along with an end to the ongoing assault on their cultural and tribal identities through policies of forced ­assimilation. For themselves, they envisioned a form of non-assimilative ­inclusion into American society. According to Joane Nagel, three factors were crucial for the RPM.4 The first factor was the Native American reaction to the policies of “termination”. “Termination” consisted of a two-partite program: termination

84  Matthias Voigt (which sought to detribalize tribal communities and debase them of their remaining land) and relocation (which sought to transfer the remaining tribal members into the big cities in order to absorb them into mainstream society). Termination policies lasted from 1953 through the 1970s and ­resulted in a highly antagonized Native population ready for protest mobilization.5 The second factor was the global context of social unrest and political upheaval during the 1960s and 1970s.6 This context provided a window of opportunity and served as a model for Native American protest activism. Third, the self-renewing power of protest activism served as a catalyst for cultural revival and restoration, inspiring further activism. The RPM offered Native men and women an avenue through which to transform their own gendered subjectivities and their tribal communities, instigating an ongoing cultural, economic and political renaissance across Indian Country. Recent scholarship has provided fresh perspectives on Native a­ ctivism. Daniel Cobb has placed Native activism within the larger Cold War context.7 Furthermore, scholarship has repeatedly called for the examination of gendered perspectives. Aside from a handful of studies on Native women in the RPM, Indigenous male perspectives remain unexplored. The absence of studies on Native men’s active role in the RPM is paralleled by a lack of studies on Native American veterans. Masculinities studies overlap with ­Native veteran activism during the RPM. Historiography has frequently ­focussed on Western-centric conceptualizations of men and masculinity, and has only recently begun to shift its focus towards the marginalized “other”.8 Indigenous masculinity studies not only foreground dynamics of race-, gender- and class-based oppression and domination within particular colonial and nationalist contexts but also work to undermine cultural hegemony and white male privilege through alternative gender practices.9 Scholars have recognized Native Americans’ contributions to each ­c onflict of the twentieth century; yet there is only a cursory ­u nderstanding of how Native soldiers have utilized their veteran status in the struggle for civil rights and treaty rights vis-à-vis the American settler nation state.10 The following chapter fills a void at the intersections of three interrelated and overlapping fields: Red Power activism, Native Americans in the US military and masculinity studies. The chapter relies on a cross-­ disciplinary approach that combines oral history with the analysis of written sources. The combined usage of first-hand ethnographic fieldwork and archival ­material serves to obtain more complete insights into the subject. ­Theoretical approaches are drawn from the fields of ethnohistory, cultural history and masculinity/gender studies, together with postcolonialism and post-­structuralism.11 With this approach, the chapter examines how m ­ ilitary service impacted Native American Vietnam veterans and their subsequent protest activism, and assesses the role that Native veterans played in the evolving RPM.

“Fighting for Their Freedom At Home”  85

Warriors into soldiers: colonial and Native American perspectives for enlistment Native Americans have an extraordinary military service record. They ­enlisted in higher numbers in proportion to their population than any other racial minority in the United States. In 1980, there were a total of 62,100 Native American Vietnam-era vets. Of these, about 42,500 served in SouthEast Asia. About 90 per cent were volunteers, at a time when the military draft was in place until 1973.12 Tom Holm estimates that about one in four eligible Native Americans served during the Vietnam War as compared to 1 in 12 of the general American population.13 In the post-Vietnam era, Native men and women have continued to serve in high numbers, an indication of the ongoing significance of the US military for Native Americans. Historically, Anglo-American elites recruited Native men eagerly into their colonial army because they considered them a “martial race”. The “­Indian Scout Syndrome” – the belief that Native soldiers are imbued with warriorlike characteristics that make them superb fighters naturally ­belonging to the battlefield – has followed Native servicemen from the First World War through to the present. Native interviewees frequently stated that their fellow non-Native service members commonly addressed them with “chief”; interviewees also stated that they were singled out or asked to “walk point” for their unit ­because of their supposedly superior sense of orientation.14 Adherents of dependency theory have – falsely – interpreted Native ­motivations to enlist as efforts to better themselves and/or to legitimize themselves in the eyes of dominant society. While these motivations may explain other ethnic minorities’ reasons for entering the US military, they do not necessarily hold true for Native Americans. Recent scholarship has turned away from explaining Native military service with domestic dependency and internal colonialism. Native enlistment is a complex combination of influences that include assimilative and acculturative factors (boarding schools, travel and adventure, the draft) and economics (employment, betterment, status, income). However, scholarship has continually reaffirmed that the larger influences behind Native entrance into the military continue to be culturally based.15 Apparently, Native veterans have their own reasons for joining the US military, which are not necessarily those imagined for them. They embrace a “hybrid patriotism” that is both Native (for their land and their people) and American (for the US nation and its people). ­Native military service can be explained through a combination of cultural ­motives, such as “hybrid patriotism” and cultural continuity (e.g. the continuation of warrior traditions in the form of veteran and family traditions) as well as military syncretism (a blending of Native and non-Native cultural and military traditions), all of which allow Native Americans to maintain a strong sense of their own tribal/cultural/ethnic identities.16 Native participation in twentieth-century wars produced several generations of veterans (who were also called warriors). According to Holm,

86  Matthias Voigt William Meadows and Al Carroll, each generation of outgoing or homecoming veterans has called for a need among tribal communities to adequately send off, welcome home and recognize their warriors through cultural rituals and ceremonies that were meant to protect, cleanse and honour veterans. Tribal communities wholeheartedly threw themselves into the war effort, making considerable sacrifices, both on the home front and in combat. Anti-war protest or draft dodging were highly uncommon among Native Americans, and those few cases were mostly due to confusion over the draft, their ambiguous citizenship status or religious reasons.17 Native participation in the First World War and, to a much larger extent, participation in the Second World War and the Korean War resulted in a broad-sweeping cultural renewal and revival across Indian Country.18 During the First and Second World Wars, conscription for military service raised questions about the special legal, governmental and cultural status of Native Americans vis-à-vis the American nation state. Native Americans have a unique legal status, stemming from their particular cultural heritage, their relation to the land and their particular relationship to the colonial government. The relationship of all racial minorities to the nation state is characterized through civil rights and liberties. The relationship of N ­ ative Americans to the United States is additionally characterized through treaty rights. In 1871, US Congress unilaterally ended the treaty-making era. Since then, Indigenous-white relations resemble one of wardenship (on the side of Native Americans) and one of guardianship (on the side of the federal government). In 1924, US Congress imposed US citizenship upon Native Americans (Snyder Act) and again reaffirmed this in 1940 and 1941, respectively. Kevin Bruyneel has characterized this ambiguous and complex Indigenous-US relationship, which awkwardly situates Native Americans neither within nor outside but rather on the fringes of the US settler state and nation as “a third space of sovereignty”.19 Native participation in the First World War resulted in the bestowment of blanket US citizenship. ­Native Americans viewed the granting of US citizenship sceptically because they feared citizenship would further erode their treaty rights and hasten the loss of their cultural identity. At the eve of the Second World War, passage of the 1940 Nationality Act reasserted Native citizenship. The 1941 Ex Parte Green decision declared that citizenship and wardenship were compatible, becoming an authoritative decision with regard to Native military service.20 The history of Native veteran activism for much of the first half of the twentieth century is largely unexplored due to a lack of written documents and oral testimony. However, there is evidence that Native ex-service members utilized their veteran status in the struggle for treaty rights and civil rights. Native First World War veterans set up several American Legion Posts.21 The Great War allowed Native men to set a precedent in transplanting existing notions of Native warriorhood into US military service and syncretizing both different cultural and martial traditions.22 The Second World War resulted in a greater number of veterans and more widespread

“Fighting for Their Freedom At Home”  87 activism than the previous war. In 1944, Native activists and veterans founded the ­National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)-like lobbying organization of Native rights. Jeré Franco has found that Native vets from New ­Mexico and Arizona, states with the highest percentage of Native ­A mericans, ­protested for the franchise and against the ban of alcohol. It took until 1948 (in the case of New Mexico) or 1962 (in the case of ­Arizona) for these states to enfranchise their Native population. Voting discrimination against Native Americans continued in North Carolina until the 1950s and in Utah until 1957. War participation also led to an increased resentment against the ban of liquor on reservations and in border towns.23 ­Political activism of Native veterans of the Korean War largely stands in the shadow of the Second World War. There is a high probability that Second World War and Korean War veterans rallied around similar political agendas. Both veteran groups roughly belonged to the same generation: Both had served in wars that were only a few years apart, they had fought conventional battles and they had largely departed for war together and returned from it collectively.

Native American Vietnam veterans and the Red Power Movement Oral testimonies indicate that Native servicemen viewed the Vietnam War every bit as critically as their non-Native counterparts. In contrast to non-Natives, Native Americans related the Vietnam War experience to their own, distinct historical experience. Throughout the narratives of N ­ ative vets, there is a strong sense of cultural and historical connection to the ­Vietnamese, which stemmed from the recognition of similar, parallel experiences and the way in which both Native Americans and Vietnamese were racialized and colonized by the United States. Many Native veterans recalled incidences of being approached by Vietnamese people saying, “You, me, same, same”. What struck many was their own physical resemblance with that of the Vietnamese people and the racism their non-Native counterparts exhibited towards Vietnamese people.24 The Vietnam War alienated Native soldiers in a profound way, fuelling a severe alienation from dominant society. Many Native soldiers experienced racism and discrimination as well as frequent comparisons of V ­ ietnam to the “Indian Wars”; the removal of Vietnamese from their land and resettlement into designated areas; the creation of free-fire zones; and, in some cases, even atrocities – closely resembling their own experiences of displacement, removal, military conflict, reservation confinement and colonial oppression.25 For many Native vets, it was not only the war in Vietnam that severely impacted them but also, equally, the homecoming experience. Crowds of hostile anti-war protesters left Native veterans with deep-seated feelings

88  Matthias Voigt of alienation, disillusionment and deceit. George Lamont (Lakota), a paratrooper from Pine Ridge, recalled, “Then we come back and the white people spit in our face. They called us baby killers and everything”.26 By contrast, tribal communities gave their veterans a quite different reception than the one they received in dominant society because they did not hold their ­veterans responsible for the war.27 However, it took until the early 1980s for the Vietnam-era generation to receive widespread recognition across Indian Country through powwows. Native veterans returned from Vietnam to a situation of heightened ­upheaval as well as domestic colonialism. Many returning Native Vietnam veterans brought with them “a sense of betrayal”, as Holm puts it. They felt that they had been used as pawns in the white man’s army.28 Native veterans encountered a “double discrimination” by mainstream society: First, as subaltern people, they were confronted with the ongoing bias directed against them as Native Americans; second, as participants and returnees from a war that was highly unpopular, they endured the same discrimination as other Vietnam veterans.29 Many Native veterans joined the RPM for recognition of their civil and treaty rights, to halt the devastating policies of termination and out of an overriding concern for their own cultural survival as an Indigenous people. A precursor of this surging activism occurred in the fishing rights struggle of the Pacific North-West. There, a number of local tribes around the Pudget Sound and the Columbia River sought to uphold their traditional fishing rights guaranteed by treaties but were challenged by state and local authorities. In a series of fish-ins, Native activists brought international ­attention to their struggle. The battle over fishing rights encouraged Native activists to utilize tactics of direct action and civil disobedience, a precursor to ­Native militancy during later years. In 1968, Sidney Mills (Yakama/­ Cherokee), a wounded combat soldier recently returned from Vietnam, found himself in the midst of the ongoing fishing rights struggle. He was arrested on 13 October 1968 at Frank’s Landing on the Nisqually River. In his court testimony, he articulated a feeling shared by many Native veterans: that instead of fighting in a faraway country like Vietnam, they should take up arms to defend their rights at home. In a further testimony, he related the story of Sergeant Sohappy – a Native combat vet with three tours in ­Vietnam and distinguished service – who was arrested for (supposedly) illegal fishing in what was an attempt to provide for his family while home recuperating from yet another series of combat wounds.30 The “Red Power” slogan meant something entirely different from the “Black Power” slogan that rebutted integration and called for separation. Throughout, the meaning and concept of “Red Power” has remained highly ambiguous and fuzzy and, dependent upon context, could encompass different meanings. Those activists calling for “Red Power” variously meant one of the following: self-determination, nationalism, sovereignty or ­decolonization – terms that refer to varying degrees of power relations

“Fighting for Their Freedom At Home”  89 and highlight the interconnectedness between them.31 According to Leah Sneider, self-­determination depends on “a complimentary relationship ­between independence and interdependence”. As Sneider notes, across ­Indian Country “self-determination is distinctly different from nationalism, which focusses exclusively on independence, rather than interdependence and ­relationship”. Nationalism requires both statehood and nationhood. ­Sovereignty encompasses a people’s right to self-government independent from outside influence. Decolonization first requires sovereignty as a prerequisite; it is a far-reaching attempt to reclaim epistemologies and social structures.32 The term decolonization involves both cultural and political processes that include the dismantling of colonialist power and the reclaiming of Indigenous practices through interwoven processes of nation-­building and cultural recuperation. Decolonization is greatly complicated and obscured through the layering of Indigenous epistemologies with hegemonic systems of race, gender, class and nation. The subsequent three case studies shed light on the role of Native V ­ ietnam veterans during key Red Power events of the 1960s and 1970s. By analyzing Native veteran involvement in these events, which took place in the wider global context of decolonization, the Cold War and the Vietnam War, I will provide insights into the role of warrior masculinity and the veterans’ ­m ilitary experience in the RPM. Paradoxically, the experiences of Native veterans in the American war in Vietnam were used to fight discrimination and segregation in the heart of the United States.

The Alcatraz takeover, 1969–1971 The prolonged takeover of Alcatraz was the culmination of two previous attempts to seize the Island. Historiography has explored the underlying causes of the occupation, the sustained takeover itself, life on the Island, the demise of the occupation, government negotiations and the takeover’s legacy.33 The occupation of Alcatraz enabled Native Americans to overcome marginalization and invisibility, marking – in the words of Dean Rader – “a movement away from cultural segregation in favor of cultural engagement”.34 The seizure of the Island engendered cultural production through public proclamations, poems and paintings, all of which marked “a performative Pan-Indian resistance” and assertion of cultural sovereignty.35 As a whole, the Alcatraz occupation foregrounded a profound reclamation of Indigenous identities (that is the abandonment of unwanted or undesirable identities with a positive ones); provided a catalyst for collective action; inspired cultural revival; which suggests a wide-ranging transformative ­i mpact across Indian Country.36 What it less known is the active part Native veterans took in capturing Alcatraz Island and sustaining the occupation as well as their part in the occupation’s undoing. Among the 14 Native students of the Bay Area who participated in the takeover, there were two veterans: Ross Harden

90  Matthias Voigt (Winnebago) and David Leach (Colville/Sioux). Others joined a little later. John Trudell (Santee Sioux), a 23-year old Navy veteran, operated “Radio Free Alcatraz” from the Island and subsequently became one of the most recognized leadership figures within AIM. “Radio Free Alcatraz” reached an estimated 100,000 listeners across the nation. Radio broadcasts reported Native American problems and conflicts between the federal government and tribal communities, and raised cultural awareness.37 During the occupation, a number of Native veterans visited and stayed. One was Gary Leach (Colville/Sioux): “I came back from Viet Nam the day after Thanksgiving, about five days later I was on the island…” he recalled.38 When asked why he joined the occupation and what he hoped to gain from it for himself and Native Americans in general, he responded, …it [Alcatraz] is just kind of a revolution to keep us from dying… …I am an Indian, I recognize myself as an Indian… I was born on the reservation and I am very proud of it… and as an Indian I don’t want to die and to me this is why I am on the island, I am trying to maintain not only my identity and my children’s and their children’s identity… we still are prisoners of war literally.39 For some veterans who stayed for a prolonged period on the Island, it was a time to reassess their experiences. Stella Leach (Colville/ Sioux), one of the Alcatraz occupiers who had five out of her six children serve in Vietnam, recounted, …Some of them that come here… they are out here on this island two weeks until you see them sit down and think about it and then they say, boy, I sure was a sucker… I let them do this to me, I let them do that to me… and look how they manipulated me by putting me in that position…40 Clearly, many returning Native veterans began to see the incongruity between their military service and their own people’s ongoing struggle at home. Some veterans on Alcatraz Island found themselves in the so-called “warrior society” or security force. The security force’s task was to keep government agents and undesirables from the island, keep track of Native and non-Native visitors through a logbook, enforce the ban on drugs and alcohol, maintain order on the Island, allocate housing, have a watchful eye on children and assign jobs for those on the Island. In the long run, though, the security force did not live up to its assigned role but played a significant part in the community’s undoing.41 The first in charge of security was Jerry Hill (Oneida), an Air Force veteran. He remembered an instance when he sat together with another veteran: “He was a ‘Nam veteran, an older guy like me. […] His point was, ‘here we are, just five Indians smoking a joint, and the

“Fighting for Their Freedom At Home”  91 government doesn’t really know what the hell to do about us.’” At a council meeting, Jerry Hill stood up and pointed out “how easy it would be to land a helicopter in the yard and bring the whole thing to an end”. The council put him in charge of security on the spot.42 In early January 1970, a group calling itself the “Thunderbirds”, composed of Vietnam veterans and Native youth, arrived on the Island, bringing with them drugs, alcohol and violence. Soon, the Alcatraz security force of about ten members, all clad in army fatigues, lost purpose and direction, disintegrating into a gang of ­m ilitants.43 Early Island residents had envisioned the occupation as a model of Pan-Indian unity, community building and liberation from oppressive conditions, and a call for self-determination. However, six weeks into the takeover, the original ideal of a moral community evaporated as life on ­Alcatraz disintegrated into a flawed community, marked by oppression and dissent. Despite its ultimate demise, the Alcatraz occupation, the first sustained takeover of Native protesters, was a pivotal moment. The festive Alcatraz occupation allowed Native Americans to express their impatience with their subaltern status and voice long-standing grievances. At the same time, the prolonged takeover fuelled Native ethnic pride and empowerment and became a role model for future activism, sparking a series of further takeovers and demonstrations that lasted well into the late 1970s.

The Trail of Broken Treaties and the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters takeover in Washington, DC, 1972 In 1972, Native activists organized a massive transcontinental caravan from the West Coast to Washington, DC, to draw attention to Native issues. The event became known as the Trail of Broken Treaties (TBT). The plan was to start on the West Coast, converge in Minneapolis/St. Paul, draw up a position paper and then travel east towards the capital just in time for the upcoming national elections. Hank Adams (Sioux-Assiniboine), a military veteran and fishing rights activist, was the intellectual mind behind the caravan’s proposal, known as the Twenty Points, which attempted to draw America into a new paradigm of dealing with tribal nations. The Twenty Points called for the restoration of treaty-making processes; a treaty commission; land reform; the repeal of termination; the abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs; the protection of religious freedom and cultural expression; and increased funding to alleviate pressing socio-economic conditions.44 The confluence of a series of interrelated developments ultimately led to the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) headquarters in Washington, DC, from 2 to 8 November. When the TBT caravan arrived in the capital they realized that there had been a breakdown in logistics – organizers had failed to arrange meetings with politicians, there were no accommodation and lodging arrangements, and Washington officials withheld any support. Some 400 participants, a broad cross section of Native people from all strands of life – men, women, children and elderly – filed

92  Matthias Voigt into the BIA auditorium. Following a failed attempt by security guards to oust the crowd, TBT participants expelled the guards themselves and took over the building. What was originally intended as a peaceful demonstration to highlight pressing Native concerns eventually turned into a violent confrontation.45 While the takeover of the BIA headquarters was unplanned, it was perhaps no coincidence that the TBT participants targeted the BIA, the government’s colonial overseeing agency, to contend their position of powerlessness and subalternity. Historically, the BIA executed and implemented federal Indian policies and with it hegemonic notions of race, gender and nation. White paternalism – a persistent attitude to do what was best for Native people according to dominant norms – guided much of federal policymaking. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Bureau in particular became a key site of contestation because the RPM held it responsible for the suppression of their culture, loss of sovereignty, economic exploitation and government dependency. For five days, hypermasculine, warrior-like activists defended the BIA, their colonial overseeing agency, now relabelled “Native American ­Embassy”, against repeated efforts by the police to oust them. Native ­Vietnam veterans played a key role in fortifying and defending the building against police attacks. Woody Kipp saw himself as a warrior/veteran/activist: “As a former marine, I considered myself a warrior [...]. I carried a big oak table leg with a dangerous nail sticking out its end. I was warfare”.46 Outside the BIA building, rows of modern-day warriors sporting Army jackets, bandanas and covered in war paint yielded makeshift weapons made of furniture and office equipment – clubs, spears and even bows and arrows – fended off columns of police. Inside, women, children and the elderly retreated to the upper floors. Some stacked typewriters and trashcans filled with hot water at the top of each set of staircases to hurl them down towards police. Some Vietnam veterans made Molotov cocktails out of light bulbs, gasoline siphoned from parked cars and wicks from torn up rags.47 Vietnam veteran Woody Kipp found that “the occupation proved similar to my Vietnam experience – long stretches of boredom punctuated by periods of frantic activity as deadlines for evacuation neared and evaporated”.48 Images of modern-day warriors were pivotal throughout the entire takeover. ­Native men articulated their quest for masculine power and authority and merged them with calls for sovereignty and self-determination. When ­Native ­A mericans confronted settler colonialism, much of their anti-colonial resistance was masculinized. Michael Messner writes, “marginalized and subordinated men [...] tend to overtly display exaggerated embodiments and verbalizations of masculinity that can be read as a desire to express power over others within a context of relative powerlessness”.49 The spontaneous takeover of the building and the impending threat of being attacked by police created a highly volatile situation. Native occupiers responded with calls for warriorhood, an aggressive posturing during impending attacks and clashes

“Fighting for Their Freedom At Home”  93 with police, and by fortifying the building. The final attack never came, and the takeover ended with a negotiated settlement. In early December 1972, a Congressional Hearing condemned the wanton destruction of the building and also stressed the government’s restraint in defusing an extremely volatile situation. Damage to the building was estimated at $2.2 million. During the entire episode, Native veterans played a significant role in seizing and defending the BIA building. Naturally, their military expertise came in handy in the defence of the building and those inside it. However, the entire nature of the takeover strongly indication that AIM was ­becoming increasingly militant and confrontational; through their active participation, Native veterans became increasingly radical.

The siege of Wounded Knee, 1973 The takeover at Wounded Knee was rooted in long-standing political conflict and community tensions on the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. The occupation erupted over tensions between tribal factions within the Native community (traditionalists vs. progressives); internal conflict over governance (an imposed Western form of tribal governance vs. a traditional tribal form of governance centring around kinship and extended family relations); as well as socio-economic dependency from the BIA and an oppressive colonial regime. In effect, tribal governance was a form of indirect colonial rule set up under the provisions of the 1935 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) and naturally supported by the BIA.50 By early 1973, inner-tribal conflict on the Pine Ridge reservation erupted into open violence under the controversial leadership of Tribal Chairman Richard Wilson. From 27 February until 9 May 1973, local reservation residents and AIM activists occupied the tiny hamlet at Wounded Knee. The express purpose of the joint was to draw attention to the inner-tribal conflict, to put the existent form of tribal governance into jeopardy and to re-install the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty as legally binding. The 1868 Treaty had been made on an equal nation-to-nation basis between the Lakota people and the United States. From its inception, the occupiers made clear that the “imposed” IRA-style form of tribal governance violated the Treaty and ought to be replaced by a tribal government of the Lakota; halfway through the siege they declared the Independent Oglala Nation (ION), a nation separate from the US government. The 71-day-long occupation of Wounded Knee constituted the nation’s longest domestic disturbance. The government’s response to the t­ akeover came with a massive buildup of military hardware and personnel to ­suppress the RPM. Opposing the powerful force of BIA police, FBI agents, US ­Marshals and US military advisors was a group of roughly 300 men, women and ­children, armed primarily with hunting rifles and old shotguns. The characteristics of the Wounded Knee siege were bunkers; roadblocks; a “­Demilitarized Zone” or no-man’s-land between the occupiers on the one hand and federal

94  Matthias Voigt agents, white ranchers and GOONs on the other side; a “Ho Chi Min Trail” into the tiny hamlet to resupply the besieged from outside; and short but heavy firefights between both sides. The conflict at Wounded Knee was compared to both Vietnam and the last “Indian Wars”, which seemed to be being refought in the twentieth century, this time between modern-day warriors and ­Vietnam-era US troops. Tom Holm and Al Carroll have noted that Native and non-Native ­veteran participation played a crucial part throughout the siege.51 Native Vietnam veterans featured prominently in the defence of the tiny hamlet. There are no exact numbers, however estimates suggest that up to 150 males were ­involved.52 Bill Means (Lakota), an airborne combat soldier, recalled “Man, I survived Vietnam, and now I’m gonna get killed on my own land, my own reservation”.53 Jim Roubideau (Lakota) recalled, “They were shooting ­machine gun fire at us, tracers coming at us at nighttime just like a war zone. We had some Vietnam vets with us, and they said, ‘Man, this is just like Vietnam.’”54 The veterans who defended Wounded Knee were military-trained: Some had combat experience in South-East Asia; several had received Special Forces training.55 George Lamont (Lakota) recalled, Well, there was quite a few I know [sic]. Because last I heard they had the 82nd standing by in Omaha, Nebraska when this Colonel [Warner] came and observed. And he was saying, ‘Okay I trained most of those guys there in there,’ [which were mostly all the Airborne guys, you know].56 Two veterans – Carter Camp (Ponca) and Stan Holder (Wichita) – ­organized the defences of Wounded Knee. They organized the defenders into squads and supervised the setup bunkers, roadblocks, trenches and holes that guarded the roads into the tiny hamlet and provided for overlapping fire.57 Woody Kipp recalled, Our bunker [at Wounded Knee] was well constructed, with a dirt wall in front and topped with sandbags. We lay flat on the ground, the bullets streaking over us at a distance of about one feet, the red tracers sparking the night air into a deadly brilliance. These were the same machine guns I had been trained to use to kill Viet Cong.58 Woody Kipp instantly recognized the popping sound of gunfire when being shot at in his bunker at Wounded Knee. The last time he had heard that sound was in the defence of Da Nang Air Base against attacks by the North Vietnamese Army. He remembered, In that moment [...], I realized the United States military was looking for me with those flares. I was the gook now. [...] Right here in America, [...] in my own homeland, the one I had eagerly sallied forth to defend some

“Fighting for Their Freedom At Home”  95 seven years previously [...] that country [...] was now sending up a flare in the night [...] that was looking for me. [...] I realized this country was not what I thought it was.59 Moments of realization like this cast away any remaining doubts about loyalty to the US nation that was now their enemy. An increasing number of veterans saw striking parallels to the war in Vietnam and to the first incident at Wounded Knee, the 1890 massacre.60 For seasoned Vietnam veterans, the standoff compared to their war experience in that long periods of boredom were interrupted by short intervals of excitement. However, when there were firefights, “it was heavier than the firefights that most of us saw in Vietnam”, Bob Anderson, a white veteran, remembered.61 The siege of Wounded Knee saw two closely interrelated events: the declaration of the Independent Oglala Nation and the setup of a warrior ­society by the defenders of the village. Scholarship has variously pointed to the inextricable connection between masculinity and nationalism in the making and unmaking of nations. Nagel finds that both masculinity and nationhood are intimately related. Nationalist projects, whether colonial or anti-colonial, require a reconfiguring of gender orders and a recasting of the relationship of men and women. Within the nationalist project, women are cast in the role of biological, cultural and symbolic reproducers of nation; militarized men, in turn, frequently take on the role of defenders of freedom and honour or as protectors of their homeland, their people and their women.62 The Independent Oglala Nation was a nation forged under siege. It was no coincidence that the declaration of the Independent Oglala Nation went hand in hand with the setup of a warrior society.63 The overwhelming forces of US colonial dominance led to the setup of a tribal nation that was coded as highly masculine, as evidenced in the highly salient images of warrior-veterans. The occupation was brought to an end through a negotiated settlement following the death of two activists and one paralyzed FBI agent. The government promised to investigate charges made against the Wilson administration and an investigation into the Fort Laramie Treaty. The takeover was inconclusive in terms of upsetting the balance of power in the tribal council, and it did not create a sovereign nation. The RPM and the armed conflict between Native veterans and the federal government did not end at Wounded Knee. Between 1973 and the mid-1970s, a number of Wounded Knee-like occupations occurred on reservations, involving tribal factions associated with AIM.64 In the wake of the occupation, Pine Ridge was rocked by considerable conflict as the federal government utilized ­Counter-Intelligence-Operations (COINTELPRO) to disrupt AIM. The decline of RPM activism was brought about by a relentless effort by the federal government to suppress, co-opt or incorporate Native dissidence.65 By the late 1970s, protest activism began to wind down. The Longest Walk, a peaceful transcontinental protest to draw attention to anti-Native legislation, is commonly regarded as the end of the RPM.

96  Matthias Voigt

Conclusion Those Native veterans who joined the RPM brought with them a sense of deep alienation and anger. Native veterans had fought in the white man’s army in faraway South-East Asia to uphold US colonial and imperialist policies; yet at the same time the very same government at home once again sought to eradicate Nativeness through policies of termination. Many ­Native veterans felt that instead of fighting a war abroad, they should bring the struggle home. Native veterans were present at virtually all the major protest events of the era, bringing with them a determination, experience and boldness that non-veteran activists lacked. Just as other liberation struggles elsewhere, the anti-colonial struggle required a (re-) masculinization of Native men and masculinities. In bringing bodies and numbers to protest events, Native veterans were key in to the RPM’s rising militancy and left a lasting mark on AIM’s national agenda for tribal self-­determination, sovereignty and nation-building efforts. Just like generations of Native veterans before them, Native Vietnam veterans emulated a “hybrid patriotism” that encompassed the protection of both their homeland and their people. Unlike previous generations of veterans, however, the Native Vietnam veteran generation utilized social protest, rather than established political procedures to seek social change. In fighting for their freedom at home through protest activism, Native veterans pushed hegemonic society for change, yet without the dire consequences of the past. With the whole world watching, it was highly unlikely that Wounded Knee would be the site of just another bloodshed as it had been during the last days of the Indian Wars in 1890. At the same time, Native veterans and activists within the American Indian Movement created new meanings of warriorhood and nationhood. From the celebratory Alcatraz occupation to the confrontational BIA headquarters takeover and the violent Wounded Knee occupation, protest activism saw the emergence of a cross-cultural warrior construct that stood up against colonial oppression. As AIM began to regard itself as a warrior society, it built upon a historical legacy of resistance. In a way, the anti-­ colonial struggle became “an outlet for Natives who wanted to be a part of a warrior tradition but could not in the newly ‘conventional’ way of becoming a veteran”.66

Notes 1 Duane Champagne, Troy Johnson; Joane Nagel, “American Indian Activism and Transformation, Lessons from Alcatraz”, in Troy Johnson (ed.), Contemporary Native American Communities (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1999). Troy Johnson, The American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz Island: Red Power and Self-Determination (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008). 2 Joane Nagel, American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 163–175.

“Fighting for Their Freedom At Home”  97 3 Stephen E. Cornell, The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 180. 4 Nagel, American Indian Ethnic Renewal, 114–184. 5 Ibid., 114–157. 6 Jeremy Suri, Power and Protest. Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 7 Daniel M. Cobb, Native Activism in Cold War America: The Struggle for Sovereignty (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008). 8 Ronald Jackson and Murali Balaji, Global Masculinities and Manhood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011). Simon Wendt and Pablo Andersen, Masculinities and the Nation in the Modern World: Between Hegemony and Marginalization, Global Masculinities (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 9 Kim Anderson and Robert Alexander Innes, Indigenous Men and M ­ asculinities: Legacies, Identities, Regeneration (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015), 1–17. Sam McKegney, Masculindians: Conversations About Indigenous Manhood, (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014), 1–11. Ty ­Tengan, Native Men Remade: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Hawaiʻi, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). 10 Thomas A. Britten, American Indians in World War I: At Home and at War, 1st ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997). Jere Franco, Crossing the Pond: The Native American Effort in World War II, 1st ed., War and the Southwest Series (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1999); Tom Holm, Strong Hearts, Wounded Souls: Native American Veterans of the Vietnam War, 1st ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 169–183. Al Carroll, Medicine Bags and Dog Tags: American Indian Veterans from Colonial Times to the Second Iraq War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 163–172. 11 The term “postcolonialism” encompasses the notion that neither colonization nor decolonization occur in the purest sense of the word; rather the term points to “the consistencies, contingencies, and fissures in the practices of colonization and decolonization”. Kevin Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.-Indigenous Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), xvii–xix. 12 Department of Veterans Affairs (ed.): “American Indian and Alaska Native ­Service Members and Veterans”, September 2012 27pp. Henceforth AIAN ­report. www.va.gov/TRIBALGOVERNMENT/docs/AIAN_Report_FINAL_ v2_7.pdf (last accessed 7 November 2015). There are only a handful accounts on Native people’s participation in each war. For WWI see: Britten. Susan ­Applegate Krouse, North American Indians in the Great War, Studies in War, Society, and the Military (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007). For WWII see: Kenneth William Townsend, World War II and the American Indian, 1st ed. (­A lbuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000). Franco. Alison ­Bernstein, American Indians and World War II : Toward a New Era in Indian Affairs, 1st ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). For Vietnam see: Holm. For an overall account of Native military heroism see: Herman Viola, Warriors in Uniform: The Legacy of American Indian Heroism (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2008). 13 Holm, 10–11; 123. 14 Interviews conducted by author during ethnographic field research during summer 2013 in South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota and Montana. 15 Holm, 18–25; 122–123. William Meadows, The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II, 1st ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 9–14. Carroll, 1–13. 16 Paul Rosier, Serving Their Country: American Indian Politics and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 9–11.

98  Matthias Voigt 17 Carroll, 150. 18 Carroll, 106–109 (WWI); 118–122 (WWII); 140–145 (Korea); 151–158 (Vietnam); William Meadows, Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche Military Societies: Enduring Veterans, 1800 to the Present, 1st ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 122–126, 385–189 (WWI); 130–133, 343–344, 391–392 (WWII); 342–343, 395–397 (Korea); 397–398 (Vietnam). 19 Bruyneel, xvii. 20 On draft and enlistment during WWI and WWII see: Britten, 51–72; Bernstein, 22–39; Franco, 41–79; Townsend, 61–80. 21 Britten, 166. 22 Ibid., 186–187. 23 Franco, 190–203. Jere Franco, “Empowering the World War II Native American Veteran: Postwar Civil Rights”, Wicazo Sa Review 9:1 (spring 1993). 24 Woody Kipp, Viet Cong at Wounded Knee: The Trail of a Blackfeet Activist (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 36. 25 Carroll, 147–151, 160–162; Holm, 148–152, 169–171. 26 Personal interview with George Lamont July 22, 2013. 27 Carroll, 147–148. 28 Holm, 171–175. 29 Johnson, 32. 30 Alvin Josephy, Joane Nagel, Troy Johnson (eds.), Red Power: The American Indians’ Fight for Freedom, 2nd ed. (Lincoln; London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 22–26. 31 Bradley Shreve, Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the ­Origins of Native Activism (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), 6–8, 13. 32 Leah Sneider, “Complementary Relationships: A Review of Indigenous Gender Studies”, in Robert Alexander Innes and Kim Anderson (eds.), Indigenous Men and Masculinities, Legacies, Identities, Regeneration (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015), 64–66. 33 Johnson, Alcatraz. 34 Rader, Dean: Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to the NMAI (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 3. 35 Rader, Engaged Resistance, 8. 36 Nagel, American Indian Ethnic Renewal 37 Johnson, Alcatraz, 85. 38 Leach, Gary (Colville/ Sioux); Leach, Stella (Sioux/Colville), others. Interview by Irene Silentman and Anna Boyd, 5 February 1970. Doris Duke Oral History Project. American Indian Historical Research Project. Manuscript 453. Special Collections, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 9. 39 Ibid., 15. 40 Leach, Stella (Sioux/Colville): interview by Irene Silentman and Anna Boyd, 4 February 1970. Doris Duke Oral History Project. American Indian H ­ istorical Research Project. Manuscript 454. Special Collections, University of New ­Mexico, Albuquerque, 53. 41 Johnson, 154–169. 42 Adam Fortunate Eagle and Tim Findley, Heart of the Rock: The Indian Invasion of Alcatraz (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 151–154. 43 Johnson, 157–169. 44 Akwesasne Notes, Trail of Broken Treaties: BIA, I’m Not Your Indian Anymore, 3rd ed. (Rooseveltown, NY 1976), 63–90. 45 Paul Chaat Smith, Robert Allen Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: New Press, 1996), 146–153. 46 Kipp, 104.

“Fighting for Their Freedom At Home”  99 47 Akwesasne Notes, Trail, 13, 19. 48 Kipp, 103. 49 Michael Messner, Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements, Gender Lens ­Series in Sociology (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997), 76. 50 Clara Sue Kidwell, “Introduction”, in Ruling Pine Ridge: Oglala Lakota Poliics from the Ira to Wounded Knee ed. Akim Reinhardt (Lubbock: Texas Tech ­University Press, 2007), xvii–xviii. 51 Carroll, 166–172. Holm, 176–179. 52 Carroll, 167. 53 Emily Kunstler et al., William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, Arthouse Films, 2010. 54 Sharon Grimberg et al., We Shall Remain, America through Native Eyes, Wounded Knee (Episode 5), PBS Home Video, 2009. 55 Tilsen, Kenneth: “A question of sovereignty and freedom”, Akwesasne Notes, 5:2 (early spring 1973), 5. 56 George Lamont personal interview 22 July 2013. 57 Carroll, 166–167. 58 Kipp, 131. 59 Ibid., 126–127. 60 Akwesasne Notes, Voices from Wounded Knee, 1973: In the Words of the Participants, 3rd ed. (Rooseveltown, NY 1976), 194–201. 61 Bob Anderson interview 12 August 2009. 62 Joane Nagel, “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 21:2 (2010). 63 Akwesasne Notes, Voices, 76–77. 64 Nagel, American Indian Ethnic Renewal, 173–175. 65 Ibid., 175–178. 66 Carroll, 170–172.

7 Poppies, pensions, passports The British Legion and transnational civil society action in decolonizing Hong Kong Daniel Schumacher Introduction In 1986, a prominent veteran of the Pacific War in Hong Kong penned a letter to the editor of the South China Morning Post, the colony’s principal English-language daily, with a scathing assessment of the ways in which Britain had been treating its former servicemen of the Second World War in the Asia-Pacific. He wrote, [i]f those who fought to preserve the freedom of this territory [Hong Kong] and most still suffer as a result are not given assistance in their search for a future free from anxiety, the justice they fought to preserve must deem to have been extinguished. Their “lasting honour” will become Britain’s “lasting dishonour”.1 These lines quickly spread to Europe as the London Times, the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph ran reprints of the letter.2 These words expressed the mounting frustration of many veterans in Asia who had served in British formations in the Second World War and had since often found themselves employed by British politics as convenient poster boys for a loyal Empire at war without seeing their needs as ageing veterans in an increasingly insecure world adequately addressed. What the veterans could fall back on to right these wrongs was a locally integrated and globally connected association that had provided a framework for civil action among ex-servicemen in ­Britain and across the Commonwealth since the 1920s – the British Legion. Despite the Legion’s position as the UK’s principal veterans’ association, it is surprising that its work, which from the very beginning was transnational in nature, has thus far remained virtually unresearched outside of ­Europe. Its worldwide network of branches, established after the First World War, served to raise funds and organize remembrance ­c eremonies in support of British and colonial veterans, with some of the most ­substantial contributions coming from British-ruled Asia. This was, however, not ­simply an ­endeavour of siphoning off financial resources from the ­humanitarian-minded in Britain’s overseas possessions. The British

Poppies, pensions, passports  101 Legion’s branches abroad also provided an infrastructure for local civil society actors to come together and connect to a larger network of interest groups, which further expanded and tightened after the Second World War, when even more ex-servicemen from across the globe joined its fold. This chapter will place a particular focus on Hong Kong, a locale significant for the post-war negotiations of the rights of Chinese, Eurasian and Indian veterans who had served in British forces and fought against the Japanese military in the Second World War. In the decades following 1945, these ex-servicemen were faced with an uphill battle for acknowledgment of and proper compensation for their wartime service and suffering as Britain was gradually disengaging from its imperial possessions. At the core of this chapter will be the Hong Kong and China branch of the British Legion and its two-decade-long campaign between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, spent lobbying mainly for pensions and UK passports for Asian ex-service personnel and for their wives and widows. This ­campaign, which represents only one in a series of post-war civil rights movements by colonial veterans in Europe and Asia, illustrates how local Legion members succeeded in bringing about a major shift towards a more Asia-­ conscious stance on remembering the past. I will argue that this allowed for critical ­reflection on Britain’s post-war administrative practices in Hong Kong, which had otherwise been hailed as a shining example of the imperial ­enterprise and as the morally favourable counterpart to a communist China, at a time when the British presence in Cold War Asia had almost entirely ­vanished. I will further show how the Legion’s ability to effectively lobby across national borders resulted not only in its efforts coming to fruition in Hong Kong but also in bringing discourses about imperial responsibility and citizenship from Asia back to Europe, even serving to reframe the memorialization of colonial soldiers in Britain itself. This chapter thus ­illustrates the power globally connected veterans’ associations, such as the British Legion, were able to exert transnationally in lifting the voices of marginalized groups from obscurity.

A global Legion When nation states first formed in Europe, an integral part of their enterprise was the creation of national armies that were often imperial armies at the same time, just as the relevant nation often sat at the core of an overseas empire. Its servicemen, whether they hailed from the imperial “metropole” or the “periphery”, initially remained, as they had in the centuries prior, a rather invisible and impotent community. One might even argue that they were no coherent community at all. This was no different for the soldiers who served one of the largest empires in history, the British ­Empire – until the advent of the twentieth century and the most devastating conflicts the world had ever seen. Eichenberg and Newman put particular emphasis on the role the First World War played in giving rise to organized

102  Daniel Schumacher ex-servicemen’s associations and through them creating a new civil society actor in his own right who was “defined by a construction of war commemoration and ­identity, as well as by [his] legal demands and rights”,3 namely, the veteran. In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, official commemoration in many places across Europe, Britain prominently among them, focussed mainly on the civilian public and prompted veterans to organize in order to gain the recognition and financial assistance they believed they were entitled to, especially when they had been physically or psychologically damaged on their deployments.4 One of the most prominent organizations that emerged in this process was the British Legion. The Legion was created from the amalgamation of a number of existing veterans’ associations in Britain in 1921 and claimed to speak for the whole of the British ex-service community.5 In July of the same year, the Legion’s first chairman, T.F. Lister, explained the association’s rationale in the first issue of the British Legion Journal. He stated that “[t]he Legion comes into being because of the problems associated with War. I believe it will flourish because it will tackle the problems of Peace”.6 As the state only provided minimal aid for its veterans and their dependants at the time,7 tackling the “problems of Peace” meant that the British Legion would work nationwide towards forging a strong organization that was able to exert influence on the government on behalf of and for the benefit of its members. It would also mount attempts to provide financial assistance where the government could or would not step in. The infrastructure of the Empire presented itself as an ideal ground to facilitate this process on a grand scale. Immediately after its foundation, the British Legion invested much effort into extending its network of branches not only all over Britain but also in the country’s colonial possessions. In the interwar period, these branches had as their self-proclaimed aims to spread a message of peace to a global public by reminding them of the horrors of war and to tap into further fundraising resources overseas.8 What aided them in their effort was a symbol that was to become the principal emblem of both their organization and of Armistice Day (later renamed Remembrance Day), Britain’s brand-new ­national day of remembrance. This symbol was the red Flanders poppy. Paper-made versions of this little object were sold on a particular flag day each November called Poppy Day. Inspired by the well-known 1915 war poem In Flanders Fields, written during the Second Battle of Ypres by ­Canadian army doctor John McCrae, the paper poppies spread from America to France and eventually to Britain, just in time for Armistice Day 1921. The poppy was quickly adopted by the British Legion, as both their emblem and a reminder of the fallen, as well as for fundraising purposes to benefit the living. By 1923, it was the flower of choice from which all wreaths were made that were officially laid on Armistice Day in Britain by the royal family, ­senior representatives from the military, government and other ­organizations. A narrative of consolation, which had hitherto focussed on

Poppies, pensions, passports  103 the dead of the most recent war, was thus joined by a narrative of exhortation, including those who had survived the conflict.9 The extraordinary proceeds Poppy Day was able to produce in Britain right from the beginning combined with the poppy’s evident transnational versatility and made it a fitting symbol for export. What was more, numerous colonial governments had seen to it that replicas of the Whitehall Cenotaph, Britain’s new and highly emotionally charged war memorial, were erected in their territories during the 1920s. Along with the cenotaphs, Armistice Day was exported accordingly. And when the government in London decided to endorse the poppy as an official national symbol of remembrance at home, it also lent its support to making the poppy part and parcel of the commemorative canon across the Empire. This meant that local Legion branches abroad were able to fall back on the same commemorative infrastructure with which their symbol was gradually being associated in Britain and thus replicate fundraising strategies that had previously been tested at home.10 Now, in the colonies too, the press was enlisted as a powerful mouthpiece for Poppy Day. Volunteers from among local schools were recruited to help sell poppies. And, as in Europe, women played a major role in the fundraising as well.11 Logistical assistance also came from local organizations, such as the Ex-Services Association of Malaya (ESAM).12 In Singapore, dozens of Legion subcommittees were created that reached out for donations to all the different communities living on the island, while similar strategies on the adjacent Malayan mainland generated an impressive £3,500 in the very first year Poppy Day was held there. These were, as the local press was eager to point out, the largest proceeds generated in all of Britain’s overseas possessions.13

A Legion for all? Utilizing the substantial funds obtained through Poppy Day, local British Legion branches across the Empire (or its affiliated organizations) granted financial aid in dozens of individual cases each year to locally residing ­veterans by paying for assistance in finding employment, assisted passage or board and lodging, to name just a few.14 In theory, the British Legion’s head office in England had determined that a request for as much as 75 per cent of the local Poppy Day proceeds could be filed if it were required for the ­assistance of ex-servicemen in British Malaya. Twenty-five per cent, however, always had to flow back for use in Britain.15 In reality, however, the Legion’s Head Office went out of its way to block requests for the aforementioned, making it next to impossible to address the needs of especially non-British veterans in any far-reaching respect, as ESAM members in British Malaya had to discover in the interwar years.16 Criticism that was voiced against this from local Legion members was brushed aside, often, as it seems, to remain on good terms with the colonial government. The latter and the government in London contextualized the raising of funds in Asia

104  Daniel Schumacher and their channelling back to Britain as signs of the great generosity of the colonies to the Empire’s heartland and as an expression of imperial solidarity and unity, which was part and parcel of the state-endorsed war narrative. Following the end of the Second World War, however, the numbers of veterans of Asian heritage – from the Indians to the Malays, Chinese and others – who had been integral to the British war effort and eventual ­v ictory in both Europe and Asia, had vastly increased. Moreover, the political tides in Asia had fundamentally shifted, putting the returning British colonial administrations on the proverbial ropes. Focussing on messages of imperial solidarity alone became a hard sell after 1945 as the Empire was coming apart at the seams. India, the largest provider of military manpower for the British Army, became independent in 1947, and the Malayan states and Singapore ­ ritain’s last followed in 1957 and 1965, respectively, leaving Hong Kong as B outpost of Empire in the region. With independence, the colonial units formerly under London’s command became part of the new ­nations’ militaries, and potential responsibilities for colonial veterans who had fought under the Union Jack before were seen by London to ­consequently vanish into thin air. Non-governmental welfare work too was cut short as local British Legion branches as well as Poppy Days were gradually removed from the public sphere in the decolonizing states or were confined mostly to the local British military installations until their eventual closure, as was the case in Singapore.17 Places like Hong Kong, where imperial rule was reinstated more permanently, saw an opposite development, which allows us a glimpse into attempts at redesigning and making more relevant imperial practices before the background of a rapidly changing post-war world. The emerging Cold War put British Hong Kong at the front line of the communist and capitalists spheres in Asia and left it with a border to mainland China that was in dire need of being regularly policed. Hong Kong became a hub for British, American and Chinese covert operations in the region. British colonial authorities in Hong Kong, however, had to strike a balance between the Cold War fight against communism and the projection of an ­ ominions.18 inclusive and democratic “British way of life” in their imperial d Thus, the need for a stronger military presence created new opportunities for local Chinese. They were recruited to join the British Army as career soldiers in the Hong Kong Military Service Corps (HKMSC), which was formed in 1962, with recruitment into its predecessor unit having started as early as 1946.19 In the wake of growing integration attempts by the colonial state, associations that spoke to the concerns of the local population gained traction, too. Hong Kong’s Chinese, Eurasian, Indian and European veterans began ­organizing accordingly, at first along ethnic lines. In 1951, mainly Portuguese veterans of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC), the colony’s home defence militia that had distinguished itself during the Japanese invasion, formed the Hong Kong Prisoners of War Association (HKPOWA). The simultaneously emerging Second World War Veterans

Poppies, pensions, passports  105 Association (SWWVA) consisted predominantly of local Chinese who had served with the British forces in the Battle of Hong Kong and subsequently in other parts of (South-) East Asia.20 Yet, within the fabric of a reform-minded colonial state of the immediate post-war years, their opportunities to exert palpable pressure for welfare payments or more comprehensive acknowledgment of their services, still remained limited. The British Legion in Hong Kong gradually trained its eyes on local ­veterans as well, moving into a position that placed it at the intersection of the interests of the colony’s multi-ethnic ex-service community and the needs of the British authorities. The latter depended on the Legion for the smooth handling of its remembrance services at the Hong Kong Cenotaph and thus the passing on of an agreeable narrative. The authorities had put the Legion in charge of organizing the wreath-laying procedure among the ex-service community while also granting it generous public access for their fundraising efforts on Poppy Day.21 By continuing to afford the ­Legion a central position in public remembrance, the colonial government had handed the veterans a powerful instrument with which they would be able to make their voices heard and which should have further repercussions for the future place of Asian veterans in the commemorative canon, both in Hong Kong and in Britain. By the mid-1960s, the media could, for example, confidently report that “ninety cents in every dollar collected on Poppy Day was available to the British Legion for use in helping ex-servicemen in the Colony”, importantly including those of Chinese heritage.22

Legion activism, decolonization and imperial responsibility Throughout the 1950s and 1960s pressure mounted on the colonial administration as large amounts of mainland Chinese arrived in Hong Kong, fleeing the devastating effects of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural ­Revolution in the neighbouring People’s Republic. For eight months in 1967, economically booming Hong Kong was even engulfed in riots and fatal bomb attacks inspired by the revolutionary events on the mainland.23 In light of mass famine and communist terror to the north, Hong Kong’s British authorities were not only eager to maintain relative peace among the swelling Chinese majority population but also to spell out the resilience of the colony and the “superior” ways of its rulers. To achieve this they were quick to fall back on the colony’s multi-ethnic veterans as role models for how Western leadership and Chinese collaboration had created a thriving capitalist island on the shores of a dysfunctional communist state.24 The veterans’ wartime exploits and their fallen comrades’ “supreme sacrifices” were used to symbolically legitimate re-­ establishing colonial rule in Asia after Japan’s surrender in 1945 and shine a favourable light on Britain’s imperial practices since on this side of the Bamboo Curtain.25 The experience of the Second World War in Asia served as a powerful common reference point and opportunity for identification

106  Daniel Schumacher for the veterans and the colonial officials alike – an experience that evoked similar memories of resilient home defence, a regimental esprit de corps and a certain loyalty to the British cause (whose ultimate aim it was to protect British control over its Asian possessions). However, while the colonial government paid lip service to the wartime sacrifices of its colonial soldiers, it refused to address the failure of its own memorial fund initiative. The latter had, in the late 1940s, been conceived to help care for the local veteran community but had quickly foundered and thus resulted in much needed financial assistance to be available through non-governmental channels only, such as that of the Legion’s.26 This ­discrepancy loomed large when the signs of old age began throwing their shadows on the lives of the veterans. It was, however, a new piece of legislation that spelled even bigger problems for the ex-service community of Hong Kong – problems, that also represented new opportunities for the British Legion. In 1981, London passed the British Nationality Act which made some 2.5 million people in Hong Kong, half of its population at the time, into British Dependant Territory Citizens who had no right to take abode in the UK unless they obtained “settled” status and fulfilled a five-year residency requirement first.27 The 1981 Act marked the latest step in “Britain’s process of disengagement”28 from its (former) colonies and was replete with racially biased undertones as the citizens of Britain’s “white colonies” – ­Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands – had, around the same time, been given full ­British citizenship without any restrictions pertaining to their civic rights.29 Coupled with the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, which codified that Britain would return the whole of Hong Kong to China in mid-1997, the new legislation brought with it great uncertainties, as suspicions towards Cold War adversary China ran high. This was especially true among those who would, even after the “handover”, remain legally associated with Britain.30 Fears were aggravated significantly when Beijing violently put down student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Having no option to migrate after the “handover” should circumstances change for the worse, created a situation that was utterly unacceptable to many, including the small band of Second World War veterans living in Hong Kong. Their objective thus became to win UK citizenship rights as the most appropriate form of honouring the survivors of the Second World War in Asia. This was meant to take London at its promise of granting its loyal colonial soldiers “the lasting honour”, i.e. a life free from anxiety, which they had been promised when putting their lives on the line in the defence of Hong Kong against the Japanese.31 To voice their demands, the veterans utilized the commemorative infrastructure which the British Legion’s work had significantly helped to fill with easily recognizable symbolism and was bound up with a narrative that sat well with the state authorities, too. Demonstrations at the Hong Kong Cenotaph on Remembrance Day hence made use of and re-appropriated

Poppies, pensions, passports  107 both these symbols and narratives. Instead of praising the unity of the Empire, the campaigners lamented its dysfunctional elements and racially prejudiced view of the local populations.32 The Empire’s poster boys had become a propaganda nightmare for the colonial authorities. In order to exploit the momentum generated by an early victory in the late 1970s that had granted the veterans long sought-after state-funded pension payments, they purposefully created a public figure through whom they could more effectively articulate and channel their further demands. This man was Jack Edwards, a Welsh-born former prisoner of war, who had made Hong Kong his permanent home in the 1960s, had married a ­Chinese woman and was heavily involved with the National ­Federation of Far East Prisoners War Clubs and Associations.33 His personal w ­ artime story of torture and forced labour in Taiwan, as well as his ability for e­ ccentric self-dramatization, ensured continued interest and coverage by the media in both Hong Kong and the UK. As a longstanding member and later even head of the British Legion branch in Hong Kong, Edwards was able to tap into a transnational network of contacts, fundraising opportunities and means of creating public visibility as well as political pressure.34 The Legion’s established network provided him and his fellow campaigners with the chance to successfully sway public opinion in their favour, lifting the memory of Asia’s contributions in the Second World War from obscurity in Europe in the process. To do so, Edwards, on the one hand, appeared to aim at beating the ­authorities at their own game. He fell back heavily on familiar imperial rhetoric by presenting the soldiers defending Hong Kong has having “fought and suffered for honour, king and country”.35 On the other hand, he presented the surviving non-white servicemen, as well as their wives and even the war widows, as having been victimized not only during wartime through physical and psychological maltreatment by the Japanese but also by the current British authorities as the latest immigration laws had effectively ­deprived them of their legal security. In order to emphasize wartime Japan’s “moral depravity”, Edwards set the veterans’ sufferings at the hands of the Japanese on a par with those of former inmates of concentration camps in Europe and with Chinese massacre victims at Nanjing.36 He thus suggested that a similar logic of compensating ex-servicemen and their dependants for their sacrifices applied in this case as well. Both Edwards’ imperial rhetoric and, crucially, his ability to tap into the Legion’s networks, to travel between Asia and Europe and appear at public occasions that were also attended by relevant political decision makers or other senior public figures allowed him to muster widespread public and even royal support. This also made him a tolerable agent with whom the colonial government could align itself.37 Together they were able to set out lobbying London to repeal what some of Hong Kong’s politicians, such as Senior UMELCO38 member Lydia Dunn, called “the mean and unworthy denial of the just claims of Britain’s most vulnerable and deserving nationals”.39

108  Daniel Schumacher With Edwards enlisted as one of the spokespersons of the passport issue, the way the war and its non-white survivors were recognized and remembered became inextricably linked with the bigger issue of Britain’s colonial retreat from Hong Kong and the legacy it would leave behind. In the run-up to the British general elections of 1997, both the Labour and Conservative parties picked up on the issue’s potential for publicity and were eager to repay what former Governor Lord Wilson had termed “a debt of honour”, so as not to lose out in the race for votes at home.40 Hence, Edwards saw his 15-year-long campaign meet with a successful conclusion in June 1996, when the remaining 28 war widows and wives of Hong Kong’s non-white ex-­servicemen were awarded full British passports.41 This major acknowledgment of service and suffering of colonial ­m ilitary personnel did, at the same time, help lift from obscurity the much less visible but numerically more important campaign for the approximately 6,000 ­Indians residing in Hong Kong who had also been turned into ­British ­Dependent Territory Citizens (BDTCs) or British Nationals Overseas (BNOs) when Britain had reformed its immigration policy. The governments in both ­Beijing and Delhi had previously expressed their unwillingness to recognize Hong Kong’s Indian residents as their own nationals and had made clear that they thought it was Britain’s responsibility alone to resolve the issue of future statelessness facing this community.42 While London had time and again shelved this very problem, the passing of the Hong Kong (War Wives and Widows) (No 2) Bill in 1996 and the continued lobbying by former and current Hong Kong officials eventually made it an issue impossible to ignore any further. In February 1997, when the war wives and widows were already collecting their UK passports, the British Home Secretary and long-time opponent of the campaign in Hong Kong, Michael Howard, had to announce that the Indian BDTC and BNO holders too would qualify for full British citizenship upon Hong Kong’s “handover” to the People’s Republic of China.43

The pivot towards Asia In legal matters, the colonial veterans had thus achieved a remarkable success. In the public imagination, however, there was still a long way to go. The memory of non-white service members from around the Empire had either been made invisible or had been used highly selectively in Europe. So much so in fact that by the turn of the century, efforts were on their way in London for new Memorial Gates to be erected on Constitution Hill to commemorate for the first time the British Indian Army and colonial units from Africa and the Caribbean. In February 1999, Baroness Sheela Flather, the first female peer of Asian heritage in the British Parliament and the project’s champion, informed the press about the official reasoning behind this new pivot towards Asia in Britain’s commemorative culture. She stated that the sacrifices of these soldiers “laid the foundations for the liberty we

Poppies, pensions, passports  109 [the British] enjoy today”, effectively extending a narrative that had thus far been reserved to refer to the exploits of soldiers of British heritage first and foremost.44 This was certainly a significant and timely step as British society was slowly waking up to the fact that the repercussions of decolonization at home had not been properly addressed for decades. But as refreshing this broadening of focus was, the contributions to the war effort and the more general policing of the Empire by East or South-East Asian personnel was nowhere to be found. The Chinese, Malays, Eurasians and others were at risk of being forgotten, perhaps even carelessly lumped together in popular memory with their former comrades from South Asia. This one-sided focus prompted the campaigners from Hong Kong to revive their efforts once more. The British Legion’s Hong Kong & China branch, again, proved to be a fitting launching pad due to its already well-connected civil action infrastructure, populated with experienced and recognizable campaigners, such as Jack Edwards. It also proved to be an effective lobbying body and reliable ally with a global reach for the reforming veteran community of post-“handover” Hong Kong. In May 1997, in anticipation of the “handover”, the existing Hong Kong Ex-Soldiers Association, the World War II Veterans Association and the Locally-Enlisted Personnel of the Royal Navy in Hong Kong were amalgamated to form the Hong Kong Ex-Servicemen’s Association (HKESA). With its membership numbers at around 1,000 in the late 1990s (all full members were ethnic Chinese), it was the largest ex-service organization of its kind in Hong Kong. Links were subsequently forged with the second-largest veterans’ association, the Royal Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers) Association, which itself had only come into existence in September 1995 with the disbandment of the Royal Hong Kong Regiment. This association counted, at the time, more than 600 members among its ranks, the majority of whom were Chinese.45 By comparison, the Legion branch in Hong Kong had, in 1999, some 100 members of which approximately 98 per cent were Chinese. Even though numerically the smallest, the Legion was also the best-­ connected association of them and had put noticeable effort into becoming closely associated with the organization that enjoyed the support of the majority of local Chinese veterans, namely the HKESA. The two associations pooled their resources and shared responsibilities. They occupied the same office in Causeway Bay, appointed the same person as their secretary and jointly organized the annual Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph from 1997 onwards. Combining forces this way placed Jack Edwards, then secretary and chairman of Hong Kong’s British Legion branch and Eric Hotung, wealthy local businessman and patron of both the Legion’s Hong Kong branch and of the HKESA, as official representatives from East Asia at Barbados in early May 1999. There, the British Commonwealth Ex-­Services League (BCEL) hosted a large conference with many influential figures, such as BCEL’s Grand President Prince Philip, in attendance.

110  Daniel Schumacher Edwards and Hotung swiftly managed to enlist the necessary support for an official proposal that aimed at including into the inscriptions on the new London Memorial Gates the veterans of the British-led South-East Asia Command – a proposal that was unanimously accepted and quickly put into practice. For the first time in the British capital, veterans of Asian heritage thus found serious recognition. And for the first time, the places of Britain’s greatest defeats in the Pacific War too, at Singapore and Hong Kong, were explicitly mentioned and memorialized. With their neat integration into the memorial, however, the defeats and humiliation they stood for in public memory was reduced to the general theme of the entire monument – namely, that a multiplicity of people had allegedly stood united in loyal service of the ­Empire and had wilfully rendered the necessary sacrifices against common foreign aggressors, thus bringing about victory and a state of freedom ­enjoyed by a multi-ethnic British society today.46

Conclusion It is debatable, of course, how impressive and long-lasting the British Legion’s actions were in placing Asia more prominently on Britain’s commemorative radar or whether or not the Legion succeeded in making Britain own up to certain responsibilities that stemmed from its imperial past. Indeed, renewed calls for British citizenship resurfaced in 2012, brought forward by former members of the HKMSC. This Chinese-staffed regular army unit had been disbanded shortly before the “handover”, and some 1,500 of its former members had been left with the unpopular BNO passport.47 These veterans self-identify as British-Chinese who see themselves as having been “abandoned” by the British in Hong Kong in 1997, strongly suggesting that the Asian colonial veteran is no longer (and indeed perhaps never was) at the forefront of the commemorative canon of post-imperial Britain. However, this is not to say that the British Legion was unable to demonstrate remarkable ability to connect civil society actors locally and project their messages on a transnational scale, even effecting palpable change. Indeed, Hong Kong during colonial times saw certain global networks converge in the city that offered overlapping points for meaningful identification, for both the “colonizers” and the “colonized” as well as unique means of facilitating civil action. The British Legion prior to 1997 was in a much stronger and more prominent position, due in part to the important role it occupied in the British government’s public remembrance procedure at home as well as abroad. Despite the comparatively small membership of the Legion’s Hong Kong branch, but thanks to its good integration in the local veteran community and its role as an established institution trusted by the British authorities in both Asia and Europe, it was able to use the same channels that the British had initially used to project power abroad. But instead of projecting coercive power through these imperial conduits, the Legion transformed them to seek allies in the quest for recognition,

Poppies, pensions, passports  111 financial justice and, importantly, British citizenship for Hong Kong’s colonial veterans. The British Legion thus proved that veterans’ associations could play a vital role in reappropriating and penetrating imperial structures and networks and thus reverse coercive measures put in place by the colonial authorities.48 To this day, the British Legion and the HKESA raise funds for local ex-servicemen who served prior to the “handover” and organize the annual Remembrance Day service in Hong Kong. However, under the ever more watchful eyes of Beijing, the Legion has since had to take a step back in public. While the Hong Kong government still gives priority to the Legion’s preferred choice of flag day to sell poppies at, it is the HKESA which has to officially occupy a leading role in looking after the colonial veteran community. Transnational networks formerly more readily available to the Legion in Hong Kong are now mostly a thing of the past too, and it stands to question whether the Legion would still be able to mount an equally successful campaign as it did in the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, the reason why the campaign for UK passports currently run by the HKMSC veterans might be a lost cause is the fact that the relevant decision makers are no longer invested in Hong Kong – neither emotionally nor politically – and the appropriate networks for far-reaching civil society action that worked in an imperial setting have shifted or disintegrated entirely. A number of voices in Hong Kong would, however, insist that Britain still has an obligation to care about and look after its former subjects on the South China coast, especially in matters of civil rights and in the face of increasing mainland Chinese influence.49 And just as the small band of campaigners of the British Legion, a group of seemingly insignificant leeway, were able to confront a mighty state and successfully press for imperial responsibilities to be honoured in the past, today’s campaigners of the HKMSC appear to dream the same dream. However, with political tensions over the city’s future and its Western legacy intensifying, entirely new ways may have to be devised for the British-Chinese veterans to succeed in their endeavour.

Notes 1 Jack Edwards quoted in “Give Them Their ‘Lasting Honour’”, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), 14 January 1986. 2 “Passports for War Widows” (14 January 1986), Archives of the Royal British Legion (Hong Kong & China branch) (ARBL-HK), Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. 3 Julia Eichenberg, John Paul Newman, “Introduction: The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism”, in Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman (eds.), The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 1. 4 Adrian Gregory, Silence of Memory: Armistice Day, 1919–1946 (London: Bloombsbury 1994), 15, 85. 5 These organisations were the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers, the National Association of Discharged Sailors and

112  Daniel Schumacher Soldiers and the Comrades of the Great War. See Gregory, Silence of Memory, 30. On the history of the British Legion during the interwar period see Niall Barr, The Lion and the Poppy. British Veterans, Politics, and Society, 1921–1939 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005). 6 T.F. Lister quoted in Alex King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford: Bloombsbury, 1998), 208. 7 Gregory, Silence of Memory, 95. 8 Brian Harding, Keeping Faith: The History of the Royal British Legion (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2001), 35. 9 Gregory, Silence of Memory, 103f. 10 “War’s Anniversaries”, South China Morning Post, 10 November 1923. 11 “Poppy Day: Successful Effort for Earl Haig’s Fund”, South China Morning Post, 12 November 1923; “Armistice Day: Observance in Hongkong. A Great “Poppy Day”, South China Morning Post, 12 November 1924. 12 “Armistice Day: Ex-Service Dinner. Big Gathering at Raffles Hotel”, Straits Times, 13 November 1922. 13 “The Late Mrs Cooper and Her Work for the British Legion”, Malayan Saturday Post, 30 May 1925; “Malaya Poppy Fund: Detailed Report for the Past Year”, Straits Times, 19 February 1926. 14 “Ex-Service Association: Particulars of Help Given in Singapore”, Straits Times, 10 July 1928, 10. 15 “Poppy Day Effort: Question of Refund to Malaya. Resolution by Ex-Service Association”, Straits Times, 14 October 1926. 16 Ibid. 17 “Flags, Not Poppies, in S’pore Now”, Straits Times, 20 June 1969, 3. 18 Christopher Sutton, Britain’s Cold War in Cyprus and Hong Kong. A Conflict of Empires (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 155. 19 Kwong Chi Man and Tsoi Yiu Lun, Eastern Fortress: A Military History of Hong Kong, 1840–1970 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014), 250. 20 Hong Kong Legislative Council, Report of the Select Committee on the Future of the Hong Kong Memorial Fund, Hong Kong, June 1986, 21. 21 Subject: Remembrance Sunday, 1953 (26 October 1953), PRO HK, HKRS41/1/ 8062, 5.1. 22 “Support for Poppy Day Urged”, South China Morning Post, 11 November 1965. See also: D.S. to Colonial Secretary (Hong Kong, 20 July 1962), PRO HK, HKRS41/2/90, 25. 23 Robert Bickers and Ray Yep (eds.), May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009). 24 Hong Kong Government Information Services, Daily Information Bulletin, Subject: H.E. The Governor Lays Foundation Stone of $20,000,000 City Hall (25 February 1960), NA Kew, CO 1030/1230, 34, 115. 25 Hong Kong Government Information Services, Subject: Opening of Garden of Remembrance (30 August 1962), PRO HK, HKRS70/3/298, 2. 26 “Privileged Minority”, The Star (Hong Kong), 30 July 1982. 27 Prakash Shah, “British Nationality and Immigration Laws and Their Effects on Hong Kong”, in Werner Menski (ed.), Coping with 1997: The Reaction of the Hong Kong People to the Transfer of Power (Stoke-on-Trent, 1995), 86. The right of abode in the UK had, technically, already been taken away from these citizens with the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act. See Rieko Karatani, Defining British Citizenship: Empire, Commonwealth and Modern Britain (London: Routledge, 2003), 1. 28 John Swaine quoted in Robert Cottrell, The End of Hong Kong: The Secret Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat (London: John Murray Publishers, 1993), 186. 29 Kathleen Paul, “Communities of Britishness: Migration in the Last Gasp of Empire”, in Stuart Ward (ed.), British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester:

Poppies, pensions, passports  113 Manchester University Press, 2001), 180–199; Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). 30 On the lengthy and complex negotiations that led to the Joint Declaration of 1984, see John Flowerdew, The Final Years of British Hong Kong: The Discourse of Colonial Withdrawal (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1998), 32–52. 31 For Churchill’s words on this, see Oliver Lindsay, The Lasting Honour: The Fall of Hong Kong, 1941 (London: Sphere Books, 1980). 32 “Silent Protest by PoWs at Ceremony”, South China Morning Post, 31 August 1982; “War Veteran Takes Fight for Widows to Cenotaph”, South China Morning Post, 15 November 1993. 33 Fionnuala McHugh, “Edwards, Jack”, in May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn (eds.), Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 132; Caroline Knowles and Douglas Harper, Hong Kong: Migrant Lives, Landscapes, and Journeys (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 22–34; “Curriculum Vitae – John Owen Edwards” (n.d.), ARBL-HK, “Passports for War Widows”. 34 Especially the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s principal English-­ language daily since 1903, and the Hong Kong Standard, founded as a pro-­ Chinese daily in 1949, readily gave a far-reaching voice to Edwards’s campaign. For the Hong Kong press, see Joseph Man Chan and Lee Chin-chuan, Mass Media and Political Transition: The Hong Kong Press in China’s Orbit (New York: Gilford Press, 1991); Stephen Hutcheon, “Pressing Concerns: Hong Kong’s ­Media in an Era of Transition”, Discussion Paper D-32 (presented at the Joan Shorenstein Centre, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, September 1998). 35 Jack Edwards quoted in “War Veterans Hold Cemetery Protest on ‘Day of Infamy’”, South China Morning Post, 10 January 1989. 36 See Jack Edwards’s wartime memoirs Banzai, You Bastards! (London, 1994). This book was first published in 1988. For the uncritical reiteration of this stance in the Hong Kong press, see “Fighting to the Bitter End”, South China Morning Post, 18 June 1988; “Jack Remembers War in Unique Way”, Hong Kong Standard, 14 July 1988. 37 “Charles ‘Sends a Message on Abode’”, South China Morning Post, 9 November 1992. 38 UMELCO stands for Office of the Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Council. See Steve Tsang (ed.), Government and Politics: A Documentary History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1995), 214. 39 Lydia Dunn quoted in “The Sound of Two Hands Clapping”, South China Morning Post, 9 January 1986. 40 “Britain Faces New Passport Pressure”, South China Morning Post, 6 June 1996. 41 This was codified by the Hong Kong (War Wives and Widows) (No 2) Bill on 12 July 1996. See “Victory for Jack in Widows’ Rights Fight”, South Wales Echo (Cardiff), 12 June 1996; “Widows’ Joy as Men’s Sacrifice Is Recognised”, South China Morning Post, 13 June 1996; “Veteran Jack Marks His Victory with a Bang”, Hong Kong Standard, 4 April 1997; “HK Spouses Get Passports”, The China Post, 8 April 1997. 42 “India Enters Row over HK Ethnic Minorities”, South China Morning Post, 9 April 1986. Beijing, in turn, would only grant Chinese citizenship to “Chinese compatriots”. See Laurie Fransman, Fransman’s British Nationality Law, 2nd ed. (London, 1989), 440. 43 “Britain Grants Citizenship to Hong Kong Minorities”, CNN Interactive, 4 February 1997, (edition.cnn.com/WORLD/9702/04/hongkong.passports). 44 Press Release by Millennium Commission, Subject: The Millennium Commission Awards Grant for Memorial Gates, 24.2.1999, ARBL-HK, “Memorial Gates Campaign”.

114  Daniel Schumacher 45 Report on Hong Kong for BCEL Conference in Barbados, May 1999, in ­A RBL-HK, “Memorial Gates Campaign”. 46 Ibid. 47 “Right of Abode for former British-Hong Kong Servicemen”, www.­abandoned british-chinesesoldiers.org.uk (accessed 25 May 2017). 48 Wang Gungwu, “Hong Kong’s Twentieth Century: The Global Setting”, in Priscilla Roberts and John M. Carroll (eds.), Hong Kong in the Cold War (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016), 1f. 49 See former Hong Kong politician and political activist Anson Chan’s comment in The Guardian, “Hong Kong – betrayed by China and abandoned by the British”, 5 October 2014, //www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/05/hong-kongprotests-betrayed-by-china-abandoned-by-britain (accessed 21 May 2017).

Part III

Decolonization and State-Building

8 Algerian veterans’ associations in the late colonial period in Algeria, 1945–1962 Samuel André-Bercovici

In December 1944, Joseph Kerdavid, chairman of the Algiers Association of Veterans and War Victims, addressed an audience of 200 civilians and soldiers in Miliana, a provincial city south-west of Algiers.1 A few months earlier, France had been liberated by Allied troops. Kerdavid gave a patriotic speech, encouraging everyone to support the war effort until the Allied victory, and called for unity behind General de Gaulle and the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF). Kerdavid also broached the question of veterans’ associations and their future role in post-war A ­ lgeria. This question was a matter of high importance, both for Kerdavid and for veterans, since the pre-war associations had been dismantled by the V ­ ichy French State. Furthermore, the role and place of Algerian indigenous veterans2 in veterans’ associations and, more broadly, in French A ­ lgeria remained an open question. In forecasting the future role of veterans, ­Kerdavid was cautious. In his address, he pointed to the lack of job prospects for Algerian veterans. For example, due to congestion in the state administration, thousands of applications for licences to open a Café-Maure were not being properly processed. More significantly, Kerdavid discussed civil and political rights for those veterans. He claimed he was grateful to “those who fought for France” and thereby gained the right to vote in the same Electoral College as French citizens.3 However, he also invited Algerian veterans to “remain close to us for [their] own interest”; otherwise, “politicians would stab [them] in the back”.4 Such patronizing behaviour towards veterans was already prevalent during the interwar years in French Algeria. The Amicale des Victimes de Guerre du département d’Alger (Department of Algiers’ War Victims Brotherhood) had discussed the rights of and discriminations against indigenous veterans at a time when some of them were founding their own associations to defend their interests, such as the Amicale des ­Anciens Combattants Musulmans du département d’Alger (Department of Algiers’ Muslim Veterans Brotherhood) or the Ligue des Anciens Combattants Musulmans de l’Oranie (Oran Region’s Muslim Veterans League).5 Kerdavid’s 1944 speech illustrated that this problem was still unresolved after the Second World War. The inclusion of indigenous veterans in larger associations, and their admission with rights similar to those of their

118  Samuel André-Bercovici European counterparts, grew as a major issue in the 1950s and during the Algerian war of independence (1954–1962). In this chapter, I will examine the evolution of the indigenous veterans’ movements and public policy towards them in the late colonial period. ­Veterans and the French colonial authorities grappled with these issues for 20 years. Various remedies were considered, but their application was complicated by the intricate structure of colonial society in French A ­ lgeria. Indeed, the organization of veterans’ associations was torn between a conservative colonial approach on the one hand and a reformist wish to reconsider the status of Algerian veterans on the other hand. The history of Algerian veterans during the struggle for independence sheds light onto the attempts and failures of the French colonial administration, which was able to neither reinforce its control over the indigenous population nor create strong bonds of loyalty between indigenous Algerians and the Fourth ­Republic. In a context of increasing political tensions and violence, racial, religious and language divisions as well as profound social inequalities ­between communities prevailed over the shared war experiences of ex-­ soldiers from European and indigenous background.

The veterans’ movement facing the turmoil of the Second World War After the First World War, the French Algerian departments witnessed an impressive development of veterans’ associations. From 1914 to 1918, the French army enlisted a large part of the male population in Algeria. Military service applied to every French citizen of military age: settlers of French origin; descendants of Spanish, Italian or Maltese immigrants who acquired French citizenship; and Algerian Jews who collectively acquired citizenship in 1871 through the Crémieux Decree. In addition, native ­Algerians, deprived of full citizenship and defined as indigenous since the 1865 sénatus-consulte,6 were also enlisted. In total, approximately 170,000 indigenous Algerians were recruited during the Great War in addition to 155,000 French citizens residing in the Algerian departments.7 As in metropolitan France, associations born during the 1914–1918 years attracted former poilus: wounded and disabled soldiers who organized themselves, created local and regional sections of veterans’ associations and joined national veterans’ federations.8 In Algeria, one of the most advanced of such structures was the Amicale des Victimes de Guerre du département d’Alger, led by Joseph Kerdavid since 1921.9 However, the 1940 defeat and the takeover of the French state by the Vichy regime led to radical changes in the structure of veterans’ associations. In Algeria, as in the rest of France, the newly founded Légion française des combattants (LFC) replaced all other veterans’ associations. The LFC was conceived by the new dictatorial regime as a highly hierarchical organization and to act as a bond between the government of Marshall Philippe Pétain and the wider population. Officials

Algerian veterans’ associations in the late colonial period  119 of the LFC were selected from former officers without a proper election being organized among the membership of the LFC.10 This way of organizing and controlling the veterans’ movement in Algeria persisted until the Allied landing in North Africa in 1942. The uncertainty over the political future of French North Africa led to a slow and disorderly breakup of the LFC. In September 1943, a decree established a freely administrated veterans’ association for Algeria: the Association des Anciens Combattants et Victimes de Guerre (Veterans and War Victims Association, ACVG), whose leadership returned to Joseph Kerdavid. However, the experience of the LFC impacted the world of veterans’ associations in post-war Algeria; notably, the ACVG was the only association authorized to represent veterans and war victims.11 Veterans’ leagues and associations of disabled and wounded soldiers were allowed to exist, but these groups could not claim complete representation of the veterans. This “single-association system” was very useful for the French authorities in overcoming divisions of associations on the basis of political and generational criteria. For instance, the system monopolized by the ACVG was able to socially reintegrate veterans of Jewish background after the period of discrimination and persecution during 1940–1943.12 The ACVG was eventually to accept indigenous Algerian veterans, but this task remained unfulfilled. In fact, the reshaping of the veterans’ movement was a necessary step in successfully demobilizing the large proportion of the Algerian male population who had become soldiers between 1939 and 1945. In 1939, 215,000 men, 92,000 French citizens and 123,000 indigenous Algerians were enlisted.13 The 1940 defeat deeply weakened the French army: Germany imposed a stark reduction on the number of troops in French North Africa under ­Vichy rule. However, after the Anglo-American landing in Morocco and Algeria in 1942, the GPRF in North Africa carried out a new draft. Between 1942 and 1945, 120,000 French citizens and 134,000 Algerians were enlisted. Most of them joined the French Expeditionary Corps, which landed in ­Italy in 1943. Later many of these men joined the First Army, which took part in the liberation of metropolitan France in 1944.14 These victorious campaigns, including the Battle of Garigliano (May 1944), the landing in Provence (15 August 1944) and the Battle of Alsace (in the winter of 1944), symbolized the revival of the French army. They gave birth to a new generation of veterans, who quickly dubbed themselves “youth veterans”. In 1945, veterans from both world wars constituted a large group among the Algerian population. Governor General Marcel-Edmond Naegelen counted 800,000 veterans15 in a population of 9,500,000 inhabitants and 2,800,000 male adults.16 Nonetheless, the ACVG association was never able to attract more than a thousand members, a number equivalent to the total membership of the pre-war ­A micale des Victimes de Guerre (War Victims Brotherhood). After 1945, the “single association system” quickly became obsolete as several associations were set up in the post-war years without official recognition and challenged the ACVG official monopoly. Many “youth veterans”

120  Samuel André-Bercovici argued that the ACVG Association remained under the control of veterans of the First World War. This underpinned their justification for affiliating with associations like Rhin et Danube, which rallied veterans from the First Army, or the Amicale du CEF (Brotherhood of the French E ­ xpeditionary Corps in Italy). These new associations gained members from all over ­Algeria. Faced with this reality, in 1952, the government passed a decree that abolished the 1943 ordinance and the “single association system” in Algeria, and thereby extended to Algeria the organizational structure of veterans’ associations, which had been adopted in France in 1945.17 In this context, an active and dynamic veterans’ movement developed in Algeria. However, the renewal of associative life did not entail the promotion of indigenous Algerian veterans on an equitable basis. The majority of association leaders and members remained European veterans. All associations were open to Algerians and claimed to defend fraternity between former soldiers from all communities, but few Algerians reached leading positions in the hierarchy. Associations such as Rhin et Danube or the ACVG sought official acknowledgement and claimed to be legitimate representatives of all veterans. But they defined themselves as a replica of their counterparts in metropolitan France without trying to develop a specific organization that might favour indigenous Algerian members. Algerian veterans were admitted as members, and, officially, their membership was encouraged. However, the associations did not attempt to promote a larger participation of these men. This fostered a lack of interest in the specific problems of ­Algerian veterans. For instance, in 1948, Joseph Kerdavid falsely claimed that “the problem of unequal pensions [between Algerian and European veterans] is, more or less, resolved”.18 This assertion by one of the main figures of the veterans’ movement in Algeria was contradicted by the persistent concerns of the ­administration about these same issues. In 1948, one of the consequences of the adoption of the 1947 law concerning the status of Algeria was to place all citizens, from all communities, on equal terms. During 1948, the Ministry for Veterans and War Victims proceeded to reassess Algerian veterans’ pensions. However, this did not solve the problems for thousands of veterans. Indeed, Governor General Yves Chataîgneau, the highest authority in the territory of Algeria between 1944 and 1948, pointed out that a majority of veterans could not benefit from this reassessment because they were not registered as veterans. According to Chataîgneau, this was the main reason for Algerian veterans’ poverty. The real cause, however, was the inability of the administration to fulfil its task.19 Beyond the pensions issue, veterans’ associations proved incapable of ­resolving the needs of their native Algerian members, nor of pushing through integration with other veterans. In 1946, the French civil servant responsible for Bou-Sâada Commune-mixte – a municipality with a mixed European and indigenous population – complained about the unhelpful behaviour of the ACVG. He criticized its lack of commitment to helping provide jobs for

Algerian veterans’ associations in the late colonial period  121 Algerian veterans; it had failed to deliver a list of unemployed former soldiers when he asked for it.20 In 1948, Kerdavid himself was required by the Governor General to attend a conference about this issue, but he answered that this was the responsibility of the administration. Many associations also set up systems of benefits and mutual help for their members. The amounts paid out were modest: For example, the ACVG Association in Algiers offered 1,000 francs to new parents. Aid and ­services were not reserved or allocated on community criteria. However, they mostly answered the needs of European veterans. For instance, some associations organized summer camps for their members’ children. Rhin et Danube and the Amicale du CEF offered their members’ children a one-month summer camp in metropolitan France. Nonetheless, those summer camps only hosted European children. It was only in 1958 that the Amicale du CEF decided to look for instructors fluent in Arabic to monitor Algerian children. This minor role left to Algerian veterans was, at last, noticeable in the newsletters published by veterans’ leagues and associations. In 1950, the monthly magazine Rhin et Danube initiated a writing competition about soldiers’ most famous exploits. The three essays selected were all written by European veterans. Likewise, the short comic-strip stories published in every newsletter depicted the daily life of a couple set in comic situations, but over dozens of comic-strips, no Algerian characters appeared.21

Algerian veterans’ associations: the Fédération des Associations des Anciens Combattants Franco-Musulmans The subordinated roles given to Algerian veterans led some of them to consider creating their own autonomous associations. In 1947, some ­A lgerian veterans united to set up the Fédération des Associations des Anciens ­Combattants Franco-Musulmans (Federation of French-Muslim Veterans Associations, FAACFM). In Oran, the newly created association focussed on claims such as equality of pensions for European and Algerian veterans. The Federation quickly attracted the attention of the authorities. The Intelligence General Department of the Oran Police warned against the presence of some communist sympathizers among the members.22 In Constantine, the newly created association wrote a letter to the French Minister for Veterans and War Victims to denounce “the alienation of ­Muslim veterans from national, social and intellectual life”23. It also ­demanded the abrogation of the 1943 ordinance. It demanded that A ­ lgerian veterans be allowed to organize freely and separately from the ACVG ­Association. These demands were supported by the République Algérienne newspaper published by the Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien (UDMA), the political party founded in 1946 by Fehrat Abbas – one of the main Algerian nationalist leaders at the time. A parallel can be drawn between the close relationship between the Algerian veterans’ movement and nationalist figures in Constantine, and the same relationship in Tunisia

122  Samuel André-Bercovici between the Tunisian Association of Muslim Veterans and the nationalist movement. The Tunisian leader of the veterans’ association Abd-El-Aziz Al-Mistury was imprisoned in 1952 on charges of nationalist activities on account of his connections with the nationalist movement.24 In Algeria, the FAACFM did not overtly challenge the French colonial ­order. In contrast to the Tunisian case, the founder of the FAACFM, ­Augustin Ibazizen, opted to deny any link with nationalist movements, such as the UDMA and the Parti du Peuple Algérien-Mouvement pour le ­Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques (Algerian People’s Party-Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties). He stressed his loyalty and fidelity to France. In 1949, he organized a ceremony under the patronage of ­Governor General Marcel-Edmond Naegelen. He justified the creation of his association by pointing out Algerian veterans’ disappointment with other associations, such as the ACVG and Rhin et Danube, which was caused by the “psychological blunders” of the European leaders.25 Ibazizen’s efforts were rewarded by a substantial growth of the association’s membership. In 1950, he claimed that the Federation had reached 10,000 members. He then tried to set up a network of local branches of the FAACFM. Despite the development of FAACFM in Algeria, the expansion of Ibazizen’s association was thwarted by various obstacles. The first problem it faced was that it was soon perceived as a competitor by other veterans’ ­associations: Rhin et Danube harshly criticized the FAACFM, blaming its actions for creating division between European and Algerian veterans. Rhin et Danube accused Ibazizen’s association of being illegitimate, pointing to the fact that it had few Algerian members.26 In its newsletter, Rhin et ­Danube accused its rival of diverting public funding for the benefits of its ­Algerian members and thereby contravening the principle of equality ­between European and Algerian veterans. Thus, associations such as Rhin et Danube urged public authorities to restrict the grants given to Ibazizen’s group, depriving the FAACFM of its main resources. This widespread suspicion towards Algerian veterans’ associations had an impact on the civil servants’ support of the FAACFM. In Algiers, civil servants in charge of veterans’ affairs pointed out the failures of this association and warned against the dangers of a nationalist infiltration of the movement. They tended to provide very limited support to the Federation, while they looked for alternative ways to counterbalance its growing influence.

The Amitiés Africaines Established in 1935 by Marshall Louis Franchet d’Esperey, the Comité des Amitiés Africaines (African Friendship Committees) had been designed to support indigenous veterans in French North Africa and to contain the growing critical comments about and claims from indigenous veterans on the French administration.27 Like many other associations, its activities and network had been dismantled during the Second World War.28 However,

Algerian veterans’ associations in the late colonial period  123 in 1950, the Ministry of Veterans Affairs made an agreement with the ­ mitiés Africaines to transform it into an organization bridging the French A ­administration and Algerian veterans.29 With this decision, Minister Louis ­Jacquinot acknowledged the lack of policies in favour of indigenous veterans, but this strategy also allowed him to circumvent traditional associations. Indeed, the organizational structure of the Amitiés Africaines made it a useful means to exert control on Algerian veterans: It was a centralized association with a small number of members recruited through co-optation. Unlike other associations, veterans inside the Amitiés Africaines were not considered full members. In other words, veterans had no voice in any decision concerning the association’s political future. The veterans’ role in the Amitiés Africaines was limited by the membership status they were granted; they were regarded as simple users or even consumers. The agreement concluded between the French administration and the Amitiés Africaines represented a different kind of relationship than the one maintained between the French administration and the veterans’ associations. The Amitiés Africaines were transformed into an auxiliary structure that would handle the usual tasks of the Department for Veterans Affairs, the agency of the French Ministry for Veterans Affairs to deal with pensions issues. After 1950, local correspondents of the Amitiés Africaines were trained to provide basic services to Algerian veterans, such as filling in a form and collecting documents to obtain an allowance or advising them about their rights to arranged employment or free medical care. Thus, the Amitiés Africaines were expected to prevent fraud regarding bureaucratic procedures. However, the Department for Veterans Affairs was worried about the role of “public writers” (écrivain public), skilled writers who publically offered their services to illiterate persons in their dealings with the administration. The “public writers” were accused of corrupting the pensions system and were held responsible for the malfunctioning of the services for veterans’ affairs.30

The Diar-el-Askris, a census instrument of Algerian veterans? The outsourcing of administrative tasks regarding Algerian veterans to the Amitités Africaines was complemented by the creation of a large network of homes for veterans called Diar-el-Askri (literally, “Soldiers’ Home”). The Diar-el-Askris were conceived as “a meeting place and a centre for material and moral support”.31 The French authorities underlined the social role of these places and warned against the dangers of transforming them into mere administrative services cut off from the outside. The authorities provided advice to promote a lively community life around Diar-el-Askris. These homes were supposed to have an office to help veterans with administrative tasks (for instance, applying for a pension) and a common room, a dispensary and even an accommodation room for veterans staying a few days. These centres also hosted official ceremonies to bring together Algerian veterans.32

124  Samuel André-Bercovici In 1946, 50 Diar-el-Askris were in service. In a few years, this network spread all over the Algerian territory. In 1953, 91 Diar-el-Askris were already functioning, and their number continued to grow during the 1950s to reach 107 in 1957. The Diar-el-Askris outnumbered the local branches of all other veterans’ associations.33 This expansion was supported by significant public spending: In 1951, the Department for Veterans Affairs approved a budget of 25 million francs to fund the Amitiés Africaines, and in 1953, this budget increased to 60 million Francs annually.34 In addition, local authorities contributed to subsidizing the creation of Diar-el-Askris: In towns such as ­Afflou and Takitount, the local government financed the construction of the local Dar-el-Askris and the purchase of furniture. The French authorities combined their use of the Amitiés Africaines and the Diar-el-Askris to extend their control over Algerian veterans. The ­A mitiés Africaines conducted census campaigns in remote regions around Diar-el-Askris. Creating inventories of the indigenous population was an old colonial strategy to reinforce the French authorities’ control. In 1953, representatives of the Amitiés Africaines covered 20,150 kilometres in the Algiers Department.35 This common effort was relatively successful. In 1953, the Amitiés Africaines got in touch with 150,000 veterans. This number rose to 240,000 in 1957. However, these numbers only represented a portion of the total number of Algerian Veterans. From the approximately 600,000 veterans in Algeria, only half of them were in contact with the A ­ mitiés ­Africaines. Furthermore, the census operations carried out by the Amitiés Africaines and the Diar-el-Askris were not adequate to facilitate the veterans’ access to the pension system. Many requests remained unresolved during the 1950s. Indeed, the partnership with the Amitiés Africaines did not solve the congestion of the French administration for Veterans Affairs. Delays in bureaucratic procedures persisted. In 1957, of 71,045 requests for pensions by Algerian veterans, only 18,362 obtained a positive answer.36 The French authorities failed in their objective of creating strong bonds with Algerian veterans through the Amitiés Africaines and the Diar-elAskirs. In the eyes of many users, the role of these institutions was limited to administrative tasks. Thousands of veterans, and their families, took advantage of the services offered in the Diar-el-Askris, but their everyday lives and feelings did not change. Many veterans and their families looked for medical care in the Diar-el-Askris; they came to submit a request for a pension or to receive financial or material aid. However, few veterans really got involved in the socializing activities initiated by the leaders of the ­A mitiés Africaines. In fact, the organization of the Amitiés Africaines seemed to show its own limits concerning this issue. The centralized character of the association, and the fact that Algerian veterans remained users and not members of the Amitiés Africaines, kept them indifferent towards them. Only a few individuals, designated as representatives, were able to vote and decide on the association’s activities. In 1953, a prospective highly ranked civil servant from the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (National

Algerian veterans’ associations in the late colonial period  125 School of Administration) who was on an internship in Algeria reported his observations: “Numerous veterans are enthusiastically joining many public demonstrations arranged for them [by the Diar-el-Askris]. Attendance is not declining. But a long-term grouping and involvement in the Diar-­el-Askris remains an unsuccessful objective”.37 The Diar-el-Askris were managed by veterans of European background, local dignitaries who supported the work of the local Amitiés Africaines, and just replicated the traditional paternalistic conception of their relationship to indigenous Algerians. For instance, in 1954, Margaret Sheridan, a distant relative of Winston ­Churchill and wife of the French officer Guy de Renéville, voluntarily managed the dispensary of the Diar-el-Askri in Biskra.38 The improvement of the Algerian veterans’ care policy through partnership between the Department for Veterans Affairs and the Amitiés ­Africaines during the 1950s was only partially successful. One the one hand, the Diar-el-Askris network bridged the existing gap between the French administration and its Algerian users, and allowed many veterans to validate their rights to pensions and medical care. On the other hand, the key ­objective of the French authorities remained unfulfilled: The Diar-el-Askris were unable to gather a large mass of Algerian veterans and strengthen the veterans’ loyalty to France. This effort to gain the souls of native Algerian veterans became more and more crucial after 1954 and the beginning of the Algerian War of Independence. Therefore, the French army, and especially its departments for psychological action (which resorted extensively to the Amitiés Africaines in their operations), became a major sponsor and gradually took over the role of the Veterans Affairs Department as a supervisory authority.

French army policies towards Algerian veterans during the War of Independence On 1 November 1954, a new nationalist organization launched a campaign of violent attacks and sabotages in Algeria. Known as the Front de libération nationale (National Liberation Front, FLN), its struggle spread all over the Algerian territory.39 The reaction of the Amitiés Africaines to this campaign was to urge its subordinates to step up their activities in order to prevent the co-optation of Algerian veterans by the nationalist movement.40 In this period, the objectives of the Amitiés Africaines gradually changed. Originally, a civil organization created to support Algerian veterans, it evolved into a military-controlled structure, whose main goal was to combat FLN influence. From the very beginning, veterans became actors of the conflict. At the outbreak of the war, there were threats and attacks against the Amitités Africaines and some Diar-el-Askris, especially in the Constantine area, where the FLN was deeply rooted. As a result, census operations were suspended and veterans’ attendance at the Diar-el-Askris activities decreased.

126  Samuel André-Bercovici Measures taken by Roger Léonard, Governor General from 1951 until 1955, and then by his successor Jacques Soustelle from 1955 until 1956, were not effective in preventing the proliferation of FLN commandos. In this challenging situation, the activities of the Amitiés Africaines were at risk of disappearing. Managers of some Diar-el-Askris were targeted. As collaborators of the French administration, the FLN regarded them as enemies or traitors. In 1957, Caid Kious Abdelkader, a collaborator from Tiaret, was killed, a few days after the Armistice Day ceremony.41 That year, only 985 people got involved to support the Diar-el-Askris activities. The army, however, was not willing to lose strategic positions to the FLN, so it started to invest efforts in the Amitiés Africaines as a part of its psychological warfare strategy. From 1955 onwards, General Cherrière, commander-in-chief for Algeria, and his successor General Lorillot, gave orders to utilize the Amitiés Africaines in “pacification” operations and political propaganda.42 In 1957, General Jacques Massu applied a similar strategy to manipulate veterans politically through the Fifth Bureau.43 Established in 1955, this was a service in charge of psychological warfare (action psychologique) against the FLN. The Fifth Bureau gathered some officers with experience in the Indochina War and developed counterinsurgency strategies and theories. It gained great political influence by developing policies to increase the authorities’ control over the Algerian population. R ­ egarding veterans, the Fifth Bureau’s task was to “make the veterans feel that we do not forget them, that we care for them in a constructive manner”.44 With the occasion of the “Battle of Algiers” (1957), psychological warfare became a critical aspect of a twofold “pacification” policy. On the one hand, airborne forces, commanded by General Massu, were ordered to occupy the streets of A ­ lgiers to seek and destroy the FLN networks, especially in the city’s Casbah, the old quarter of Algiers with majority of Muslim population. On the other hand, the Fifth Bureau set up a mass surveillance o ­ rganization and carried out active propaganda, in which veterans played a role. Veterans were gathered in ­ perations were public places, and propaganda movies were screened. These o ­ bjective of the Fifth Bureau directly related to military concerns; the key o was to collect information about the FLN. For this reason, the Fifth Bureau increasingly cooperated with the Amitiés Africaines. General Raoul Salan, commander-in-chief from 1956 until 1958, ordered officers on the ground to monitor veterans’ census campaigns. In addition, the officers in charge of the Special Administrative Sections (SAS), whose mission was to reduce FLN influence by strengthening contacts with the Algerian population, were ordered to work with the Amitiés Africaines. From 1957, the army’s propaganda and intelligence activity expanded from Algiers to the whole country. The Fifth Bureau’s power and political influence grew during the “Battle of Algiers” in early 1957 and later with the 13 May 1958 coup, in which a group of European activists and m ­ ilitary officers in Algiers demanded the instauration of a government of national unity that defended French Algeria. While supporting the European population in Algiers,

Algerian veterans’ associations in the late colonial period  127 the  army adopted violent counterinsurgency practices. With the May 1958 coup, the army officers established the Comité de Salut Public (Committee of Public Safety), which challenged the legitimacy of the French government in Paris. The army exceeded their military remit in an overtly political intervention. As it is known, this situation led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic and to the return to power of de Gaulle, who was seen as a vigorous champion of French Algeria. Supported by the army, de Gaulle’s government proposed a new constitution for the French Fifth Republic, which was overwhelmingly approved by referendum on 28 September 1958. In this process of politicization, the army also became interested in the ­Algerian veterans as a tool for their purposes. The officers expected to reorganize the Amitiés Africaines as they saw fit. In 1957, General Salan criticized the prominent role that Europeans had in the associations and suggested recruiting more Algerian veterans to take charge of Diar-el-Askris. In 1958, General Joseph de Montsabert, a retired Second World War hero, was required to lead an inspection mission throughout Algeria, on which he delivered a pessimistic report.45 He castigated the authorities for their lack of interest in veterans’ affairs. As he put it, “their material condition does not seem very different from the one noted ten years earlier”. He blamed the inefficient organization of the Amitiés Africaines and the lack of public spending on veterans.46 He urged the government to increase the budget for these purposes, in line with the ambitious Constantine Plan for development announced by de Gaulle on 3 October 1958. In addition, Montsabert advised placing veteran’s affairs under the sole supervision of the army – the only institution, in his opinion, capable of successfully dealing with veterans’ affairs. Liaison military officers were thus charged with supervising the activities of the Diar-el-Askris. Between 1958 and 1960, the army officers set out a new set of goals for the local branches of the Amitiés Africaines. The army intensified efforts to grant Algerian veterans real access to pensions, which the officers regarded as part of the counterinsurgency strategy. In other words, attempts to gain anti-FLN support among the Algerian population led to better treatment of indigenous veterans. However, material rewards in the form of pensions were complemented with straightforward political propaganda.47 In September 1958, the Fifth Bureau officers campaigned for the “yes” at the referendum for the Fifth Republic constitution proposed by de Gaulle after his return to power. For this occasion, many Diar-el-Askris turned into propaganda hubs, where leaflets and posters were distributed to the Algerian population, thus contributing to the clear victory of the “yes” with 96 per cent of the votes.

The veterans’ associations and the political crisis of French Algeria Beyond the political activities of the Amitiés Africaines and the Fifth Bureau, the war deeply transformed the wider tapestry of veterans’ associations

128  Samuel André-Bercovici in Algeria. During the conflict, the army attempted to reconfigure the associations in order to achieve a merging of veterans from all communities in the defence of French Algeria. For this purpose, officers resorted to the Joint Committee, an organization established by a number of veterans’ ­associations in Algiers and led by Auguste Arnould.48 In 1956, the first ­action of the Joint Committee was to join the violent demonstrations against the socialist Prime Minister Guy Mollet and the appointment of General ­Catroux as Resident Minister in Algeria, who was forced to resign.49 However, despite this success, the Joint Committee remained poorly organized and seriously challenged by other associations.50 Unable to gain the support of most veterans, its influence was limited to Algiers and its suburbs. It represented only a right-wing minority of European veterans. Powerful and well-established associations such as the ACVG and Rhin et Danube did not support the Joint Committee, and the FAACFM strongly criticized it. However, the political activities of the Joint Committee continued.51 The political crisis of May 1958, when a coup led to the return of General de Gaulle to power, provided the Joint Committee with an opportunity to elevate their organization to a leadership role in the movements in defence of French Algeria, which gathered a substantial part of the European population in the Algerian territory in defence of continued French rule. During the crisis, French military officers intensified their political propaganda. As a part of this strategy of psychological warfare, public demonstrations were set up in Algiers to stage unity between the European and indigenous communities.52 The army officers considered veterans, both Europeans and Algerians, an ideal group to represent such unity. The climactic event of this propaganda strategy took place on 16 May 1958, only three days after the military coup, at the Forum square of Algiers. European veterans were summoned by their associations, and Algerian veterans were brought to the demonstration by the Fifth Bureau’s officers with the assistance of the Amitiés Africaines. Together, European and Algerian veterans demonstrated in support of the Committee of Public Safety.53 This demonstration was intended to display publicly the veterans’ supposed brotherhood uniting different communities and as a model of allegiance to French c­ olonial authority. Auguste Arnould, leader of the Joint Committee of Veterans Associations, led the attendants to this demonstration to form a chain of friendship by linking hands.54 The army’s propaganda was complemented by the political reorganization of the veterans’ associations. For this purpose, the army and the Fifth Bureau had recourse to the Joint Committee, which set out the task of unifying all Algerian veterans’ associations under a single structure. They promoted the formation of a “Veterans Joint Committee of Algeria and Sahara”, which linked associations from all the Algerian departments and, most importantly, included indigenous Algerian veterans in its ranks. During the summer of 1958, military officers involved in psychological warfare actions participated in the founding congress for this committee. They drew

Algerian veterans’ associations in the late colonial period  129 up a program, designed the statutes for the new committee and arranged transportation for the delegates to the congress.55 Yet in the end, the officers were not satisfied with the outcomes of the congress; the new Joint Committee was unable to consolidate its leadership, and not a single Algerian veteran was appointed to the management board.56 During the following months, officers often advised the committee to reform its structure to include, at least, some Algerian veterans but without success. There was also a problem of rivalry between different groups. Watchful of its autonomy, the Joint Committee declined the Fifth Bureau suggestions to develop closer links with the Algerian veterans’ associations and the Amitiés Africaines. Indicative of its political orientation, however, was its establishment of close links to the movements in defence of French Algeria. These veterans strongly criticized de Gaulle’s policy on Algeria. After 16 September 1959, when de Gaulle publicly considering the possibility of granting independence to Algeria by recognizing the right to self-determination of Algerians, the French Algeria movement split.57 The Joint Committee remained a prominent group among the radical wing of the French Algeria movement, which adopted an insurrectional strategy. The political radicalization of the Joint Committee convinced the Fifth Bureau to give up its efforts to unite Algerian and Europeans veterans under the leadership of the Joint Committee. Instead, the Fifth Bureau concentrated its strategy on the Amitiés Africaines. However, the so-called week of barricades in Algiers in late January 1960 – the reaction of a part of the French Algeria movement against de Gaulle’s decisions – brought the activities of the Fifth Bureau to an end. French Algeria groups, including the Joint Committee, organized violent demonstrations. The Joint Committee issued several leaflets to urge Algerian veterans to unite with the rioters, but this attempt bore no fruit. The week-long riots caused 20 deaths: 14 police officers and six rioters. De Gaulle, conscious of the existing ties between the French Algeria movement and the Service for psychological warfare, took the decision to dismantle the Fifth Bureau, which was regarded as responsible for this radicalization and as an accomplice of the rioters.58 As de Gaulle dissolved the psychological warfare units of the army, political propaganda among veterans ended.

Conclusion Between the Second World War and Algeria’s independence in 1962, ­public policies in colonial Algeria tried to reshape veterans’ associations. On the one hand, French authorities tried to grant freedom of association to erase the legacies of Vichy. On the other hand, they sought to increase their ­control over Algerian veterans. Indigenous Algerian veterans had been consistently considered as an asset to increase support for French sovereignty over the colonial territory. According to French officials and military ­officers, former soldiers remained loyal to France after demobilization. The French believed

130  Samuel André-Bercovici that the veterans’ feelings and loyalties could be maintained through an active associative life in veterans’ organizations. However, despite a number of initiatives, the veterans’ associations in colonial Algeria remained largely unsuccessful in their purpose of rallying indigenous ex-soldiers. In the postwar period, associations with European leadership proved reluctant to admit native Algerian veterans in their structures and governing boards. After the beginning of the War of Independence, veterans again gained prominence as actors in the conflict. The French Algeria movement leaned on some the veterans’ associations in its mobilization against reform and the FLN. Realizing the growing gap between veterans from the European and Algerian communities, colonial authorities looked for another way to ­ mitiés achieve their goal. Their response was the strengthening of the A ­Africaines. Cooperation with this organization yielded some results. ­However, this strategy remained largely inadequate in strengthening the ­allegiance of indigenous veterans to France. The Amitiés Africaines had been conceived as an efficient organization to fulfil administrative tasks regarding veterans’ affairs, but it proved to be ineffective in the political mobilization of veterans. The creation of the Diar-el-Askri network, which was kept under a strict surveillance by the authorities, was an example of the classical paternalistic behaviour towards the indigenous population. The reality contradicted the claims of a faithful existing relationship between the authorities and Algerian veterans. When the War of Independence broke out in 1954, the shortcomings of the French policy towards indigenous veterans became evident. The French army and its Fifth Bureau were never successful in the political mobilization of Algerian veterans in favour of French Algeria. After 1960, the failure of the psychological warfare strategy to rally Algerian public opinion in support of French Algeria was clear. After the dissolution of the Fifth Bureau by de Gaulle’s order, the army returned to a much more traditional approach based on the Amitiés Africaines and the provision of benefits to veterans.59 The last months of the War of Independence between 1960 and 1962 were marked by the extreme violence of the Organisation Armée Secrète (Secret Army Organization, OAS), an extreme-right paramilitary organization created by former officers. The OAS fought against de Gaulle’s policy, trying to stop the negotiations with the FLN.60 It did not succeed. Ultimately, A ­ lgeria became an independent country. The 1962 exodus of pieds-noirs (Europeans in Algeria) and harkis (Algerians recruited by the French army) to France reduced the activities of veterans’ associations in Algeria to a minimum. The Amitiés Africaines network of Diar-el-Askris was dismantled, and only a residual service of the Department of Veterans Affairs remained active, run by the French Embassy and consulates. The history of inequality between French and Algerian veterans of two world wars started a new era. After independence, the pensions system was frozen, widening the gap between pensions in France and in Algeria. Only at the beginning of twenty-first century was it decided to reassess the pensions question, largely because of the

Algerian veterans’ associations in the late colonial period  131 success of the movie “Days of Glory” by Rachid Bouchareb, which depicted four Moroccans and Algeria soldiers enlisted in the French army during the Second World War.61

Notes 1 General Intelligence Service, Miliana Police (2 December 1944), Overseas Territories Archives Department (ANOM) 1/K/155/2. 2 In this chapter, I refer to indigenous veterans as Algerian veterans, since the “indigenous status” was officially cancelled in 1947. White French citizens living in late-colonial Algeria are referred to as “Europeans”. 3 Abderrahmane Bouchène, Jean-Pierre Peyroulou, Ouanassa SiariTengour and Sylvie Thénault (dir.), Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale, 1830–1962 (Paris/Algiers: La Découverte/Barzakh, 2012), 468. See also Benjamin Stora, Histoire de l’Algérie coloniale, 1930–1954 (Paris: La Découverte, 1991), 103; and Charles-­Robert Ageron, Histoire de l’Algérie Contemporaine, 2 vols. (Paris: PUF, 1979), 602. 4 General Intelligence Service, Miliana Police (2 December 1944), ANOM 1/K/155/2. 5 Dónal Hasset, “Mobilising Memory: The Great War and the Language of Politics in Colonial Algeria, 1918–1939” (PhD thesis, European University Institute, Florence, 2016), 185–186. 6 Bouchène, Peyroulou, Siari Tengour and Thénault, Histoire de l’Algérie, 212–217. See also Laure Blévis, “Les avatars de la citoyenneté en Algérie coloniale ou les paradoxes d’une catégorisation”, Droit et Société 48:2 (2001), 557–581. 7 Gilbert Meynier, L’Algérie révélée, la guerre de 14–18 et le premier quart du XXe siècle (Paris: Droz, 1981), 404, 601 8 Antoine Prost, Les anciens combattants et la société française, 3 vols. (Paris: FNSP, 1977), vol. 1, 76. 9 Hasset, Mobilising Memory, 179. 10 Jacques Cantier, L’Algérie sous le régime de Vichy (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2002), 59–60. See also Jean-Paul Cointet, La Légion Française des Combattants: la tentation du fascisme (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995). 11 Ordonnance du 2 septembre 1943 portant réorganisation des associations d’anciens combattants et victimes de guerre, Journal Officiel, ANOM 1/K/701. 12 General Intelligence Service, Algiers Police (28 August 1943), ANOM 1/K/701. 13 Cantier, L’Algérie sous le régime de Vichy, 33. 14 Julie Le Gac, Vaincre sans gloire, le corps expéditionnaire français en Italie (Paris: Belles-Lettres, 2013), 56–66. 15 Governor-General Naegelen’s report (26 July 1948), ANOM 81/F/1675. 16 Kamel Kateb, Européens, “Indigènes” et Juifs en Algérie (1983–1962), représentations et réalités des populations (Paris: PUF, 2001), 280. 17 “Vers l’Union”, Rhin et Danube d’Algérie, 15 April 1950. 18 General Intelligence Service, Blida Police (1 March 1948), ANOM 1/K/701. 19 Governor-General Naegelen’s report (26 July 1948), ANOM 81/F/1675. 20 Bou-Sâada municipality report (4 June 1946), ANOM 1/K/155/2. 21 “Concours: le plus beau fait d’arme”, Rhin et Danube d’Algérie, 8 September 1950. 22 General Intelligence Service, Oran Police, ANOM Oran-686. 23 “Deux protestations des AC constantinois”, République Algérienne, 18 March 1949. 24 Thomas DeGeorges, “A Bitter Homecoming: Tunisian Veterans of the First and Second World Wars” (PhD thesis, Harvard University, 2006), 145. 25 Ibazizen’s report (15 July 1950), ANOM 1/K/702.

132  Samuel André-Bercovici 26 General Intelligence Service, report on the Fédération Algérienne des Anciens Militaires et Anciens Combattants Franco-musulmans, 1952, ANOM 1/K/702. 27 Belkacem Recham, Les musulmans algériens dans l’armée française, 1919–1945 (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1996), 89. 28 Jan C. Jansen, Erobern und Erinern: Symbolpolitik, öffentlicher Raum und französischer Kolonialismus in Algerien, 1930–1950 (Munich: Oldenburg Verlag, 2013), 381. 29 Convention between the Ministry for Veterans Affairs and the Amitiés Africaines, Archives Nationales de France (AN), 980331-09. 30 “Lutte contre les spoliateurs des pensionnés militaires franco-musulmans”, Bulletin trimestriel d’information et de liaison des Amitiés Africaines, 5 (1954), Service historique de la Défense (SHD), GR1/K/669/50. 31 Propaganda movie, Service cinématographique du Gouvernement Général de l’Algérie, 1952, INA http://fresques.ina.fr/independances/fiche-media/Indepe00069/ askri-anciens-combattants-algeriens.html (accessed 11 November 2017). 32 Amitiés Africaines, report on activities (27 August 1953), AN, 980331-09. 33 Samuel André-Bercovici, Les anciens combattants dans l’Algérie coloniale: les associations d’anciens combattants et l’Algérie française, 1942–1962 (Master’s Degree, Paris 1 Sorbonne, 2014), 130 and 244. 34 Office départemental des anciens combattants et victimes de guerres, report and financial activities, 22 August 1953, AN, 980331-09. 35 Bulletin trimestriel d’information et de liaison des Amitiés Africaines, 9 (1955), SHD, GR1/K/669/50. 36 Ibid. 37 Serge Barthélémy, “L’Ancien combattant musulman d’Algérie (et sa prise en charge)”, report for the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, 1953, ANOM 81/F/1679. 38 “Biskra, ville militaire a gardé son sourire”, Dépêche de Constantine, 10 December 1954. 39 Sylvie Thénault, Histoire de la guerre d’indépendance algérienne (Paris: ­F lammarion, 2012), 55. 40 Amitiés Africaines, report on activities in Algeria (16 May 1955), ANOM 1/K/701. 41 Bulletin trimestriel d’information et de liaison des Amitiés Africaines, 16 (1957). 42 General Lorillot, order (10 July 1956), SHD GR1/H/2557. 43 Bouchène, Peyroulou, Siari Tengour and Thénault, Histoire de l’Algérie, 526–532. 44 General Massu, order (27 February 1957), SHD GR1/H/2557. 45 “Le Général de Montsabert a reçu un accueil enthousiaste”, L’Echo d’Oran (Oran), 1 November 1958. 46 General de Montsabert, report on Algerian Veterans (22 October 1958), AN ONAC-19980331-2. 47 Fifth Bureau, report on activities and veterans (26 February 1957), SHD, GR1/H/2557. 48 General Intelligence Service, Algiers Police, report on the Joint Committee (31 May 1958), ANOM, 91/3F/125. 49 General Intelligence Service, Algiers Police, report on the Joint Committee (April 1956), AN, F-7-15187. See also Marie Dumont, “Les Européens dans la rue pendant la guerre d’Algérie”, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 206 (2006), 59–85. 50 Samuel André-Bercovici, “Le milieu ancien combattant d’Alger pendant la guerre d’indépendance algérienne”, Circé, 7 (2015), available at: http://www. revue-circe.uvsq.fr/le-milieu-ancien-combattant-dalger-face-a-la-guerre-­ dindependance-algerienne/. 51 J. Scelles letter to Guy Mollet (15 February 1956), ANOM, 1K/701.

Algerian veterans’ associations in the late colonial period  133 52 Michel Winock, L’agonie de la IVe République (Paris: Gallimard, 2013), 38. 53 Serge Bromberger, Les treize complots du treize mai ou la Délivrance de Gulliver (Paris: Fayard, 1959), 244. 54 “300,000 personnes réunies à l’appel des Anciens Combattants acclament De Gaulle”, Le Journal d’Alger, 31 May 1958. 55 Fifth Bureau, report on the Congress of the Joint Committee (August 1958), SHD, GR1/H/2557. 56 Fifth Bureau, report on the Congress of the Joint Committee (September 1958), SHD, GR1/H/2557. 57 Benjamin Stora, De Gaulle et la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: Pluriel, 2012), 143. 58 Thénault, Histoire de la guerre, 232–234. 59 Algiers military chief of staff, report on Veterans issues (May 1960), GR1/H/2557. 60 Anne-Marie Duranton-Crabol, Le temps de l’OAS (Brussels: Complexe, 1995), 133. 61 “Pour la sortie d’Indigènes, Chirac harmonise les pensions des anciens combattants coloniaux”, Libération, 26 September 2006.

9 Colonial soldiers and postcolonial politics in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Upper Volta, 1958–1973 Riina Turtio

During the protracted process of decolonization after the Second World War, colonial structures often influenced the shape that postcolonial states took, particularly with regard to their coercive institutions. However, l­ocal individuals and groups with different experiences of colonial rule were ­i mportant actors in determining how the colonial state became a postcolonial one. This chapter examines the role played by former colonial soldiers of the French empire – Africans who had served in the French army – in the building of the national armed forces and postcolonial political systems in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Upper Volta from 1958 to 1973. French recruitment of African soldiers began with the conquest of colonial possessions during the nineteenth century. Conquered African forces were often included in the French army, and African soldiers became important actors in the expansion and maintenance of the French empire.1 Altogether 170,000 of them participated in the First World War, and a further 200,000 participated in the Second World War.2 Later, in the 1950s, African soldiers fought against nationalist movements in Indochina and Algeria. Most African soldiers, however, served in West Africa, where their main task was to maintain order and guarantee the flow of African labour to European plantations and companies.3 Despite being part of the same colonial unit, French West Africa, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Upper Volta walked very different roads towards independence. Guinean, Ivorian and Voltaic choices were particularly diverse with regard to their relations with the former colonial power and their international alignments and economic policy. Guinea, the first to become fully independent (in October 1958), had the most estranged relations with the former colonial power. Its president, Ahmed Sékou Touré, sought inspiration in the socialist model of development but benefitted from significant foreign aid from both sides of the Iron Curtain. In contrast, after independence in 1960, the Ivorian government remained aligned with France. For its part, the Voltaic government, after gaining independence in 1960, was largely dependent on French economic assistance, but it emphasized its sovereignty by refusing to have a French military base on its territory. Veteran politics in the three countries reflected this diversity.

Colonial soldiers and postcolonial politics in Guinea  135 The transfer from colonial coercive structures to national armed forces provided challenges to postcolonial governments. In francophone West Africa, soldiers did not have a significant role in achieving the countries’ independence. The champions of independence were the student, peasant and labour union movements, and the first ministers and presidents rose amongst these. Peaceful transition meant that colonial soldiers, like the military bases and arms, were transferred to the newly formed national armies. Despite the ambivalent attitude and outright antagonisms of African political elites towards those who had served in the French army, the national armed forces were formed of those same individuals. The main reservation of African politicians was that colonial soldiers had served in the French army for their personal financial gain, against the interests of their future countrymen. What complicated the relationship further was the social and ethnic polarization of French recruitment. Colonial soldiers often came from the most disadvantaged rural groups, whilst politicians rose from the small educated elite.4 Even if nationalist politicians wanted the colonial ­soldiers to return soon after independence, their return caused economic, political and social problems. There was, however, great variance in colonial structures and postcolonial decisions. First, the return of colonial veterans provided the most challenges in countries with high numbers of recruits to the French army, such as Guinea or Upper Volta. Second, countries’ relations with the former colonial power often influenced their approach. According to French officials, colonial ex-soldiers maintained a certain affinity towards France, regardless of whether they were pensioners or transferred to the national army. Consequently, for a pro-French regime, such as that of Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, former soldiers could be important allies, but for a revolutionary regime, such as that in Guinea, the returnees posed an increasing threat. Former colonial soldiers’ experiences and connections also gave them possibilities and incentives to influence national politics. In Upper Volta, former soldiers were influential because of previous ­social structures and their sheer numbers, and they had an important role in pushing for a strong and autonomous national army. Consequently, through a comparison of colonial soldiers’ influence in national politics and post-­ independence governments’ approaches to colonial soldiers, this chapter seeks to underscore the connections between colonial security structures and postcolonial state-formation.

West African soldiers in the French army By looking at Africans who were recruited into the French army, it is possible to discover who the first soldiers in the Guinean, Ivorian and Voltaic national armies were. Gendarmes and police officers were also often former colonial soldiers. Even if some African politicians did not hesitate to call colonial soldiers mercenaries, most colonial soldiers did not fit into this

136  Riina Turtio category of individuals who engaged in an armed conflict voluntarily and purely for financial gain. The French introduced universal conscription in their colonies in 1912. Colonies were expected to pay “impôt du sang” by supplying a predetermined number of recruits to the French army. From a military perspective, conscription had many unwanted consequences. It forced the army to recruit inexperienced soldiers.5 Educated Africans often succeeded in evading conscription, whilst the most disadvantaged groups of colonial societies were made to pay the “tax”. Most recruits did not speak French, and only a handful could read and write, which limited the training that the army could provide.6 Despite these generalizations, French recruitment practices varied considerably during the colonial period. There were also significant regional and ethnic differences. In some areas, the number of absentees was very high. In border areas, the number of recruits was reduced following the exodus of young Africans to the Gold Coast and Liberia. Mauritania and Niger were practically exempted. For most of the colonial period, the number of volunteers was limited, but in some regions, a tradition of military service developed. This was true for the most populous regions of French West Africa (FWA), such as French Sudan (Mali) and Upper Volta. The French valued the “warrior qualities” of Mossi and Bambara, and they were often promoted to non-commissioned officers.7 After the end of the Second World War, the French army began accepting an increasing number of ­volunteers, and Guinea became the most important source of volunteers to the French army.8 In the 1950s, African soldiers were deployed to fight against anti-­ colonial movements in Indochina and Algeria, but Africans continued to serve in low-level positions, allegedly because of their low level of education. French officials estimated that the nationalist movements in Algeria and Indochina had a limited impact on African soldiers, who were content as long as their financial remuneration was adequate and their possibilities of advancement and re-enlistment good. However, the soldiers were seen to be a lot less immune to the increasing popularity of nationalist movements in their home colonies, and ensuring the loyalty of African soldiers became a major preoccupation for the French.9 Consequently, in the mid-1950s, increasing attention was paid to promoting Africans. In 1955, there were only 23 African officers, but by 1959, their number had increased to 65.10 The deployments to Indochina, Syria, Madagascar and North Africa were seen to have negative consequences for the reputation of the French army. The return of the African soldiers from Indochina between 1954 and 1956 posed a difficult challenge for the French authorities: 10,000 soldiers returned in 1954, and 12,000 returned in 1955.11 France’s ability to re-enlist returning soldiers was limited, and disappointed soldiers were to be sent back to their home colonies, where nationalist movements were already gaining momentum. Providing benefits and employment for returning soldiers was considered of utmost importance. The most talented were to be employed in the gendarmerie, whilst the rest were supposed to return

Colonial soldiers and postcolonial politics in Guinea  137 to their former professions as peasants, all to keep them from joining the “­uprooted” proletariat in the cities, which were susceptible to nationalist agitators.12 The conflict in Algeria eased pressures on the French military to repatriate African soldiers. In 1956, 10,000 West Africans were recruited to serve in North Africa.13 However, already in 1957, the French Minister of Overseas Territories suggested that no new West African recruits should be accepted for deployment in North Africa,14 and their number was diminished from 15,300 to 13,000 men.15 In 1960, the French authorities decided to withdraw all West African soldiers from Algeria by 1962.16 Furthermore, with the creation in 1961 of national militaries in newly ­independent countries, the overall number of African soldiers in the French army decreased sharply: from 56,000 in 1958 to 28,555 in 1959 and to less than 9,000 by the end of 1962. The repatriation did not cause significant problems, with the exception of Guinean soldiers, but it was anticipated that the reintegration of colonial soldiers would pose a social and economic challenge.17 The French army had transferred very few skills to its African recruits that could have been helpful in civilian professions. Not all colonial veterans were eager to return after independence as they thought this would risk professional futures and material comfort. Young soldiers were interested in the prospects of promotion in the national army, whilst the older ones wanted to continue their service in the French army to attain the right to a French pension. Former colonial soldiers had a vested interest in ­influencing their national governments to adopt pro-French policies.18 Given the army’s dependence on France, good relations with the former colonial power were important for veterans who were transferred to the ­national forces as well as for former soldiers reliant on French pensions.

Guinean colonial soldiers as pawns in Franco-Guinean disputes The approaches of post-independence governments towards the colonial soldier varied, but the stance of the Guinean president was the most radical. The situation of Guinean soldiers was, nevertheless, most affected by the difficult relations between Guinean and French decision makers. Unlike all other colonies of FWA, Guinea voted against joining the French Community, a proposal made by General de Gaulle in 1958, and opted for immediate independence instead. As a consequence, Guinean soldiers were presented with a choice to either return to Guinea or continue to serve in the French army.19 Out of 12,630 Guinean soldiers, most returned to Guinea, while approximately 1,000 decided to continue their service in the French army. However, both groups came to suffer the consequences of ­Franco-Guinean disputes.20 Out of over 11,000 returnees, 2,500 were selected to join the national army.21 French officials noted that even if the potential Guinean military manpower was significant, soldiers’ loyalty to President Sekou Touré was not assured. They, nevertheless, estimated that the number of soldiers loyal

138  Riina Turtio to the French Community would decrease as family or racial ties of a “quasinational” nature would prove more important.22 Guinean governments’ cautious attitude towards colonial soldiers was reflected in their careful ­selection. However, despite this suspicion, until the purges of 1969 and 1971, all commanding positions within the Guinean army were held by former members of the French army. In Guinea, French recruitment was polarized on regional and social grounds, which created problems at independence. Even if Guineans were the most likely to volunteers for service,23 the French had great difficulties levying the required numbers of soldiers from certain regions.24 French perceptions of the “warrior qualities” of certain groups also played a role as members of those groups were most likely to re-­enlist and to be promoted.25 Guinean soldiers took a more significant role in the French army in the 1950s26 when a large number of volunteers was accepted to fight in Indochina and Algeria. According to recruitment records, from 1950 to 1958, close to 40,000 Guinean men entered service.27 The number is almost four times higher than the amount of Ivorian or Voltaic recruits during the same period. French military authorities, nevertheless, came to ­regret ­accepting a high number of Guinean volunteers when France ­w ithdrew from Indochina. Repatriating Guinean soldiers was seen to be dangerous. Even if Guineans were thought to make good soldiers, they were also characterized as withdrawn and easily persuaded to join collective rebellions.28 In 1958, Guineans represented 23 per cent of regular soldiers and 30 per cent of non-commissioned officers.29 The massive defection of Guineans was feared to set a negative example,30 but their continued presence in Algeria was seen to present an even greater risk. Even if the withdrawal of Guinean soldiers from Algeria was considered a priority, sending almost 5,000 soldiers directly from Algeria to Conakry was thought unwise. A decision was made to delay repatriation until the end of the year, when relations between France and Guinea would be normalized.31 Instead relations deteriorated, and colonial soldiers came to pay a heavy price. The colonial soldiers’ role in fighting against nationalist movements elsewhere created antagonism towards them among the Guinean political elite. The revolutionary regime emphasized the difference between the colonial and national army, and soldiers were given tasks in the economic development of the country.32 The Guinean president did not hesitate to call colonial soldiers “mercenaries” but also praised veterans who had returned immediately after independence.33 Touré’s recognition was not, however, connected to any material benefits given to former soldiers. Veterans were considered solely a French responsibility.34 The situation was worse for former soldiers who did not have the right to a pension. They staged protests in Guéckédou and Kankan in 1959, which were quickly silenced.35 Even soldiers who had the right to pensions had problems receiving them as the French and G ­ uinean authorities could not agree on how the pensions would be paid.36 French officials worried that the pensions might end up in the wrong hands  – in the coffers of the Parti democratique de Guinée

Colonial soldiers and postcolonial politics in Guinea  139 or individuals in its cadres.37 The military coup in Togo further deteriorated the situation of colonial soldiers. In 1963, Togolese officers from the northern part of the country carried out a coup d’état, unsatisfied with their salaries and benefits. These events led Touré to refuse entry to Guinean nationals recently repatriated from the French army.38 He also had good reason to consider the colonial soldiers a threat because of their overt and covert activities against his regime.39 French officials deemed Guinean decisions rational and decided that soldiers should be repatriated in smaller groups. After all, soldiers who had returned before had been well received.40 Later, it became clear that Touré’s decision was final.41 Guinean officials tied the issue of returning soldiers to the pensions ­issue.42 Pensions were included in a tangled set of issues that complicated Franco-Guinean relations. An agreement was reached in 1963, but it was never implemented because of disputes over its interpretation.43 In 1965, pension payments stopped altogether. Guinean officials threatened to sanction FRIA, a bauxite mining company of French ownership, if the pensions were not paid. The French insisted that pension payments would only be made on the condition that Guinea recognized the loans taken prior to independence and the damages caused by nationalization. The sum repaid yearly should have been close to 30 million francs. When the French started paying the pensions again in the 1970s, the money did not go directly to reimburse Guinean government that had continued to pay veterans’ pensions. Between 60 and 80 per cent went to French companies that had suffered losses because of Guinean independence. Between 20 to 40 per cent was left at the disposal of the Guinean government to buy French products. Later, French officials came to regret how the pension issue was handled: They did not possess any retaliatory measures in potential further disputes.44 The situation was also regrettable for the Guinean soldiers who had ­continued their service in the French army and who were subsequently permanently stuck abroad. In 1961, there were still over 600 Guineans serving in the French army, but they were dissatisfied and disobedient. Problems ­multiplied when France decided to repatriate all African soldiers, yet ­Guineans were unable to return home. Guinean soldiers insisted that they had been promised that they could return to Guinea when released and to serve in the French army until retirement. The soldiers felt that France had unilaterally broken the moral contract owed to them.45 The French authorities were not forthcoming in respecting the wishes of Guinean soldiers, even if the soldiers received sympathy from the highest levels of the French government. In 1966, the French president even suggested that Guinean soldiers should be reintegrated into the French army.46 Unable to return home, most ex-soldiers took up residence in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Niger or Dahomey,47 but the neighbouring countries soon become hesitant to accept their presence, because of veterans’ continued activities against Touré.48 French ­intelligence services also kept an eye on Guinean veterans residing in France. Former soldiers were warned against taking any direct action

140  Riina Turtio against Touré and were reminded that accepting French hospitality entailed certain responsibilities.49 Consequently, the Guinean case aptly demonstrates the conflicting roles of former colonial soldiers in building state institutions and fostering instability. If colonial soldiers had previously provided a link between the French and the Africans, in postcolonial Guinea former soldiers were both actors in aggravating Franco-Guinean disagreements and the pawns in those disputes. Guinea subsequently served as a warning to other African politicians and former soldiers, who hence valued cooperation and good relations with France.

Ivorian colonial soldiers as natural allies in pro-French policies In Ivory Coast, the colonial veterans also formed the basis of the national army, but the first president, Felix Houphouët-Boigny, had a more ambivalent relationship with the former soldiers than Touré. Soldiers who had ­chosen civilian professions were natural allies to Boigny’s pro-French ­policies. Boigny, nevertheless, viewed the colonial veterans with suspicion,50 and carefully selected the commanding officers based on their personal ­affinity to him.51 Noting that the Ivorian army “came from Indochina”, Boigny complained that colonial soldiers had absorbed foreign influences and thus could form a divisive force in the country.52 He thought that ­colonial soldiers had developed an appetite for adventure in the messes of Indochina and Algeria. The army should be kept divided to prevent veterans’ interference in Ivorian politics.53 Certainly, colonial soldiers had very different experiences than their countrymen, but they also often came from very different social and educational backgrounds than the political elite. Touré and Boigny shared a cautious attitude towards colonial soldiers, not least because veterans’ connections, experience and knowledge gave them the potential to challenge presidents’ power. This became increasingly evident after the military coup in Togo in 1963. The same year, two coup attempts were announced in Ivory Coast. As a consequence, the Ivorian army was temporarily disarmed and party militias were established.54 ­Subsequently, the Ivorian president increasingly relied on French military presence and assistance, which created dissatisfaction among Ivorian soldiers,55 who saw their career opportunities reduced.56 Colonial evaluations might have affected French perceptions of the ­Ivorian national army. The French military authorities did not have a high opinion of the Ivorian army, which according to them, lacked cohesion and technical skills, which would make them dependent on French technical assistance for years to come.57 However, the integration of Ivorian soldiers was made easier by their smaller number and favourable economic development. During the whole colonial period, Ivorian readiness for military service was considered weak, and colonial authorities had set the maximum quota for Ivorian recruits to 2,000 because of the long border with ­Liberia and the Gold Coast.58 In 1960, there were 5,700 Ivoirians serving in the

Colonial soldiers and postcolonial politics in Guinea  141 59

French army. Ivorian soldiers continued to serve in the French army after independence, but soldiers in Algeria became a particularly sensitive issue to Boigny,60 which reflects the overall symbolic value of colonial soldiers to Ivorian independence. Nevertheless, Boigny’s reliance on French assistance did not allow a clear rupture with the colonial past, which provided a challenge to establishing the legitimacy of the coercive institutions.

Voltaic colonial soldiers as a political force In contrast to Guinea and Ivory Coast, the Voltaic authorities had a more positive attitude towards colonial soldiers, regardless of whether they were transferred to the national army or whether they took on civilian professions.61 Upper Volta was an important source of recruits for the French army and had the largest number of colonial soldiers in the former FWA.62 Even if the opinions of veterans were not unreservedly pro-French, they depended on France for their pensions and had an interest in maintaining good relations with the former metropole.63 Because of their number, social status and economic power, veterans also formed an important political force and were influential in arguing for a strong national military. Decolonization in Upper Volta, therefore, meant continuity in the role soldiers played in society. The second president of Upper Volta, Aboubacar Sangoulé Lamizana, had been a “volunteer” to the French army in 1936, even if, according to his own description, his recruitment did not entail much choice on his part. The chief of his village wanted to get rid of him, and the French were impressed by his ability to read and write.64 Even if Sangoulé Lamizana might have had reasons to downplay his eagerness to join the French army, his description still reflects French recruitment practices: the relative power of local ­actors, reticent “volunteering” and difficulties in recruiting soldiers with even a minimal knowledge of French. The continuing importance of soldiers in Upper Volta is reflected in Lamizana’s life. In January 1966, following increasing protests in the capital in response to former President Maurice Yaméogo’s austerity measures. The high regard soldiers had in Upper Volta is reflected in the fact they assumed power by relatively peaceful means and with popular encouragement.65 However, the military government was later criticized for not having earned its decorations in the service of Upper Volta and for having hijacked political power from those elected by the people.66 Soldiers’ central role in pre-colonial times might have influenced ­Voltaic social values, but it was French perceptions of certain ethnic groups making good soldiers that led them to recruit a significant number of soldiers from the colony.67 Voltaics were, nevertheless, not eager to join the French army, which is reflected in the percentage of individuals who failed to ­report to recruitment commissions – bons absents. Most of the absentees were r­ eported to have sought refuge in the Gold Coast.68 The number of Voltaic volunteers was also lower than in Guinea or Cote d’Ivoire. In 1929, the Voltaic quota was fulfilled with only 21 per cent of the volunteers, whilst, the corresponding

142  Riina Turtio number for Guinea was 79 per cent. The recruitment records also show that it was very difficult to recruit Voltaics who could speak French.69 The ­Second World War seemed to further reduce the ­Voltaic ­w illingness to join the French army: The number of absentees went up, and the number of volunteers diminished.70 Despite this, in 1960, Voltaic recruits formed the largest group of Africans in the French army. Altogether more than 13,000 Voltaic soldiers served in the colonial forces in 1960: 7,449 in FWA and 5,712 outside. There were also many relatively high-ranking Voltaic soldiers: 19 officers and 645 non-commissioned officers.71 The large number of returnees made reintegration difficult. The French officials suggested that veterans’ reintegration might cause problems as neither the national army nor the Voltaic fields could feed them all after their military earnings had run out. By 1963, over 9,000 Voltaic veterans had been repatriated, even if many continued to serve in the French army.72 Lamizana himself served in the French colonial conflicts in Indochina and Algeria until 1961, when he was transferred to serve as Chief of Staff of the Voltaic Armed Forces.73 In 1961, A French report noted that Voltaic soldiers serving abroad were becoming increasingly concerned that their absence affected their chances of being included in the national army.74 However, not all V ­ oltaic soldiers were eager to return and only a small number of them could be included in the national armed forces. The rest would need to return to civilian life without many chances of employment. Voltaic politicians, therefore, had a conflicting attitude towards the colonial soldiers. On the one hand, they did not want soldiers to continue to serve as “­mercenaries” in service of a foreign power and were concerned about soldiers’ ­reluctance to return to Upper Volta. On the other hand, politicians were well aware of the political risks that returning soldiers and rapid growth of the army might pose.75 An American embassy report in 1962 approvingly noted that French policy discourged states from building up their armies too quickly. The report concluded that even if “the French don’t need the Voltaics in their army”, there are “cheaper ways to reintegrating them into a ‘normal’ Voltaic life than setting up a new battalion”.76 In the first years of independence, the Voltaic army was small, but despite its humble beginnings, the French had confidence in its potential. Because of the quality of Voltaic soldiers, the army could become one of the best in West Africa. Insufficient financial means and government policies risked hampering the army’s development.77 Voltaic refusal to accept a French military base on its territory and its demand for a quick departure of French troops reduced French willingness to assist the creation of the Voltaic army, but it also reflected the importance of national defence in symbolizing Voltaic independence. Both French and American officials noted the priority Voltaic politicians gave to displaying the Voltaic army during the Independence Day celebrations.78 Even if Voltaic soldiers’ hesitations to rejoin their country were material in nature, their inclusion within the national army was expensive. The Voltaic army was based on professional soldiers, which

Colonial soldiers and postcolonial politics in Guinea  143 meant that much of its resources went towards salaries, whilst soldiers lacked even the most basic equipment.79 Despite the relatively high cost of soldiers’ salaries, the perceived insufficiency of salaries created dissatisfaction.80 In 1962, the chief of staff reported that numerous officers had resigned because of low wages.81 Wages continued to be the source of dissatisfaction. Small pensions also caused protests.82 In 1960, African veterans’ pensions were crystallized so that they corresponded with the 1960 prices in each colony. Lamizana discussed the pensions with the French officials multiple times,83 referring to the discontent discriminatory practices created among colonial soldiers.84 In 1969 and 1970, Lamizana complained to French officials that Voltaic political parties were trying to capitalize on colonial soldiers’ dissatisfaction.85 French reports noted that during that period Lamizana’s support among colonial soldiers was decreasing and that they would have preferred a civilian government.86 This fact demonstrates that the former soldiers were an influential constituency to any Voltaic (military or civilian) government. Already in colonial Upper Volta, soldiers played an important role in ­creating links between the Voltaic population and French authorities.87 After independence, former soldiers continued to play an important role in promoting pro-French policies. A 1961 French report emphasized that “with its 100,000 veterans, Upper Volta remained deeply attached to the Community”.88 The value of annual pension payments was between 5 and 7.5 million USD,89 which accentuated colonial soldiers’ important role in the Voltaic society.

Conclusion Colonial soldiers had an important effect on building the state coercive structures and political systems in francophone West Africa. The approaches of Guinean, Ivorian and Voltaic governments towards colonial veterans reflect the differences and similarities in postcolonial politics but also the continuities and ruptures between colonial structures and national institutions. Colonial veterans posed similar economic and political challenges to newly independent countries. One should not underestimate the difficulties caused by the return of a high number of professional soldiers, unskilled in any other profession, when national armed forces or other state institutions could employ only a few. If the French had been concerned with the consequences of repatriating African soldiers in the 1950s, the challenge was far greater for African politicians, with much less experience and fewer resources at their disposal. However, integrating colonial soldiers was more difficult in countries with a high number of recruits, such as Guinea or Upper Volta. Nevertheless, the countries’ relation with the former ­colonial power also mattered. Conscription was motivated by the objective that ­A frican soldiers could enforce the link between the colonies and the metropole, and it was hoped that colonial soldiers would play a similar role in newly

144  Riina Turtio independent countries. Many colonial veterans maintained a certain affinity with France, regardless of whether they were pensioners or not, or whether they were members of the national armed forces or not. Consequently, for a pro-French regime, the former soldiers could provide important allies, but for a revolutionary regime, the former soldiers posed an increasing threat. Guinean colonial soldiers became pawns in Franco-Guinean disputes. France responded to Guinean policies by suspending pension payments to Guinean soldiers. Touré responded by refusing to allow soldiers to return. The Guinean case hence served as a warning to other African politicians and former soldiers. The three countries also had in common the difficult relations of African politicians with veterans. These relations were further complicated by their different social backgrounds: Soldiers often came from the most disadvantaged groups, whilst politicians rose from the small educated elite. Colonial soldiers’ role in maintaining the French empire, their use against anti-­ colonial movements elsewhere and their absence from nationalist struggles created unease among African politicians, generating doubts as to whether colonial soldiers could be relied upon to provide security for the political regime and to ensure national defence. Politicians’ attitudes were reflected in their discourses. The term “mercenary” was especially prominent within the discourses of nationally minded Voltaic and G ­ uinean ­politicians, even if it was strongly disapproved of by both veterans and French officials. Even if the Ivorian president did not use the term “mercenary”, his private conversations with French officials revealed similar attitudes ­towards colonial ­soldiers. Guinean, Ivorian and Voltaic policies nevertheless demonstrated that there was degree of difference in politicians’ approaches. However, for all governments, the return of colonial veterans was a symbol of independence. Similarly, the military coup in Togo in 1963 had an important impact on presidents’ views and approaches towards colonial soldiers. In all three countries, the Togolese coup increased presidents’ suspicions of colonial soldiers. Even before this, African postcolonial governments were uncertain about soldiers’ loyalties and faced the difficulty of building a national army out of colonial soldiers. The most immediate way that African politicians sought to ensure soldiers’ loyalty was through careful selection and nationalist discourses directed at soldiers, emphasizing their new role. The presidents also responded to direct threats from soldiers by weakening the national army and relying on foreign expertise. Generational differences also became more apparent within the army, when veterans of the Second World War, Algeria and Indochina, with little formal training, were asked to command over much better-trained young officers, whose experience differed greatly from their superiors. Governments’ approaches to veterans’ movements were cautious, as for any other opposition movement that could have challenged their power. In one-party authoritarian systems, there was little space for veterans’ movements which made political or social claims.

Colonial soldiers and postcolonial politics in Guinea  145

Notes 1 Myron Echenberg, Les tirailleurs sénégalais en Afrique occidentale française, 1857–1960 (Paris: Karthala, 2009), 25, 29, 58–59; Myron Echenberg, “Paying the Blood Tax: Military Conscription in French West Africa, 1914–1929”, Canadian Journal of African Studies 9:2 (1975), 172–173, 176; Ruth Ginio, The French Army and its African Soldiers: The Years of Decolonization (London: University of ­Nebraska Press, 2016). 2 Echenberg, Les Tirailleurs sénégalais, 59, 91, 116; Direction des affaires politiques des affaires politiques “Recrutement indigène 1937” (9 September 1937), 4D12, Archives d’Afrique Occidentale Française (AAOF). 3 Jean-Pierre Bat et Nicolas Courting, Maintenir l’ordre colonial: Afrique et Madagascar XIXe-XXe siècles (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012); Martin Thomas, Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 4 Echenberg, “Paying the Blood Tax”, 190–191. 5 Echenberg, Les Tirailleurs sénégalais, 25, 58–59, 98, 115, 291; Echenberg, “Paying the Blood Tax”, 172–173, 176. 6 Documents in 4D8, AAOF. 7 Echenberg, Les Tirailleurs sénégalais, 112–117, 194; Michel Bodin, Les Africains dans la guerre d’Indochine (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2000), 162–164. 8 Box 4D16, AAOF. 9 Commandant supérieur AOF-Togo “Plan de renforcement des forces armées de la zone de défense” (8 February 1955), GR5H37; General Garbay, “Effort entrepris concernant le remise en condition des forces terrestres de l’AOF” (23 March 1955), 5H37, SHD. 10 “Réunion des généraux supérieurs” (20 July 1959), GR5H28; “Plan de renforcement des forces armées de la zone de défense” (8 February 1955), GR5H37, SHD. 11 Ibid. 12 Commandement supérieure AOF-TOGO to Gouverneur général de l’Afrique occidentale (23 March 1955); Ministre de la France d’outre mer to général commandant AOF-Togo (28 June 1955); “Plan de renforcement” (8 February 1955), GR5H37, SHD. 13 Report by General Bourgund (16 May 1958), GR5H28, SHD. 14 Le ministre de la France d’outre-mer to Ministre de la defense “Relève des militaires africains en Afrique du nord” (2 March 1957); Ministère de la France d’­ Outre-mer Cornut-Gentille to Ministre des Armées “Effectifs africains servant en Algérie” (15 October 1958), GR7T248, SHD. 15 Commandant Fabre, “Relève des militaires africains en service en Afrique du nord” (10 May 1958) and Direction des troupes coloniales “Effectif des militaires africains servant en Algérie en 1959” (21 April 1958), GR7T248, SHD. 16 Etat-major de l’armée, “Retrait d’Algérie de tous les personnels Africains” (13 October 1960), GR7T248, SHD. 17 Général d’armée Mancbou to Monsieur le Ministres des armées, “Conséquences de la sécession de la Guinée sur le potentiel des forces terrestres d’outre-mer” (16 October 1958), GR7T248; Brebisson “Rapport Annuel 1961”, GR5H27, SHD. 18 Brebisson, “Rapport sur le moral 1er semestre” (13 July 1960), GR5H29, SHD. 19 DAM “Option des militaires d’origine Guinéenne” (20 October 1958), 51QO/15, ADC. 20 Général Gouraud, “Mesures a prendre a l’égard des militaires originaires de la Guinée” (11 October 1958), Ministre des armées to Ministre de la France ­d’outre-mer (23 September 1958), “Evacuation militaire de la Guinée” (23 ­October 1958), GR7T248; Rapport de fin de commandement du général de CA Gardet (15 February 1960), GR5H28, SHD.

146  Riina Turtio 21 Ibid. 22 Rapport de fin de commandement de Gardet (15 February 1960), GR5H28, SHD. 23 Affaires militaires, Rapports de recrutement: 4D1, 4D2, 4D3, 4D8, 4D9, 4D11, 4D12, 4D15, 4D16, 49D, AAOF. 24 Documents in 4D02, 49D, 4D16, 4D8; 4D11,AAOF. 25 Rapport du Capitaine Nya (21 February 1927), 4D8; Rapport du général Benoît (21 August 1930), 49D; Rapport de Colonel Colombani (5 June 1935); 4D11, AAOF. 26 Recruitment reports 1917–1949, 4D1, 8,9,11,12,15,16, AAOF. 27 Recruitment reports on Guinea, Ivory Coast and Upper Volta (1950–1958), Centre des archives du personnel militaire (CAPM), Pau. 28 Plan de renforcement (8 February 1955), GR5H37; Rapport de fin de commandement du general de CA Gardet, (15 February 1960), GR5H28, SHD. 29 Conséquences de la sécession (16 October 1958); Etat major de l’armée “Effectifs Guinéens” (24 October 1958); Ministère de la France d’Outre-mer “Effectifs africains servant en Algérie” (16 October 1958), GR7T248, SHD. 30 Direction des troupes d’outre-mer “Militaires originaires de la Guinée en service dans la métropole ou en Afrique du nord” (4 October 1958); Effectifs africains servant en Algérie (16 October 1958), GR7T248; Rapport de fin de commandement du general de CA Gardet (15 February 1960), GR5H28, SHD. 31 Chef d’état major général des armées Garbay “Guinéens en Algérie” (22 October 1958), GR7T248, SHD. 32 Délégation pour la défense de la zone 1, “Bulletin de renseignements” (8 November 1963), GR5H92, SHD. 33 Sékou Toute, Expérience Guinéenne et l’Unité Africaine (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1961), 536; Sékou Touré, L’action politique du parti démocratique de Guinée pour l’émancipation africaine (Paris, 1959). 34 Toute, Expérience Guinéenne, 536. 35 SDECE “Incidents à Kankan” (20 May 1959), 51QO/32, ADC; Bureau d’études d’outre mer “République de Guinée” (13 March 1959, 13 April 1959 and 29 April 1959), AG5F/555; Telegram, General Messmer to Foccart Segeprecom (27 February 1959), AG5F/1638, FFAN. 36 51QO/41, ADC. 37 Ministre des affaires étrangères Paiement des pensions en Guinée (13 June 1959), 51QO/15, ADC. 38 Ambassador Pons to DAM (17 January 1963), 51ONT/41; DAM “Démobilisation des militaires Guinéens en service dans l’armée française” (6 December 1963), 51QO/36, ADC; Libération des militaires Guinéens (30 April 1963), 5AGF/1643, FFAN. 39 Charge d’Affaires, Hure “Affaires militaires en Guinée” (19 March 1959), 51QO/15, ADC; Maurice Robert, Ministre de l’Afrique; Entretiens avec André Renault (Paris: Seuil, 2004), 103–109. 40 Ministre des affaires étrangers “Rapatriement de militaires Guinéens” (16 February 1963), 5QONT/36, ADC; Rostain “Ressortissants Guinéens en service dans l’armée française” (19 February 1961), 5AGF/1639, FFAN. 41 Ambassador Koenig “Rapatriement des militaires Guinéens démobilises de l’armée française” (18 February 1965), 51QO/36, ADC; Lieutenant-colonel Laparra, “Militaires Guinéens de l’armée française” (22 July 1965), 5AGF/558, FFAN. 42 Militaires Guinéens de l’armée française (22 July 1965), 5AGF/558; Vice-Admiral Descadre, “Sort des militaires Guinéens de l’armée française” (20 November 1965); Lieutenant-Colonel Laparra “Rapatriement des militaires Guinées stationnes en métropole” (1 October 1965), 5AGF/561, FFAN. 43 Alain Plantey to Prime Minister (17 June 1963); Ambassador Pons “La situation en Guinée” (15 June 1963); Le secrétaire d’état aux affaires étrangères “Contentieux franco-guinéenne” (8 July 1964); DAM “Relations franco-guinéennes”

Colonial soldiers and postcolonial politics in Guinea  147

44

45

46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60

(29 October 1965), 5AGF/558, FFAN; DAM “Contentieux financier francoguinéen” (24 June 1970); DAM “Evolution des relations franco-guinéennes” (22 June 1970), 51QONT/29, ADC. MAE “Guinée le problème des pensions” (25 January 1967); Moussa Diakite, Ministre de commerce extérieur et des banques de Guinée to MAE (13 January 1967), 5AGF/561; Secrétariat général des affaires africaines et malgache “Retour de Guinée dune mission française” (17 November 1970); Alain Richard, “Note à l’attention de monsieur secrétaire général” (18 November 1970), 5AGF/1648, FFAN; MAE “Schéma d’intervention concernant la Guinée” (September 1967), 5QONT/27; DAM “Contentieux financier franco-Guinéen” (24 June 1970); MAE “Relations économiques franco-Guinéenne” (25 June 1970); DAM “Commerce franco-guinéen et intérêts française en Guinée” (31 August 1968), 51QONT/29; MAE “FRIA et le régime Guinéen” (16 November 1971), 51QONT/34, ADC. Captain Berthezene, “Moral des militaires Port Bouet et de transmission du Niger” (4 April 1962), GR5H32, SHD; Direction des troupes outre-mer “Situation par état d’origine des personnels des troupes d’outre-mer en service en AFN” (1 February 1961), GR7T248, SHD; Rapport de fin de commandement du général de CA Gardet (15 February 1960), GR5H28, SHD. “Note de général de Gaulle à Pompidou et Messmer” (5 January 1966), 5AGF/561, FFAN. DAM “Démobilisation des Guinéens en service dans l’armée française” (6 December 1963), 51QO/36, ADC. Direction du renseignement to MAE (19 January 1966); MAE “Demandes formulées par des ressortissants Guinéens en vue de quitter la France” (2 April 1968), 5QONT/36, ADC. Sous-direction d’Afrique, “Activités de certaines militaires Guinéens en France” (28 August 1970), 51QONT/29, ADC. Abassador Raphael-Leygues, La Côte d’Ivoire et l’Armée (30 August 1974), 1 PO/1/16, AND; “Message au parlement du président de la république” (3 ­August 1961), 324QONT/9, ADC; Contre d’Exploitation du Renseignement, “Le problèmes de défense en Côte d’Ivoire” (23 January 1968), GR9Q5113, SHD. Embassy of France, “Malaise au sein de l’armée ivoirienne” (6 July 1965), 5AGF/1793; Raphaël-Leygues to DAM (13 August 1969), 5AGF/1805, FFAN. Interview with Général Ouassenan Kone, 26 November 2015. Telegram from Abidjan to DAM (27 February 1964), 324QONT/1, ADC. Ambassador Raphael-Leygues from Abidjan to Paris DAM (13 December 1963), 324QONT/10, ADC. DAM “Situation politique en Côte d’Ivoire” (29 August 1963), DAM, 324QONT/12, Telegram, Abidjan to Paris (14 August 1963); DAM, “Situation politique en Côte d’Ivoire” (29 August 1963), DAM, 324QONT/10, ADC. Telegram from Abidjan to Paris (31 August 1963), 324QONT/10, ADC. Ambassador Raphael-Leygues, “Situation intérieure” (17 December 1968), 1po/1/1, ADN. Général Brebisson, “Rapport de fin de commandement” (30 June 1962), GR5H28, SHD. Gouverneur-General Van Vollenhoven to Monsieur Maginot, Ministre des Colonies (July 1917), 4D1; Lieutenant-gouverneur de la Côte d’Ivoire, “Rapport sur les opérations du recrutement indigène 1927–1928” (6 May 1928), 4D8, AAOF; Gouvernement Général “Recrutement 1926 Côte d’Ivoire” (28 May 1926), 4D3, AAOF. Rapport de fin de commandement du general de CA gardet (15 February 1960), GR5H28, SHD. Secrétaire d’état aux a ministre des armées (21 September 1960), 324QONT/23, ADC; Rapport Annuel 1961, GR5H27; Direction des troupes outre-mer “Situation par état” (1 February 1961), GR7T248, SHD.

148  Riina Turtio 61 Berard-Quelin to Secrétaire de la communauté (18 August 1960); DAM “Questions militaires en Haute-Volta” (2 November 1961), 313QONT/20, ADC. 62 Rapport Annuel 1961, 5H27, SHD. 63 Ministère des armées, “Notice sur Haute-Volta” (8 July 1960), GR5H150, SHD. 64 Sangoulé Lamizana, Sous les drapeaux: mémoire de Sangoulé Lamizana (Paris: Jaguar, 2000), 50. 65 Ambassador Levasseur, “Crise politique en Haute-Volta” (4 January 1966), 313QONT/10, ADC. Conseiller Militaire “Rapport mensuel mois de décembre” (6 January 1966), GR14S261, SHD. 66 Délaye to Paris (22 December 1970), “Elections en Haute-Volta” 5AGF/1856, FFAN. 67 Gouverneur général d’Indochine et de l’Afrique-Occidentale française (AOF), “Tableau des effectifs recrutes en Afrique occidentale française depuis 1910”, 4D1, AAOF. 68 Colonie de Haute-Volta, “Rapport sur le recrutement 1927–1928” (12 April 1928), 4D8; Troupes du groupe de l’AOF, État major, “Rapport sur le recrutement 1932”, 49D, AAOF 69 Rapport annuel 1929 (4 August 1929), 4D8; Rapport du général Benoît (21 August 1930), 49D, AAOF. 70 Note sur les opérations de recrutement (23 March 1949), 4D16, AAOF. 71 Rapport de fin de commandement du général de CA Gardet (15 February 1960), GR5H28, SHD. 72 Embassy of France in Upper-Volta, “Note sur la Haute-Volta” (3 July 1963), 313QONT/20, ADC. 73 Direction des troupes outre-mer, “Situation par état” (1 February 1961), GR7T248, SHD. 74 Zone outremer no. 1, “Rapport semestriel sur le moral” (26 November 1961), GR5H29, SHD. 75 US Embassy in Ouagadougou, Major Frank to DCSOPS, “Military mission to Upper Volta”, 12 June 1962, RGCGRDS 1960–1963, 770K, Box 1983, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); DAM, “Questions militaires en Haute-Volta” (2 November 1961), 313QONT/20, ADC. 76 John Bovey, First Secretary American embassy in Paris (25 June 1962), ­RGCGRDS 1960–1963, 770K, BOX 1983, NARA. 77 Rapport de fin de commandement du général CA de Brebisson (30 June 1962), GR5H28, SHD. 78 US Embassy in Ouagadougou Antony Dalsimer to State Department “Upper Volta Gains an Army” (20 October 1961), RGCGRDS 1960–1963, 770K, BOX 1983, NARA; Ambassade de France en Haute-Volta “Compte-rendu hebdomadaire” (4 August 1961), 313QONT/3, ADC. 79 Ambassador Levasseur, “Synthese XXXIX67” (13 October 1967); “Synthèse no vii68” (5 April 1968), 313QONT/8 ADC. 80 Embassy of France in Upper-Volta to DAM, “Finances publiques Haute-Volta” (31 August 1970), 499po/1/1, ADN; Rapport de fin de mission du Colonel Darchy (17 December 1967), GR14S261; Eléments destines à l’élaboration d’une directive pour le conseiller militaire (17 October 1969); Rapport de Fin démission du Colonel Jean Parisot, GR9Q5122, SHD. 81 Chef de Bataillon Sangoulé, Note de Service No142/3M/3 (9 March 1962), 6V33, ANB. 82 Forces d’opposition et force de l’opposition en Haute-Volta (10 July 1965), 313QONT/ 11; Ambassador Levasseur to MAE “La Haute-Volta en 1964” (6 January 1965), 313QONT/10, ADC. 83 Secrétariat général des affaires africaines et malgache, “Audience du général Lamizana” (26 August 1969), 5AGF/1855, FFAN.

Colonial soldiers and postcolonial politics in Guinea  149 84 “Pensions des anciens combattants et militaires voltaïques” (26 October 1966), 5AGF/1849, FFAN. 85 Ambassador Délayé, “Pensions des anciens combattants voltaïques” (12 January 1970), 5AGF/1856; “Audience général Lamizana” (26 August 1969); Ambassador Délaye to MAE Michel Debre, “Des pensions des anciens combattants voltaïque” (14 January 1969), 5AGF/1855, FFAN. 86 Conseiller militaire, monthly reports for April (30 April 1970), March (31 March 1970) and January (31 January 1970), GR14262, SHD. 87 General Garbay, “Effort entrepris concernant le remise en condition des forces terrestres de l’AOF” (23 March 1955), GR5H37, SHD. 88 Ministère des armées, “Notice sur Haute-Volta” (8 July 1960), GR5H150, SHD. 89 US Embassy Ouagadougou to State Department, “Interview with Maurice Yaméogo: Review of Upper Volta affairs” (28 august 1961), RGCGRDS 1960–1963, 770K, BOX 1983; US Embassy Ouagadougou “Potential Opposition Elements” (23 April 1964), RGCGRDS 1964–1966, Poluvolta, Box 2908, NARA.

10 War, mobilization and development in the Islamic Republic of Iran From the Construction Jihad to the Trench Builders Association, 1979–2013 Eric Lob Introduction: war, veterans and the state In 2004, the Iranian Association of Trench Builders Without Trenches (Kānūn-i Sangarsāzān-i bī Sangar) – hereafter the Trench Builders Association (TBA) – was established in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). TBA members are veterans of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988). Alongside the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and Shiʿi Islam, the war is a legitimizing pillar of the state that produces propaganda that seeks to justify and glorify the conflict through various institutions, including the Centre for the Documentation and Research of the Holy or Sacred Defense (Markaz-i Asnād-i va Taḥqīqāt-i Difā’-i Muqaddas), which is affiliated with the Islamic ­Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) (Sipāh-i Pāsdārān-i Inqilāb-i Islāmī). The TBA resembles other war veterans’ associations in the United States and beyond.1 The TBA is a non-profit organization that facilitates communication between veterans and their families, organizes meetings for them and offers them financial assistance. The TBA also runs a nationwide civic education program and lobbies the state for improved compensation and disability benefits for veterans and their families. Irrespective of its similarities with other veterans’ organizations, the TBA sheds light on the specific social and political roles that veterans adopted in revolutionary states during a period marked by the apex and subsequent demise of the Cold War international system and the emergence of new polities, such as the IRI, which were buttressed by revolutionary ideologies. As in the People’s Republic of China and the former Soviet Union,2 the national memory of the war in the IRI is dominated by elites and veterans in state-affiliated propaganda offices that present a glorified and simplistic rendering of the conflict rather than allowing other veterans to portray it as they experienced it. This glorification of the war represents an attempt by the state to bolster its popular legitimacy and generate youth interest in military service, which is compulsory for all males who are 18 years old.

War, mobilization and development in the Islamic Republic  151 As an unintended consequence, this glorification also helped TBA members and other veterans at the grass roots level in their efforts to gain support from the public and obtain welfare benefits while demonstrating loyalty to the state. As in other countries, the IRI’s glorification of the war does not necessarily equate to the improved treatment of veterans.3 In the IRI, the war is referred to as the “holy or sacred defence” (difā‘a-i muqaddas) and the “imposed war” (jang-i taḥmīlī) for two reasons. First, from a constructivist perspective and within the context of the Cold War, the Iran-Iraq War constituted an ideological struggle for regional and international supremacy between the IRI’s Pan-Islamist and Iranian nationalism, on one side, and Iraq’s secular and Pan-Arab nationalism, the Soviet Union’s secular socialism or communism and, above all else, the United States’ Western imperialism and Christian capitalism, on the other side.4 This ideological struggle prompted the IRI’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1979–1989), to famously declare “Neither east nor west” (nah sharq, nah gharb). Second, the Iran-Iraq War is called the “holy or sacred defence” and “the ­i mposed war” because Iraq initiated it by invading Iran in 1980 and fighting on Iranian soil along the western border until 1982. That year, the IRI turned the tide of the conflict by repelling Iraqi forces and going on the offensive inside their territory. The war became a protracted conflict that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and caused immeasurable economic damage to both sides until Khomeini “drank the poisoned chalice” by signing an United Nations-brokered ceasefire agreement with Iraq in 1988. Through propaganda and other means, the IRI has attempted to justify and glorify the war because it remains the subject of much controversy and ­debate. While some Iranians believe that the war should have lasted until the ostensible surrender of Iraq – which contains Shiʿi Islam’s holiest shrines in Karbala and Najaf – other Iranians believe that the war should have ended sooner to spare human lives and reduce the socio-­economic costs. The Iran-Iraq War enabled TBA members and other veterans to gain public support and benefits because it was a total war that triggered mass mobilization and soldiering. According to official statistics, 5 per cent of the population or 2,547,000 combatants served in the war out of a total population of approximately 50 million.5 Many of the IRI’s mobilized soldiers, at least during the first years of the Iran-Iraq War, were nationalistically and ideologically motivated volunteers; others were drafted against their will or opportunistically volunteered later in the war. As a result, a “war generation” emerged in Iran: a generation that, in theory, epitomized the nationalistic and ideological values of the war mobilization but, in reality, was far from being a unified entity.6 During and after the Iran-Iraq War, mass mobilization and soldiering in the IRI required the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of returning veterans by the state lest they turn against it and threaten or endanger post-conflict security and stability.7

152  Eric Lob In an effort to successfully implement demobilization and to maintain the nationalistic and ideological values of the “holy war” within the war generation, the state encouraged veterans to establish and join the TBA, and other volunteer groups, civic associations and government-organized non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at the grass roots level.8 The state also supported and reintegrated ex-combatants through governmental and parastatal agencies and organizations, such as the Ministry of the Agricultural Jihad’s Department of Veterans Affairs (Daftar-i Umūr-i Īsārgarān-i Vizārat-i Jahād-i Kishāvarzī), the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans ­Affairs (Bunyād-i Shahīd va Umūr-i Īsārgarān) and the Foundation for the Oppressed and Disabled (Bunyād-i Mustażʿafān va Jānbāzān).9 TBA members and other veterans were grouped with poor and disabled civilian populations due to the developmental and populist ideology and practice of the IRI, and the popular pressure it faced to deliver on them (developmental and populist ideology and practice) for legitimation purposes, as evidenced by the names of its organizations. In addition to soldiering, a crucial part of the Iran-Iraq War was volunteerism through revolutionary organizations that paralleled the regular army, including the IRGC, the Basij and the Construction Jihad (CJ) (Jahād-i Sāzandigī), and its War Engineering and Support (WES) (Pushtībānī va ­Muhandisī-i Jang-i Jahād), with which the TBA was affiliated. According to official ­statistics, “almost two-thirds of the uniformed war dead was from the ranks of the revolutionary military forces created as a rival for the regular military, which comprised only about a quarter of the war dead”.10 Compared to ex-combatants of the regular army, which had been purged of real and suspected Shah loyalists during the revolution and the war, the veterans of the revolutionary organizations presumably received greater support from the state, if not the public, because of their higher number of combatants and casualties during the war; their revolutionary, religious, popular and voluntary nature; and their proximity to the supreme leader, the commanderin-chief of the armed forces. The IRI emphasized the volunteerism of TBA members and other veterans of revolutionary organizations to glorify and justify the war, bolster state legitimacy and raise youth interest in the military. At the same time, these veterans did so to increase their political clout, self-entitlement, moral debt, legitimacy and leverage while attempting to gain public support and welfare benefits. Although the volunteerism of these veterans blurred the distinction between their status as civilians and combatants, they agitated for concessions, respect and influence because they had quantitatively sacrificed and suffered twice as much as civilians, given the eight years of defensive and offensive war. Compared to the approximately 17,000 civilians who were killed, the armed forces sustained casualties that totalled around 190,000, a combatant-to-civilian ratio of over 11 to 1, even if the civilian estimate purportedly remained low.11 While far from unique or exceptional to the IRI, the TBA offers insight into three critical aspects of the IRI’s state formation and state-society

War, mobilization and development in the Islamic Republic  153 relations during and after the revolution and the war. First, the TBA reveals how a fledgling and vulnerable IRI in the 1980s relied on rural development and other non-coercive tactics to mobilize activists and consolidate power against internal political opponents and invading Iraqi forces. Some scholarly works attribute the IRI’s power consolidation to its use of repression through coercive institutions, including revolutionary courts (dādgāh-i inqilābī), club-wielding partisans of God (chamāqdār-i ḥizbullahī) and the IRGC, which is tasked with defending the IRI from domestic and foreign adversaries.12 Other works attribute the IRI’s power consolidation to its effectiveness at mobilizing mass support and channelling revolutionary fervour and popular energy into new military and administrative institutions.13 These works overlook or downplay how rural development and other non-violent tactics facilitated mobilization and consolidation against the IRI’s domestic and foreign opponents – a process on which the TBA sheds light. Second, the TBA demonstrates how an increasingly consolidated and bureaucratized IRI in the 1980s and 1990s attempted to reintegrate revolutionary activists and war veterans by channelling them into government ministries and volunteer groups that ostensibly continued to serve the IRI’s interests and mitigated the potential threat that these individuals posed to state and societal stability. This demobilization policy created conflicting outcomes for these veterans, who constituted a heterogeneous population in terms of geography, ethnicity, age, education, income and religious and political beliefs. This heterogeneity rendered unity and collective action difficult for these veterans and enabled the increasingly factionalized state to adopt a divide and rule strategy towards them. Some veterans experienced reintegration and sociopolitical mobility, while others – including those who later became affiliated with the TBA – were “reintegrated back into poverty”, as Jaremey McMullin has put it.14 Rather than having time to engage in political activism and collective action, these veterans were too busy attempting to find housing and healthcare, searching for employment and working lower-level jobs, and struggling to make ends meet. As a consequence, these individuals experienced deep-seated disillusionment because their real and perceived political and socio-economic statuses did not correspond to the sacrifices they had made and the recognition they had received during the revolution and the war – a common outcome for veterans outside of Iran.15 Third, the TBA reveals the efforts of an increasingly factionalized IRI and its conservative and hard-line elites to mobilize and socialize l­ower-class veterans, youth and villagers against moderate and reformist elites during the 2000s.16 Although these efforts ostensibly helped the conservatives and hardliners maintain bureaucratic influence, gain popular support and secure electoral victories, these efforts also produced unintended consequences. While attempting to mobilize and socialize veterans, youth and villagers in a controlled manner, the conservatives and hardliners simultaneously

154  Eric Lob empowered these constituents. Thus, these political elites subjected themselves to popular pressure in the form of rising expectations and demands for greater compensation and benefits. To this end, the TBA sought to organize and unify a broad and heterogeneous membership, cultivate and leverage elite allies in the government and bureaucracy, use the press and media effectively and mobilize voters efficiently. In the TBA, the IRI spawned a government-organized NGO that reinforced the tendencies of elite clientelism, co-optation and corporatism yet also represented the seedbed for authentic or genuine grass roots associationalism and lobbying.17

The Construction Jihad The TBA’s antecedents date back to the revolution and the war with the inception of the IRI’s rural development organization, the CJ. Its origins were rooted in the rural development policies that the IRI instituted several months after Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi departed Iran on 16 January, and the exiled Khomeini returned on 1 February 1979. On 16 June, the provisional government officially established the CJ as a revolutionary organization, less than two months after the establishment of the IRGC on 22 April. The provisional government established the CJ to fulfil the revolutionary promises during 1978–1979 to bring development to the country’s 70,000 villages. In the ideology and rhetoric of Khomeini and his Islamic Republican Party (IRP) (Ḥizb-i Jumhūrī-i Islāmī), the villages had been “de-­developed” under the Shah, and their residents had been allowed to become “oppressed” and “dispossessed” (mustażʿafīn), a term that was employed to appeal to the country’s urban working class and rural population.18 According to a former CJ member, contrary to Western perceptions and stigmatization of jihad as exclusively equated with holy war, the term in the organization’s name implied a divinely inspired, collective and individual struggle to improve society and the self through rural development and other positive and productive endeavours.19 For the purposes of recruitment and mobilization, the organization’s name and Khomeini’s use of it as a grand ayatollah (āyatullāh ʿuẓmā) and source of emulation (marjaʿ taqlīd) – the highest-ranking cleric in Shiʿism – implied that a sacred duty was ­incumbent upon every Iranian Muslim. In his nationally televised speech announcing the CJ’s official establishment on 16 June, Khomeini reminded current CJ members and potential recruits of their duty to perform jihad by taking part in the organization. In an attempt to maximize recruits, he conflated membership in the CJ with the sacred duty of jihad, a framing device that he also employed to mobilize volunteers to the front ( jibhih) during the Iran-Iraq War.20 According to a former CJ member, as Khomeini had done when announcing the CJ’s official establishment as a revolutionary organization, he appealed to Iranians’ sense of nationalism and piety by issuing an order ( farmān) for the entire nation to support and participate in the war effort and the jihad against Iraq.21

War, mobilization and development in the Islamic Republic  155 The CJ consisted of thousands of volunteers, who undertook an ambitious development campaign and spread revolutionary and religious ­values throughout the countryside, where over half the population ­r esided.22 To these ends, the organization disseminated books and films with revolutionary and religious content; distributed Qur’ans and other Islamic texts; and organized clerical sermons, prayer groups and study sessions. In total, 22,000 rural libraries were created by the CJ in 20 years of development activities. Between 1979 and 1989, the CJ built 25,000 kilometres of rural roads (including bridges), and another 45,000 kilometres were built in the following decade. Before 1979, only 4,500 Iranian villages were electrified; in the first ten years after the revolution, the CJ supplied electricity to 9,050 small villages and 17,800 larger villages of above 20 families. Between 1979 and 1999, the CJ provided access to potable water in more than 22,000 Iranian villages. In addition, it constructed schools, health clinics and public baths. It also delivered medication and vaccinations and provided inputs, credit, guidance and assistance to farmers, herders and artisans.23 While promoting rural development and gaining popular support in the provinces and villages, the CJ helped the fledgling IRI consolidate power against a myriad of domestic opponents, including royalists and liberals; communists and Marxists; Sunni and ethnic separatists; and traditional elites and other counterrevolutionaries. The CJ neutralized these opponents in three ways. First, the CJ monitored these opponents and reported on their presence, personnel and activities in the provinces and villages to the political and security establishment.24 Second, in the spirit of patronage or clientelism, the CJ encouraged provincial and rural residents – who were privy to its services – to participate in political rallies in support of the IRP and to vote for it during elections.25 Third, the CJ integrated its members and supporters – who ostensibly supported the IRP and participated in the revolution and the war – into thousands of rural or Islamic councils and away from those that were affiliated with traditional elites, Marxists and other opponents.26 Less than two years after the IRI’s inception, the Iran-Iraq War began with Iraq’s invasion of Iran by land, sea and air on 22 September 1980. ­Between 1981 and 1983, the CJ inaugurated major projects in thousands of Iran’s villages while getting involved in the war effort.27 Prior to the war, the CJ had been active along Iran’s Western border region with Iraq in an effort to subdue the Sunni and ethnic separatists that had resisted and revolted against the Shiʿi and Persian-centric IRI. As such, the CJ was positioned to play a pivotal role in the Iran-Iraq War. Former members described being on two- or three-week rotations, alternating between their responsibilities in the villages and those on the front. The CJ’s wartime responsibilities included collecting, donating and delivering funds, vehicles and supplies to the troops, and recruiting citizens in the provinces and villages to enlist in the army, the IRGC and the Basij.28

156  Eric Lob As indicated earlier, the CJ served as the IRI’s eyes and ears in the c­ ountryside – an important task considering that Shah loyalists, Marxist guerrillas and other domestic opponents sought refuge there and collaborated with the Iraqis. During the early stages of the war, the CJ helped the disorderly security services and the inexperienced IRGC cultivate local informants and identify and detain suspected dissidents. One former CJ member who had served in Kurdistan and Khuzestan – the sites of confrontation against Iraqi forces and Marxist and ethnic rebels – acknowledged, passing information that [he] collected from schoolteachers and other informants about individuals and groups that had opposed and attacked the CJ and the state to the security forces and the IRGC so that the perpetrators could be dealt with accordingly.29 The CJ leveraged its skills to provide logistical support to Iranian troops on the front. The CJ’s physicians served as paramedics who offered emergency medical assistance to wounded troops, and its teachers taught illiterate soldiers how to read. In an attempt to boost morale within the armed forces, the organization distributed propaganda and religious texts, and organized clerical sermons, prayer groups and study sessions.30 The CJ’s rural infrastructure personnel formed a corps of combat engineers (­m uhandisān-i razmī) called the WES. During the war, the WES constructed dirt and asphalt roads, conventional and pontoon bridges, and other essential infrastructure.31 The WES held a seat on the National War Council (Shūrā-i Milī-i Jang) to coordinate with the army and the IRGC.32 The WES primarily supported the IRGC and the Basij, and all three reported directly to the military’s central command.33 The WES’s highly skilled combat engineers assembled and repaired weapons and equipment, and became adept at producing military technology. These engineers worked for the CJ’s Engineering Research Centers (Marākiz-i Taḥqīqāt-i Muhandisī), which were established at the beginning of the war in 1981. During and after the war, the centres researched and developed defence projects, including missiles, tanks and masks, and devices against chemical weapons, which the Iraqis used against the Iranians during the war.34 Outside the military and defence sectors, the centres undertook civilian projects in rural development.35 The WES recruited the CJ’s bulldozer and loader drivers, who had experience digging wells and irrigation canals and erecting dykes made of soil to protect villages from landslides and floods. According to a former deputy minister of the CJ, these drivers, “who became increasingly numerous, came from [Iran’s] provinces and villages, and tended to be less educated and more ideological”.36 On the front, these individuals risked their lives digging trenches and levees to shield Iranian forces and impede Iraqi troop movements. The WES built trenches for military combat and stocked others with food, water and other basic necessities to house troops.37

War, mobilization and development in the Islamic Republic  157 These trenches constituted a central component of the conflict, which relied on trench warfare reminiscent of the First World War.38 The trench builders received national recognition and praise from the IRI’s leadership due to their important contribution to the war effort and the fact that they suffered approximately 3,100 casualties, approximately 1.6 per cent of the total of 190,000 casualties.39 During the war, Khomeini introduced and applied the moniker “trench builders without trenches” (­sangarsāzān-i bī sangar) to the WES’s bulldozer and loader drivers, who risked their lives digging trenches on the front without having trenches to offer protection against Iraqi attacks. After consolidating power against its domestic opponents and turning the tide of the war against Iraq, the IRI integrated the CJ into the ­expanding ­bureaucracy by converting the revolutionary organization into a ­government ministry in 1983. In 1990, the IRI’s pragmatic, fourth president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989–1997), introduced parliamentary legislation that restricted the CJ’s rural development responsibilities to the management of fisheries, forests, pastures and livestock, seeking to reduce the bureaucratic redundancy that had existed between the CJ and the Ministry of Agriculture.40 In 2001, the IRI’s fifth president, Mohammad Khatami (1997–2001), and the reformists merged both ministries to form the Ministry of the ­Agricultural Jihad (MAJ) (Vizārat-i Jahād-i Kishāvarzī). For the CJ’s activists and veterans, its bureaucratization and merger ­created a mixed outcome. Some activists and veterans experienced sociopolitical mobility while others did not. Between the 1980s and 2000s, these activists and veterans were appointed to political positions. In interviews and discussions, former CJ members consistently took pride in the fact that they and their colleagues had reached the highest echelons of the political and economic establishment by becoming high-level officials and government advisers, business executives and consultants, and newspaper editors and university professors. According to the former deputy minister of the CJ, many of the individuals, who were members of the CJ’s [central] council (shūrā-i markazī) [in Tehran] or led the organization at an early stage, have been appointed cabinet ministers in different governments, including the current one, while many more [of these individuals] have become parliamentarians or [have been appointed to] executive positions like governors or [the heads] of national companies.41 Some of the CJ’s former representatives and ministers have served and currently serve as advisers to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (1989-present) in the Expediency Discernment Council of the System (Majmaʿ-i Tashkhīṣ-i Maṣlaḥat-i Niẓām). These individuals include Khomeini’s first representative to the CJ, Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri (1997-present); the CJ’s first minister and the IRI’s current Petroleum Minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh (1997–2012); and the CJ’s former deputy minister and the IRI’s former Minister of the

158  Eric Lob Economy (1985–1989), Mohammad Javad Iravani (2012–­present).42 The current cabinet of the IRI’s centrist, seventh president, Hassan Rouhani, ­contains several ministers who were founding members and leaders of the CJ. These provincial-born, upper-middle-class and well-connected elites have headed ministries that comprise key areas of the CJ’s core competencies, when it had existed as a revolutionary organization and a government ministry. The backgrounds of these individuals reveal the organization’s provincial antecedents and the opportunities for advancement that it provided to some of its personnel. However, other CJ activists and veterans – including many of the trench builders, who were less well connected, educated, ambitious or lucky – were reintegrated back into sociopolitical marginalization. They believed that their political and socio-economic status was not commensurate with the risks they had assumed and the price they had paid (approximately 3,100 casualties and thousands more injured) and the recognition they had received during the war. Sixteen years after the war ended, these individuals formed the core of the TBA’s membership during and after its establishment in 2004.

The Trench Builders Association Between 2004 and 2009, the IRI’s sixth president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2009–2013), and the hardliners defeated the reformists in consecutive parliamentary and presidential elections.43 These electoral victories were due not only to the conservative-controlled Guardian Council’s disqualification of reformist candidates or their repression by the IRGC and the Basij but also to the efforts of the hardliners to mobilize lower-class veterans, youth, villagers and other constituents while demobilizing middle-class voters. The hardliners attempted to mobilize and socialize these constituents through a civic association and a lobbying organization or an interest group known as the TBA.44 The TBA’s establishment constituted an appropriation of tactics from the reformists, who had successfully mobilized middle-class youth and other constituents at the grass roots level.45 In 2004, the year of the hardliners’ first parliamentary victory, “some of the individuals [from the WES], who had prospered as high-level commanders and officials, pooled their resources to establish the TBA, which was independent from the state”.46 This claim regarding the independence of the TBA was not entirely accurate because it was established with the encouragement and support of conservative and hard-line elites. The TBA’s membership consisted of veterans with a “record of volunteering at the front for the CJ’s WES” and their families, who could join as secondary or “subordinate members”.47 As revealed by the TBA’s name, many of its members had served in the war as trench builders and came from provincial and rural lower-class backgrounds. Rather than refer to itself as an organization and to promote unity among its members, the TBA listed one

War, mobilization and development in the Islamic Republic  159 of its goals as “preserving the social connection and solidarity of a [social] stratum (qishr) that served and was resourceful, loyal, and supportive of the revolution”.48 For TBA members and other veterans, the revolution was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, these veterans brandished their revolutionary ­credentials in an attempt to gain public support and welfare benefits. On the other hand, the fact that these veterans had taken part in a broader revolutionary struggle for which the civilian population had sacrificed and which, in Khomeini’s words, “was not about the price of watermelons”, caused the state and society, including some of the veterans themselves, to question whether they deserved special treatment. In an effort to gain support and votes from lower-class veterans and other constituents, ­Ahmadinejad and the hardliners campaigned on “fulfilling the populist promises of the Khomeini era”.49 The TBA appropriated and employed the hardliners’ populist rhetoric that supported the oppressed, showed hostility to the middle class and promoted socio-economic equality and social justice.50 The homepage of the TBA’s website displayed the following quote from Khomeini alongside his photograph: “The [Construction] Jihad is a world icon of freedom and independence in the areas of working, struggling, and fighting against ­poverty, indigence, cruelty, and hardship”.51 The website also stated that the CJ’s former members “have treated the pain of poverty and indigence in the country, and have saved [Iranians from] the hardship of dependence on ­others”.52 The TBA did not simply employ this populist discourse to legitimate and support the hardliners but also to advance the interests of its lower-class members and their families. The TBA attempted to mobilize and socialize youth through its provincial and township branches around the country.53 These branches ­logistically ­facilitated visits to high schools and universities in an attempt to educate and inculcate youth. The deputy director of the TBA revealed that it ­delivered presentations and spoke to students about the WES’s role in the war, including how “through ingenuity and initiative, the CJ’s combat engineers overcame limitations on the front to confront the enemy”.54 While visiting schools and universities, the TBA encouraged and recruited students to participate in camps, known as the jihadi and hijrah camps, through which youth travelled to remote villages to undertake development projects and engage in religious and cultural activities. The camps were part of the efforts by the conservatives and hardliners to mobilize youth in their favour and away from the reformists, and to increase the interest of youth in military service. In addition to visiting schools and universities, the TBA recorded and commemorated the CJ’s wartime history by conducting interviews with former members and collecting documents at archives. The TBA used this information to publish books and attempted to incorporate them into the national curriculum and proposed dedicating certain weeks of the school year to the “theoretical and practical transmission of the [CJ’s] experiences to

160  Eric Lob current and future generations”.55 The TBA also sought to establish educational, training and research institutes, and centres for students, and to create seminars, memorials and exhibits dedicated to the CJ’s veterans – including sections of the Museum of the Holy or Sacred Defense and the Promotion of Resistance Culture (Mūzih-i Difāʿa-i Muqaddas va Tarvīj-i Farhang-i Muqāvimat) that commemorate the contributions of WES engineers and trench builders to the war effort. For the TBA, the goal of these activities was “honoring the memory of the CJ’s martyrs [killed in] the holy or sacred defense, preserving the history and identity of the CJ… and transmitting jihadi culture and jihadists’ past experiences to current and future generations”.56 Through the TBA’s educational programs, the hardliners sought to channel the energy of veterans into socializing youth and other citizens with religious, revolutionary and nationalistic symbols and values related to wartime sacrifice. These symbols and values were prevalent in the IRI’s public space on street signs named after martyrs, on murals and posters of the fallen, and in media programs and publications dedicated to the war.57 Thus, the TBA reminded “Iranians of the sacrifices that were made for the war and of citizens’ religious and patriotic duty to serve God and country”.58 The TBA’s educational initiatives may have increased the interest of some youth in military service and mobilized and socialized them in favour of the conservatives and hardliners. However, religiosity and patriotism were not values that exclusively belonged to the conservatives and hardliners but also to the moderates, reformists and other Iranians. In fact, given the heterogeneity of the veteran population, the CJ’s former activists and veterans with moderate and reformist leanings joined the TBA and its sister organization, the Jihadists Association (JA) (Kānūn-i Jahādgarān), which was established in 2006, the same year as the fourth election of the Assembly of Experts, a body that elects, supervises and, if necessary, can dismiss the supreme leader. ­Political factionalism aside, the TBA’s educational activities represented an attempt to advance its own agenda by bringing national attention to its cause and reminding the government and public of veterans’ sacrifices and plight. The TBA sought to instil unity among veterans, who were affiliated with the WES and other branches of the military. The TBA’s logo ­contained the CJ’s original “all together [toward construction]” (hamih bā ham [bih ­sāzandigī]) slogan framed by a sickle and stalk below Qur’anic verse that conveyed piety.59 Underscoring its conservative credentials, the TBA expressed, the hope that, with the Almighty’s help and the Twelfth Imam’s special approval, the TBA’s members can take effective steps toward Imam Khomeini’s goals for this organization and toward the Supreme Leader’s expectations for jihadists through the realization, once again, of the ‘all together’ slogan.60 Consistent with the CJ’s “all together” slogan, the TBA strove to “maintain social solidarity” and “solve jihadists’ problems through direct communication

War, mobilization and development in the Islamic Republic  161 and information exchange with each other”.61 Towards this end, the TBA designed an outreach program for the CJ’s veterans and their families. In Tehran and other provinces, the TBA held meetings with the CJ’s veterans and their “brothers” who had fought in the IRGC and the Basij and had been supported by the WES during the war.62 A main TBA goal was to improve the economic status of the CJ’s veterans. Although the TBA was a non-profit organization, it “performed activities in manufacturing and trade, and in spending revenues to promote the economic conditions of the CJ’s veterans and their families”.63 The TBA “organized and directed investment and participation in [buying] shares in companies that benefited veterans and were [in line with] the TBA’s goals”.64 Moreover, the TBA “pursued establishing a loan fund and connecting it to existing funds” to offer credit to qualified members.65 The TBA also helped the CJ’s veterans find jobs. In the TBA’s central headquarters in Tehran, veterans with physical disabilities – including blindness, shrapnel wounds, severed limbs and illnesses from chemical weapons exposure – performed administrative tasks. The TBA partnered with the MAJ’s Department of Veterans Affairs to help the CJ’s veterans obtain jobs at the ministry. This partnership comprised a rehabilitation and reintegration program, which seemed to have achieved a measure of success, with employed veterans working alongside and sharing offices with bureaucrats. However, other than promoting religious values, the role of these veterans remained unclear. Some bureaucrats looked down upon and stereotyped these veterans as ­uneducated, unskilled, ideological and lazy. Referring to his veteran officemate with a hint of condescension and contempt in his voice, an employee stated that, “I attend the meetings and write the reports while he reads the Qur’an and prays in the corner [of the room] three times per day”.66 As with the TBA’s educational activities, its efforts to promote unity among veterans served a dual purpose. The TBA recruited, organized and mobilized veterans in support of the conservatives and hardliners during parliamentary and presidential elections. At the same time, solidifying a base of members and supporters allowed the TBA to pressure the conservatives and hardliners into advancing its goals. This was particularly the case after the TBA helped elect Ahmadinejad, who appointed IRGC commanders and veterans to the cabinet with whom TBA members and other veterans identified and perceived as an opportunity for political patronage. The TBA pressured the conservatives and hardliners in the Ahmadinejad government into awarding these veterans greater compensation. The TBA endeavoured to make “securing the basic material needs [of the CJ’s veterans] a priority and commonplace” for the government.67 To this end, the TBA “obtained information on the living conditions and problems of the CJ’s veterans and their families, and took steps to resolve these problems”.68 One of these steps included launching a national publicity campaign with advertisements, films and publications on the issue of veterans’ compensation. Since its establishment in 2004, the TBA launched this campaign in

162  Eric Lob cooperation with several cultural and publicity organizations, including IRI Broadcasting (Ṣidā va Sīmā), which was under the supreme leader’s purview, and the IRGC-affiliated Foundation for the Preservation of Relics and the Dissemination of the Values of the Holy or Sacred Defense (Bunyād-i Ḥifẓ-i Āsār va Nashr-i Arzishhā-i Difāʿa-i Muqaddas), which also published books on the CJ’s wartime history and activities.69 Apart from contributing to attempts by the conservatives and hardliners to socialize youth and other citizens and increase their interest in military service, the TBA visited schools and established research centres and memorials to raise national awareness of the issue of veterans’ compensation. In essence, the TBA acted as an interest group that “supported and trained the CJ’s veterans and their families in receiving compensation for physical, emotional, and financial damage suffered during the holy or sacred defense”.70 The TBA primarily lobbied the parliament and presidency  – which the conservatives and hardliners controlled between 2004 and 2013. The TBA directed its lobbying efforts towards “seeking the implementation of laws passed by the parliament, and the approval of cabinet decrees and general provisions related to the CJ’s veterans and their families”.71 The TBA lobbied in partnership with the Foundation of Veterans Affairs, the IRGC and the Basij, the MAJ’s Department of Veterans Affairs and various clerics. The fact that most, if not all, of these entities fell under the supreme leader’s purview attested to the controlled nature of these lobbying efforts. The latter may have also served as a means for the supreme leader and other conservative elites to pressure Ahmadinejad and other hard-line elites as tensions between both factions escalated following the 2009 presidential election, helping pave the way for the electoral victory of Rouhani and the centrists in 2013.

Conclusion Resembling other veterans’ associations worldwide, the TBA reveals the ambiguity and reciprocity of state-society relations and associational life in the politically factionalized IRI. While portraying itself as apolitical and financially independent, the TBA was a lobbying organization established with the encouragement and support of conservative and hard-line elites – a paradoxical phenomenon known as a government-organized NGO. While imbued with elite clientelism, co-optation and corporatism, the TBA ­simultaneously produced the unintended consequence of validating and empowering previously marginalized and disadvantaged war veterans and their families. By ­assembling a critical mass of constituents and aggregating popular claims from below, these groups pressured the conservatives and hardliners – whom they had helped gain support and get elected – into addressing rising expectations and demands for increased and improved compensation and benefits. The TBA was initially an instrument of mobilization, socialization and militarization for the conservatives and hardliners, who drew on the intense wartime experience of the CJ to promote a developmental, populist,

War, mobilization and development in the Islamic Republic  163 revolutionary and religious ideology among former servicemen. However, the TBA appropriated this ideology in an effort to garner national attention and popular legitimacy as well as challenge and change the status quo. The TBA did so in a deliberate and controlled manner that demonstrated the TBA’s loyalty and closeness to these elites. Indeed, the TBA cooperated with institutions that were largely or entirely affiliated with the supreme leader. For the latter and other conservative elites, the TBA ostensibly served as a feedback mechanism that enabled them to gauge popular expectations and demands, relegate reform to the socio-economic rather than the political sphere and reduce the possibility of contentious politics erupting in society.

Notes 1 Stephen R. Ortiz (ed.), Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics (Gainesville, FL: ­University Press of Florida, 2012); Martin Crotty and Mark Edele, “Total War and Entitlement: Towards a Global History of Veteran Privilege”, Australian Journal of Politics and History 59:1 (2013), 15–32. 2 Neil Diamant, “Conspicuous Silence: Veterans and the Depoliticization of War ­ oviet Memory in China”, Modern Asian Studies 45:2 (2011), 431–461; Mark Edele, S Veterans of the Second World War. A Popular Movement in an ­Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 3 China and the Soviet Union offer the clearest parallels. See Mark Edele, “Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement Group, 1945–1955”, Slavic Review 65:1 (2006), 111–137; Gordon White, “The Politics of Demobilized Soldiers from Liberation to Cultural Revolution”, The China Quarterly 82 (1980), 187–213; Neil Diamant, “Veterans, Organization, and the Politics of Martial Citizenship in China”, Journal of East Asian Studies 8 (2008), 119–158; Neil Diamant, Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949–2007 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); and Neil Diamant, “Veterans’ Political Activism in China”, Modern China 41:3 (2015), 278–312. 4 Tim McDaniel, Autocracy, Modernization, and Revolution in Russia and Iran (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 224–225; Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 288–297. Pierre Razoux, The Iran-Iraq War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). 5 “New statistics on dead in Iran-Iraq war”, International Iran Times, http://irantimes.com/new-statistics-on-dead-in-iran-iraq-war (accessed 16 October 2017). 6 Farideh Farhi, “The Antinomies of Iran’s War Generation”, in Lawrence G. Potter and Gary G. Sick (eds.), Iran, Iraq, and the Legacies of War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 101–120. 7 Theda Skocpol, “Social Revolutions and Mass Military Mobilization”, World Politics 40:2 (1988), 147–168; Jaremey McMullin, Ex-Combatants and the Post-­ Conflict State: Challenges of Reintegration (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Crotty and Edele, “Total War”, 15–32. 8 For more on government-organized NGOs in the IRI, see Paola Rivetti, “Co-opting Civil Society Activism in Iran”, in Paul Aarts and Francesco Cavatorta (eds.), Civil Society in Syria and Iran: Activism in Authoritarian Contexts (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013), 187–207. 9 Diamant, Embattled Glory, 408–410. 10 According to official statistics, among the 2,547,000 combatants who served in the war, 84 per cent or 2,130,000 served in the Basij, compared to 200,000 in the

164  Eric Lob

11

12

13

14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22

23

24 25

IRGC and the police, and 217,000 in the regular forces. See “New statistics”, International Iran Times. “New statistics”, International Iran Times. No statistical breakdown was released to show how many civilians were residents of the border combat zones and how many died from the Iraqi attacks on Iran’s cities. See http://kurzman. unc.edu/death-tolls-of-the-iran-iraq-war (accessed 11 November 2017). Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1984); Said Amir Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Misagh Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989); Mansoor Moaddel, Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution (New York: ­Columbia University Press, 1993). See, for example, Skocpol, “Social Revolutions”; Farideh Farhi, States and ­Urban Based Revolutions (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1990); and John Foran and Jeff Goodwin, “Revolutionary Outcomes in Iran and Nicaragua: Coalition Fragmentation, War, and the Limits of Social Transformation”, Theory and Society 22 (1993), 209–247. McMullin, Ex-Combatants, 55–59. See Crotty and Edele, “Total War”, 15–32. For more on the IRI’s factionalized elites, see Mehdi Moslem, Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002). For more on the elite clientelism of civil society in the Middle East, see Q ­ uintan Wiktorowicz, “Civil Society as Social Control: State Power in Jordan”, ­Comparative Politics 33:1 (2000), 43–61; Amaney Jamal, Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Andrea Liverani, Civil Society in Algeria: The Political Functions of Associational Life (London: Routledge, 2008); and Francesco Cavatorta and Vincent Durac, Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World: The Dynamics of Activism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010). For an early eyewitness account of the CJ, see Emad Ferdows, “The Reconstruction Crusade and Class Conflict in Iran”, MERIP Reports 113 (1983), 11–15. Former CJ member, interview with the author, Tehran, 12 February 2011. The Ministry of the CJ, The Ten-Year Performance of the CJ from 1979 until 1989 (Tehran: The Ministry of the CJ, 1991), 6. Former CJ member, interview with the author, Tehran, 9 March 2011. Ahmad Ashraf, “State and Agrarian Relations before and after the Iranian Revolution, 1960–1990”, in John Waterbury and Farhad Kazemi (eds.), Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East (Miami: Florida University Press, 1991), 290; Ahmad Ashraf, “From the White Revolution to the Islamic Revolution”, in Saeed Rahnema and Sohrab Behdad (eds.), Iran after Revolution: Crisis of an Islamic State (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), 6; Mustafa Azkia, “Rural Society and Revolution in Iran”, in Eric Hooglund (ed.), Twenty Years of Islamic Revolution (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 97. The Ministry of the CJ, The Ten-Year Performance, 68–72; The World Bank, ­“Islamic Republic of Iran Services for Agriculture and Rural Development ­(Volume I, Main Report)”, World Bank Report, 11956-IRN (20 June 1994), 56–60; the Ministry of the CJ, Twenty Years of Effort for Construction: A Glance at Twenty Years of the CJ’s Performance and Achievements (Tehran: The Ministry of the CJ, 2001), 32–38; Azkia, “Rural Society”, 105–106. Former deputy minister of the CJ, interview with the author, Tehran, 15 March 2011. Former CJ member and Iranian parliamentarian, interview with the author, ­Tehran, 1 June 2011.

War, mobilization and development in the Islamic Republic  165 26 Ahmad Ashraf, Iranian sociologist, interview with the author, Princeton, NJ, 25 January 2011. See also Bakhash, The Reign, 198–199, 202–211; Parsa, Social Origins, 258–265; Ashraf, “State and Agrarian Relations”, 292–299; Moaddel, Class, Politics, and Ideology, 229, 240–297; Asghar Schirazi, Islamic Development Policy: The Agrarian Question in Iran (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993, 150–151, 268–269; and Azkia, “Rural Society”, 105–109. 27 Ferdows, “The Reconstruction Crusade”, 11–15. 28 Former CJ member, interview with the author, Bushehr, 27 March 2011. 29 Former CJ member, interview with the author, Tehran, 23 April 2011. 30 Former CJ member, interview with the author, Tehran, 17 April 2011. 31 The Ministry of the CJ, The Ten-Year Performance, 169–187. 32 Former CJ member, interview with the author, Tehran, 9 March 2011. 33 TBA director, interview with the author, Tehran, 16 March 2011. See also the TBA’s website, https://web.archive.org/web/20130518031241/http://www.ksb1383. ir:80/ (accessed 9 May 2013). 34 The Ministry of the CJ, The Ten-Year Performance, 104–106. 35 The Ministry of the CJ, The Ten-Year Performance, 97–109. See also Mohammad Javad Iravani, Institutionalism and Jihad-e Sazandegi (Tehran: The Ministry of the CJ, 1998), 198–207; and the Ministry of the CJ, Twenty Years of Effort, 67–89. 36 Former deputy minister of the CJ, interview with the author, Tehran, 15 March 2011. 37 Former CJ member, interview with the author, Tehran, 9 March 2011. 38 Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 171. 39 TBA director, interview with the author, Tehran, 16 March 2011. For more on the CJ’s wartime activities and achievements, see Schirazi, Islamic Development Policy, 158–161; the Ministry of the CJ, The Ten-Year Performance, 169–187; and the Ministry of the CJ, Twenty Years of Effort, 143–144. 40 Iravani, Institutionalism, 196–206. 41 Former deputy minister of the CJ, email to the author, 25 July 2015. 42 For more on Iravani’s biography, see Iravani, Institutionalism, preface. 43 For simplicity, Ahmadinejad and his faction are classified as hardliners. While the hardliners are politically and socially conservative, their economic policies combine radical leftism or populism and laissez-faire liberalism. 44 During my first visit to the TBA’s central headquarters in Tehran on 16 March 2011, a pedestrian on the street negatively referred to its members as “partisans of God” (ḥizbullahī), a politically charged term for the hardliners. 45 Rivetti, “Co-opting Civil Society”, 187–207. 46 TBA deputy director, interview with the author, Tehran, 12 April 2011. 47 Ibid. 48 The TBA’s website, https://web.archive.org/web/20130518031241/http://www. ksb1383.ir:80/ (accessed 9 May 2013). 49 Abrahamian, A History, 193. 50 Saied Golkar, Captive Society: The Basij Militia and Social Control in Iran (Washington, DC and New York: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Columbia University Press, 2015), 190–191. 51 The TBA’s website, https://web.archive.org/web/20130518031241/http://www. ksb1383.ir:80/ (accessed 9 May 2013). 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. On the relationship between the war generation and younger Iranians, see Farhi, “The Antinomies”. 54 TBA website, https://web.archive.org/web/20130518031241/http://www.ksb1383. ir:80/ (accessed 9 May 2013). 55 Ibid.

166  Eric Lob 56 TBA deputy director, interview with the author, Tehran, 12 April 2011. See also the TBA’s website, https://web.archive.org/web/20130518031241/http://www.ksb1383. ir:80/(accessed 9 May 2013). 57 The TBA’s central headquarters are located on one such street: Shahid Daʾimi Street. The TBA’s website, https://web.archive.org/web/20130518031241/http:// www.ksb1383.ir:80/ (accessed 9 May 2013). 58 TBA deputy director, interview with the author, Tehran, 12 April 2011. 59 Surat Sabaʾ (34:46): “Say, ‘I advise you of only one thing. Stand up for God individually and in pairs…’” 6 0 The TBA’s website, https://web.archive.org/web/20130518031241/http://www. ksb1383.ir:80/ (accessed 9 May 2013). 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 MAJ employee, discussion with the author, Tehran, 6 April 2011. 67 The TBA’s website, https://web.archive.org/web/20130518031241/http://www. ksb1383.ir:80/ (accessed 9 May 2013). 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. The TBA director also confirmed this activity in an interview with the author, Tehran, 16 March 2011. 70 The TBA’s website, https://web.archive.org/web/20130518031241/http://www. ksb1383.ir:80/ (accessed 9 May 2013). 71 Ibid.

11 Veterans, decolonization and land expropriation in postindependence Zimbabwe, 2000–20081 Obert Bernard Mlambo Introduction Zimbabwe gained its independence from colonial Britain in 1980, after seven years of armed conflict and a longer period of anti-colonial struggle. This small, landlocked Southern African country with a population of approximately 13 million has an important ideological position in Africa and the global South at large. Zimbabwe has its origin in the former British colony of Southern Rhodesia and today shares borders with South Africa, ­Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana and Namibia. Its ideological influence derives from the consistent articulation of a radical Pan-Africanist political agenda championed by Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe between 1980 and 2017, and the guerrilla veterans of the war of liberation (1973–1980).2 For many decades, British colonial rule denied land rights, sovereignty, independence and other freedoms to the native population. If the war of liberation aimed to dislodge colonialism, foster black majority rule and restore the dignity of African people, Zimbabwe’s veterans burst into the international media between 2000 and 2008 as the storm troopers in Mugabe’s new, so-called “war of economic liberation”, in which veterans expropriated land and other private properties from white farmers in collaboration with other actors. This set of events demonstrates that a militant ideology of war worked hand in hand with the agenda of decolonization and served political projects of post-war resettlement in Zimbabwe. While it has been argued that Mugabe’s nativist economic ­nationalism was not unique to Zimbabwe – as states of black Africa before him had taken over huge industries owned by multinational corporations – in ­Zimbabwe, a radical and deeply rooted ideology emerged from the Liberation War.3 Mugabe’s post-war, veteran-driven economic nationalism was essentially equivalent to a decolonizing agenda marked by higher levels of ideological commitment than anywhere else in Africa. While Zimbabwean veterans seemingly pursued aims similar to those pursued in other A ­ frican countries during decolonization,4 there were crucial differences. West and East ­African ex-servicemen from countries such as Nigeria,5 Ghana,6 Uganda7 and Kenya did not unequivocally employ their military skills and war

168  Obert Bernard Mlambo experience to demand benefits8 nor did they participate meaningfully in nationalist political activities during and after the struggle for independence.9 In contrast, in Zimbabwe, veterans actually resorted to military occupation tactics to eject the white farmers from the land. According to official figures, at independence, Zimbabwe’s Liberation War veterans numbered 50,000. This figure excluded pregnant women fighters who returned home under the United Nations-sponsored refugee repatriation program.10 The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in ­Zimbabwe estimated the total number of ex-fighters of the ­Zimbabwe ­National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and the Zimbabwe People’s ­Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), the two armed sides that fought in the war, at 65,000.11 The political activist Judith Todd raised the count to 80,000, including trainees.12 It is instructive to note that the pool of mobilized persons from which the veterans’ movement was drawn was wider than the actual number of ex-fighters bearing arms and trained in designated camps, and included recruits awaiting training.13 After the Liberation War, veterans were not a unified political force. ­Divisions concerning war disability, gender, etc., marked the veterans’ postwar struggles.14 Most importantly, veterans were divided by their wartime political loyalties. Fighters from ZANLA supported Robert ­Mugabe’s party, Zimbabwe African Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), while veterans from ZIPRA gave their support to Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe ­A frican People’s Union (ZAPU).15 Only after a controversial agreement to merge the parties in 1987 under the aegis of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF did ­divisions among veterans decrease. As the Soviet Union, Castro’s Cuba and the P ­ eople’s ­Republic of China supported liberation movements in South ­A frica in the 1970s and 1980s,16 and Zimbabwean fighters received arms and training from these countries, veterans from both ZANU and ZAPU were influenced by ­Marxist-Leninist ideology. However, after the end of the Cold War, a more indefinite ideology rooted in the war experience motivated veterans to ­undertake Mugabe’s radical decolonization project. This ideological project of land resettlement also allowed Mugabe to transcend veterans’ divisions for his own benefit. Scholars have explored the menace of the Zimbabwean veteran phenomenon, describing and cataloguing their acts of violence against white farmers and anyone they perceived to be an enemy of the land reclamation movement.17 The phenomenon of violence has been given sustained attention in existing scholarship on the land question in Zimbabwe.18 Muzondidya dealt with the phenomenon of violence from the point of view of rights violations against minority races in Zimbabwe. Notions about race and nativism, ­nationhood and citizenship have characterized the debate about land and resource ownership in Zimbabwe since 2000. These notions have been ­applied to different categories of Zimbabweans in manners that viewed the native African as the sole and rightful owner of land, violating and excluding other minority races in the process.19 While limiting its focus to the white

Veterans, decolonization and land expropriation  169 minority race, this chapter adopts a broader view of violence to include raw and symbolic violence in Zimbabwe’s post-war veteran resettlement project. Norma Kriger argued that the guerrilla combatant was brutal and violent during and after the war of liberation.20 More importantly, her pioneering work on symbolic and violent politics in Zimbabwe deftly historicized the terrain of the guerrilla veterans’ ideals of revolutionary violence and their deployment in claims for state resources.21 This allows us to analyze how the symbol of the veteran informed the modes of land acquisition through martial and manly heroism. We may then stretch the argument not only to offer an interpretation of the continuum of veterans’ martial activities but also to argue that such a process warrants a closer analytical look at the physical body of the veteran and how the veterans’ bodies were deployed in land expropriations. The expropriations, we argue, not only became a means through which Mugabe could create new social and political spaces for his regime but also constituted a process of disturbing and dismantling the vestiges of colonial order to conform with his post-war political project. Thus, our point of departure from the stated treatment of the phenomenon of violence requires us to pay closer attention to the role of the body of the veteran as seen through the vast continuum of veterans’ performative action. As we will see, the public display of the body of the veteran and of symbols related to it was a performative part of the decolonization process in Zimbabwe. Then the chapter examines the spatial dimension of the land expropriation process. I explain how land redistribution among veterans was sustained by an ideological reinterpretation of the Zimbabwean nation’s space, which presented veterans as gallant and heroic “protectors” of land against colonialism, therefore transforming them into strident supporters of Mugabe.

Decolonization, expropriation and veterans: an overview While the term “decolonization” is largely used to describe the struggle of colonial peoples to achieve political and national independence,22 in independent Zimbabwe, decolonization was understood as the process of eliminating colonial legacies in so far as land ownership was concerned. Decolonization also sought to deal a fatal blow to opposition political parties, which were perceived to be sponsored by Western governments to remove Mugabe’s regime from power.23 For Ndlovu-Gatsheni, decolonization, which he calls “decoloniality”, encapsulates a more profound African quest for the radical transformation of colonial structures of domination and repression, the colonial economic logic of exploitation and the rebirth of a new post-racial humanity.24 Mugabe’s public speeches convey a pan-­ African anti-colonial and anti-imperialist message.25 This message has been dismissed as mere rhetoric and as a desperate strategy of survival in which Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party tried to symbolize the nation.26 However, I contend that this stance has made him very popular in the global South.27 Addressing Zimbabwe’s former colonizers, Mugabe captured well

170  Obert Bernard Mlambo the “decolonization” argument in his Earth Summit speech in 2002 in South Africa, in which he reminded the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair to “…keep your England, and let me keep my Zimbabwe”.28 The decolonization argument, as articulated by Mugabe, found credence in Zimbabwe’s colonial past.29 In Zimbabwe, during the period of land expropriations, the history of the armed struggle was enormously important. It served as a way of reminding citizens of the bloody struggle for independence. Zimbabwe’s history includes 90 years of white domination over the indigenous black majority. The Rhodesian state system dated back to 1890, and from its inception, its overriding imperative was the consolidation of colonialist hegemony and its attendant infrastructures of control.30 However, the indigenous population soon rebelled against the colonizers through Chimurenga: violent uprisings or wars fought against colonial ­occupation. The first Chimurenga was the Shona-Ndebele uprising against the British South Africa Company in 1896–1897. Later on, African involvement in the Second World War was to have profound psychological and political effects on attitudes towards colonial domination.31 After the war, Africans could not accept the tyranny of their colonizers, whom they had defended from German and Italian tyranny.32 The end of the Second World War had far-reaching political, economic and demographic effects on the African continent; Zimbabwe, then Southern Rhodesia, was not spared. The immediate post-war years saw a huge influx of European immigrants, mostly from Britain, which increased the country’s settler population.33 This resulted in the displacement of Africans from the “European areas” and, in turn, fuelled interracial tensions, which hastened the rise of African ­nationalism that eventually led to the dislodging of the colonial government through the protracted war of liberation.34 The second Chimurenga was the liberation war fought from 1973 to 1980. After gaining independence in 1980, Zimbabwe continued to be embroiled in the restructuring and reconfiguration of the post-war state. This process aimed to restore justice and equity with regard to land and resource ownership and redistribution.35 Between 2000 and 2008, the ­expropriation of white-owned farms by veterans was a violent and radical reaction to unequal economic opportunities and the postcolonial state’s reluctance, indeed inability, to fully address the race question and its continued influence in the postcolonial economy.36 In Zimbabwe, the terms “expropriations” and “farm invasions”, commonly known in the native Shona language as hondo yeminda (wars for land) and jambanja (violent invasions), mask a great range of dynamics as different combinations of actors occupied different properties in different ways for different reasons.37 The war veterans dubbed this movement kutora ivhu (taking (back) land) or the Third Chimurenga. Thus, the violent and radicalized redistribution of land spearheaded by the ex-soldiers of Zimbabwe’s liberation war ­b ecame ideologically linked to a narrative of continuous struggle for decolonization since the 1890s.

Veterans, decolonization and land expropriation  171 The role and influence of veterans in post-war societies differ across time and space. In some societies, veterans have played key roles and exercised a wide-ranging influence. Since the nineteenth century, political battles over veterans’ claims to entitlement have been central to state formation and politics in different Western countries. For instance, the distribution of land to American veterans marked the territorial expansion of the United States before the Civil War.38 African countries had similar experiences.39 The postcolonial government of ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe looked to appease the impoverished and angry veterans of the liberation war when its political fortunes were waning,40 giving them land and letting them fight against the former colonial masters and their alleged collaborators in the post-war decolonization resettlement project.

The symbol of the veteran and the violent mechanics of land expropriation The idea of Zimbabwean war veterans as violent individuals may sometimes be conditioned by the colonial picture of freedom fighters as “bloodthirsty anti-Christian Marxists”.41 Nevertheless, there was real violence in ­twenty-first-century Zimbabwe. McGregor mentions the following: the ­arrest, beating and intimidation of opposition activists and MPs, whom the veterans labelled “traitors”; the closing of district council and other local government offices suspected of working with opposition political parties; demands for the suspension of, and accusation of, officials; the pressuring of village chiefs to coerce their subjects to support ZANU-PF; and the taking of land from white farmers.42 McGregor even quotes a minister telling trainee teachers they could be killed for supporting the opposition.43 Moore highlights the then leader of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) Chenjerai Hunzvi’s “medievalist medical clinics-cum-torture-chambers”.44 Veterans also carried out acts of violence on farms that they intended to confiscate, resulting in the forced ejection of white farmers from their properties. In some cases, veterans mobilized crowds of youths and even women in demonstrations for land. In fact, crowd violence became a common tool used to violently evict white farmers from their farms. What were the causes of the veterans’ violence? In the first place, promises made to combatants during the war, and historical precedents of decolonization, played a key role. According to a veteran who used the nickname Wevhu (son of the soil), Our nationalist leaders used to promise us during the war that we were going to live in the suburbs of the white men after defeating them. We all expected, soon after the war, to go on a rampage to grab for ourselves nice houses and properties like what happened in Mozambique. This actually motivated us to see the white men defeated.45

172  Obert Bernard Mlambo Another veteran who called himself Gidi (Shona word for “gun”), however, recalled that there were no specific promises made by the military leaders; rather, “we all talked about the land among ourselves as freedom fighters, and that we all knew and told each other that we were going to take the land one day”.46 When asked why they took cattle that did not belong to them, he retorted, “Did the white man bring any cattle here? Did he bring the land from abroad? We took the farms and we are not going back. Mugabe always says that we fought for the land”.47 Further “promises” made “when the war ended” were pointed as a justification for the veterans’ violent expropriations in the 2000s.48 However, the violent confiscation of cattle and properties from white farmers was already put in practice during the war as a means of obtaining food, setting the pattern for what happened during the so-called third Chimurenga. As a veteran nicknamed Mabhunumuchapera (which literally means “White men you will all perish”) put it, We took the enemy’s wealth during the war. We all promised ourselves that after the war we will take more cattle for ourselves and for our parents and relatives. This third Chimurenga, chikomana,49 is the fulfilment of the promise. We have indeed taken not only the land but also the cattle of our ancestors, which the white farmer had appropriated. Hauzvizivi here kuti zvinhu zvose ndezvambuya Nehanda (Do you not know that all things belong to our great ancestor Mbuya Nehanda?).50 Therefore, there was a clear nexus between land expropriations and the War of Independence in Zimbabwe. In considering what inspired the land ­expropriations, we may note that a “contract” between Mugabe and his veterans was deeply binding. Thus, when Mugabe issued a call to arms after the struggle (in support of the expropriations), memories of war were revived, and in no time, veterans were “back on the road”. The demilitarization and demobilization of the veterans after independence was never fully completed.51 Consequently, like “soldiers pausing on parade”, veterans coordinated efforts to expropriate land. It is also critical to recognize the role played by patriotism in motivating the veterans to “return to war”. Here, I will examine how the symbol of the veteran informed the violent modes of land acquisition through martial and manly heroism. Among the activities performed during the land confiscations, ideals of martial prowess and heroic manliness were acted out by veterans for their intended audience: white farmers, Western powers and the people of Zimbabwe in general. Mugabe seized on the veterans’ patriotic fervour and maintained that participating in the decolonization movement was the highest expression of patriotism and heroism. In the same vein, his use of the word “hero” demonstrated that even veterans who died during the liberation war were viewed as heroic martyrs. The deaths of veterans in the war were represented less as a matter of martial exploits than of the fatalistic acceptance of death in the service of their country. Mugabe utilized the image of soldiers’ martyrdom

Veterans, decolonization and land expropriation  173 to emphasize the importance of patriotic and heroic qualities. He deployed the image of the martyred soldier in land reclamation: Our notion of heroism thus comes directly from the bloody resistance to British imperial expansionism and the challenges, which come with foreign domination. These heroes we have here at the National Shrine and elsewhere in and outside the country come from the tradition of resistance and tell through their lives, the story of our struggle in its various constitutive facets; trade unionism, urban protests, nationalist politics…and of course liberation soldiery.52 Both living and fallen veterans were deployed as combatants in the new armed struggle to expel whites from their farms. The bodies of the deceased were particularly potent. Dead veterans were exhumed from mass graves for reburial during the period in question. According to Shoko, the exhumation, exhibition and reburial of dead bodies reconfigure the system of meanings and symbols around notions of justice, suffering, blame and compensation.53 All these issues are part of the land question. For this reason, the ritual of reburials allowed for the reshaping of the politics of restitution and nation building: manipulating dead bodies help to rewrite national history. Within such rhetoric, the erstwhile colonizers, Britain and its ­fellow ­European countries, had no right to lecture Mugabe on democracy and ­human rights, because of the mass killings they committed during ­Zimbabwe’s Liberation War.54 In Mugabe’s own words,55 Our perspective on the land reform programme derives from our struggle for sovereign independence, and the compelling fact that the last and decisive seven years of that struggle took on an armed form that demanded of us the precious and ultimate price of our blood. We died and suffered for our land. We died and suffered for sovereignty over natural resources of which land, ivhu/umhlabati is the most important. Mugabe and his veterans shared the view that the shedding of blood to get the land made land a non-negotiable resource. One of the television advertisements at the height of the Third Chimurenga captured this in a pithy declaration: “Nhaka haigobwi” (inheritance is not sold/shared/given away).56 With such rhetoric, veterans were mobilized and assembled in order to achieve the decolonization project. Thus, a martial ideology worked hand in hand with the post-war resettlement project. At their political rallies and mass demonstrations against Western countries, for example, veterans performed songs imbued with an ideology of war and violence.57 One such song warned, “Chenjera ­chenjera, vanamukoma vanorova, chenjera chenjera, vanorova nematanda, chenjera chenjera…” (Beware, beware, war veterans beat up, beware, beware, they beat up with logs, beware beware), a stark warning to the enemies of the

174  Obert Bernard Mlambo land reclamation movement. The late ex-combatant, Elliot Manyika, who was also a ZANU-PF political commissar, performed liberation war songs at most ZANU-PF political gatherings. One such popular song, e­ ntitled “Mbiri yechigandanga ndiyo mbiri yatinayo” (The glory of brutality is the glory that we have), was for a long-time broadcast by the state-owned ­Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC). The song stated that the ex-fighters were a conscious group operating outside government as a paramilitary wing of the ZANU-PF party. Zimbabwean television sometimes showed veterans invading farms; the point of this seemed to be a public “show of force”. The strategy also served to show non-participants that the government was committed to the idea of land reform and to revolutionary violence. The violence was not just raw but also performative – in part symbolic – with an emphasis on taking back the land.58 Veterans and the mob played to the cameras by performing ritual dances and singing revolutionary songs in which the rhetoric of violence was glorified. In the same vein, veterans conducted demonstrations which were captured on national television, to send a message to Britain that the veterans were fully behind their patron and president, Robert Mugabe. Such demonstrations also reminded Western powers to respect the sovereignty of Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe, there is an official discourse of heroic and active masculinity of war. This type of masculinity is charged with the display/representation of the public, civic,59 heroic and martial values of veterans. Veterans were shown on national television to exhibit active and public masculinity during marches and demonstrations in support of the land invasions. Television footage of freedom fighters depicted the ex-soldier’s life as the highest level of martial prowess and manliness, even as the same men were continuing the war for land during the Third Chimurenga. On a daily basis during the height of the land invasions, viewers of national television were bombarded with videos and pictures of Chimurenga fighters holding guns, singing, dancing and stamping their military boots.60 Military boots and military fatigues evidently aimed to intimidate the veterans’ opponents. There were also ritualized parades of veterans at ZANU-PF Party rallies. Some veterans were made to parade their disfigured bodies and battle scars, in an appeal to the emotional proclivities of the population attending the rallies. This was done to stress that veterans’ call for decolonization was not a joke. Zimbabwe Army General, Constantine Chiwenga once invoked his war scars in stark reference to the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai whom the veterans vowed never to recognize even if he won the elections. For them, his electoral victory would mean a return to colonialism: …veterans of the independence struggle would not work with leaders who did not respect their sacrifices…thousands of people died for this country and you cannot change nor wish it away…This country was liberated courtesy of a protracted struggle; some of us carry severe scars from that struggle…61

Veterans, decolonization and land expropriation  175 Addressing supporters at the Forty-Fifth Ordinary Session of the ZANU-PF Central Committee on 13 December 2001, Mugabe acknowledged the role of veterans: I want to thank all those of you who were involved in campaign work in the last by-elections, and specifically the war veterans who have now come back into the Party structures in such a massive, resounding and re-invigorating way. We need to harness the same energy to win the forthcoming local government and mayoral elections … Looking ahead, we should remain principally focused on the forthcoming Presidential elections scheduled for some time in 2002 … Our wish is that land resettlement should have been completed by the end of the year so that in 2002, we would only have the worry to make the newly resettled farmers more productive.62 Mugabe here alludes to the active role played by veterans as they vigorously took over campaigning. This parading of veterans functioned not only as a weapon for taking land from white commercial farmers but also as a display of the pageantry of power. Since the majority of veterans of the liberation war were old, one might wonder how the veterans’ bodies, including Mugabe himself, served to evoke martial and heroic ideals in the decolonization project. Things worked in such a way that attention was diverted on television and during marches to various martial paraphernalia – guns, knobkerries, machetes, axes and clothes whose colour or form attracted the eye to the site of martial power and potency. Thus, the parading of veterans’ bodies suggests that they embodied the ideal of martial prowess and served as psychologically loaded representations of the ideal. Marching veterans were not so much the reality of ordinary citizens protesting for land as the idealization of soldierly bodies marching to war against the vestiges of colonialism. Veterans’ bodies became wholly commodified as they marched wielding placards with various messages: “Land to the p­ eople; our country, our sovereignty; sanctions , weapon of mass destruc 63 tion!; R educe speed, war veterans ahead; down with Tony Blair! Down with Imperialism!”. The long-since dead and defeated colonial government was resurrected in Mugabe’s speeches and assaulted again,64 in a process in which saw land continually wrested from it and the imperialism it represented. An important aspect of Mugabe’s public speeches was that they ­e mphasized the legitimacy of revolutionary violence and the annihilation of political enemies (as the white farmers were perceived), which ­a llowed veterans to give free rein to their violent activities, perceiving their ­a ctions as just vengeance against white farmers. During the ­v iolent years of ­expropriation, Mugabe even stated that he was “Hitler tenfold”.65

176  Obert Bernard Mlambo

Veterans and the politics of space in Zimbabwe66 To appreciate Mugabe’s Earth Summit declaration directed at Tony Blair, “So, Blair, keep your England, and let me keep my Zimbabwe”, this section is partially guided by the views of critical theorists.67 Theorists agree that physical space is political, hence not neutral. Space is open to contestation. In decolonizing Zimbabwe, such contestation saw the transformation of commercial farmlands owned by whites into battlefields. The veterans viewed the expropriations as a process that turned every part of the occupied former white farms into new liberated zones. The expropriations reconfigured physical space by ejecting the whites and replacing them with black people. Mugabe also demanded loyalty and appreciation from beneficiaries of the confiscations. Veterans and peasants saw their settlements as a creation of their patron and benefactor, Mugabe, and therefore viewed his resettlement scheme as the force which stabilized and protected their well-being. Conversely, in the eyes of Mugabe, the resettlement zone was viewed as the space which stabilized and protected his regime. White farmers in Zimbabwe were seen as symbols of colonial pillage, who must be ejected. They were viewed as enemies, who, through cooperation with opposition parties, were working to overthrow Mugabe’s regime. As a result, Mugabe disparagingly invoked memories of the colonial past and boldly declared that thanks to his veterans, “Zimbabwe will never be a colony again”.68 Mugabe also invoked African spirituality relating to the sacredness of the land to justify the invasions.69 The religio-spiritual outlook shared between Mugabe and his veterans must be appreciated. First, both were convinced that land reclamation was intrinsically linked to the quest for justice. Second, both contended that the ancestral spirits were behind the struggle for land. Mugabe understood that veterans had the same claim to the spiritual realm as he had. In the decolonization process, the land would be reclaimed from white settlers and re-inscribed within indigenous spirituality.70 Within Mugabe’s narrative, Europeans divested Zimbabwean land of its sacred dimension through their greed and avarice. They reduced the holy land to mere soil.71 Mugabe’s rhetoric served to contrast the secular and selfish white settler and the religious, communitarian and authentic “child of the soil”. Addressing approximately 15,000 supporters at the 28th Independence Anniversary Celebration in Harare in 2008, M ­ ugabe described Britain as “thieving colonialists…. fronting their lackeys among us”.72 This caused Mugabe to resort to “Afro-radicalism” and a “nativist interpretation of the nation” to effect and justify land expropriations.73 In ­Mugabe’s rhetoric, black people do not find themselves in Zimbabwe by ­accident but as part of God’s redemptive plan for humanity. “The white man is not indigenous to Africa. Africa is for Africans. Zimbabwe is for

Veterans, decolonization and land expropriation  177 74

­ imbabweans”. By identifying white farmers as “foreigners” violating the Z sacred space of the indigenes, Mugabe represented them as a threat to national security. The acquired territories are more than ordinary agricultural communities, although they were configured as “A1 or A2” resettlement areas. They were, in the eyes of Mugabe and his veterans, a force field of political order. These territories were associated not only with opposition to Mugabe but also with the funding of opposition political parties in Zimbabwe. White commercial farms in peri-urban environments were occupied for strategic purposes. All the land which was occupied by whites, together with their entire population of farm workers, eventually fell under the control of new owners, that is, veterans and landless peasants. Even individuals who received land but failed to render support to the new political order were punished by having their land taken away.75 To prevent white settler farmers and the farm workers whom they controlled from supporting the MDC, they would be thrown out of their constituencies through farm seizures and the forcible dispersal of workers.76 Veterans, it must be noted, gave Mugabe a vast “unofficial government-supporting force”,77 and were prepared to commit all the necessary illegalities and atrocities in order to keep him in power, while hoping to benefit materially.78 When war veterans and peasants became new landowners, they automatically became an important voting bloc for Mugabe.79 Veterans vociferously supported Mugabe, who, besides being their political leader during the war of liberation, was also their patron and, more importantly, Commander in Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces. The logic of the violence committed by veterans during farm occupations should be seen in the context of the transformation of farm communities into political zones for the establishment of a political order that was capable of taking care of their welfare. Norma Kriger observed that Mugabe’s government used veterans and others to preserve his power and that land resettlement was a mere symbol of the revolution. There was no genuine commitment to economic transformation, and veterans had their own political agendas.80 Mention may be made at this point to Bayart’s observations on African politics,81 in which he notes how the values underlying the hope of liberation in Africa have been betrayed or undercut under postcolonial African government. In contrast to the liberating role played by veterans during the Zimbabwean war of independence, during the post-war decolonization project, Zimbabwe gradually became a state totally policed by veterans in an authoritarian fashion.82 This implies that the democratic hopes associated with independence have to some extent given way to dictatorship as Mugabe has consolidated his grip on power by ensuring that his veterans and their associates have access to land. Bayart refers to the “politics of the belly”,83 illustrated by the political cartoon of a goat labelled with the slogan, “I graze, therefore I am”. This politics of the belly, according to Bayart,84 has crushed the nationalist parties which worked for the advent of a modern Africa.

178  Obert Bernard Mlambo

Conclusion Within Zimbabwe’s decolonization project, the war of liberation was invoked, and the symbol of the veteran loomed large. Land was viewed as sacred, ancestral and to be fought for; political opponents were viewed as military enemies. Some difference may be discerned between the goal of liberation which people assumed Mugabe and his forces were fighting for at ­independence – a goal originally viewed by Western onlookers in terms of democratic rights – and the “politics of the belly” with which the Zimbabwean land invasions of the 2000s seem to have more in common. ­Ndlovu-Gatsheni has argued that Mugabe’s politics were anti-colonial rather than de-colonial as his postcolonial practice of governance is similar to that of colonialists in that he has embraced violence as a pillar of ­governance. Racism has continued despite Mugabe’s calls for reconciliation in 1980, and tribalism, sexism and patriarchy have flourished unabated, alongside the deep militarization of state institutions.85 For Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Mugabe’s decolonization project failed to inaugurate a new postcolonial dispensation.86 In Zimbabwe, space itself was politicized and militarized after decolonization. While this conclusion is true, it is important to highlight that Zimbabwe’s radical approach to land reform has found resonance in the global South in general and Africa in particular. Mugabe and the ex-fighters are feted as the unstinting revolutionaries who defied racist forces and returned black people to their ancestral land. Despite the contradictions and limitations accompanying this process, many people in the global South regarded ­Mugabe as an icon of liberation. They contended that he restored the dignity of the black people in a world in which black people come as an afterthought. With his powerful rhetoric and grandstanding, Mugabe placed himself strategically as the bearer of the burden of the global South. When the “principalities and powers” of the new world order forget that the world is not only for them, Mugabe took to the podium to remind them of precisely this fact. With Zimbabwe’s radical approach to land reform, he was convinced that he had earned his stripes. However, it would be limiting for one to interpret the radical approach to land reform in Zimbabwe only in terms of the political economy. Zimbabwe taking back its land was used to represent decolonization in its totality. The people who take back their land simultaneously also regain their identity. If the colonial project meant distancing the people from their land physically and spiritually, land reclamation was at once as political-economic as it was spiritual. Zimbabwe became the leader of those who seek to dismantle colonialism and its effects, replacing it with black pride and identity. In addition, Zimbabwe became a prime mover of Pan-Africanism. Significant days such as Africa Day, observed on 25 May every year, provided opportunities for Zimbabwe to proclaim its leadership of the Pan-African movement. Music, speeches and movies are utilized to remind Zimbabweans about the need to remain resolute in the face of “vicious enemies and erstwhile oppressors”.

Veterans, decolonization and land expropriation  179 No matter how controversial and contradictory, the influence of the Zimbabwean decolonization movement on its neighbours, especially Namibia and South Africa, has in recent years become real.87 In 2006, the then president of Namibia, Sam Nujoma, was quoted as saying, “If the people of Zimbabwe did this, we can do it in the same manner”.88 Mugabe’s decolonization project had an impact in mainland Africa and the diaspora, among countries and communities genuinely searching for champions and bulwarks against global epistemic designs.89 To this group, Mugabe stood out as an example and veritable paragon of pan-African struggles.90 However, there is a flip side to the decolonization project which African countries have to be wary of, namely the consequences of violent expropriations. The great challenges of violence and lawlessness in Zimbabwe have led to the collapse of large-scale commercial farming and the withdrawal of aid and foreign investment.91 Zimbabwe’s post-war decolonization project created hierarchies that operate outside the democratic constitution of ­Zimbabwe, which was the source of profound social and political disruption. While veterans allowed Mugabe to strengthen his power, they were also decisive in his fall.

Notes 1 This chapter was written with the generous support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, through the Georg Forster Research Fellowship (2016–2019). 2 Norma Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans in Post-War Zimbabwe: Symbolic and Violent Politics, 1980–1987 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 3 Alois S. Mlambo, “Mugabe on Land, Indigenization, and Development”, in Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Mugabeism? History, Politics, and Power in Zimbabwe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 45–60. See also Leslie Rood, “Nationalism and Indigenization in Africa”, The Journal of Modern African Studies 14:3 (1976), 427–447. 4 See G. O. Olusanya, “The Role of Ex-Servicemen in Nigerian Politics”, The Journal of Modern African Studies 6:2 (1968), 221–232; David Killingray, “Soldiers, Ex-Servicemen, and Politics in the Gold Coast, 1939–1950”, The Journal of Modern African Studies 21:3 (1983), 523–534; Hal Brands, “Wartime Recruiting Practices, Martial Identity and Post-World War II Demobilization in Colonial Kenya”, The Journal of African History 46:1 (2005), 103–125. 5 Olusanya, “The Role of Ex-Servicemen”. 6 In Ghana, the role of ex-servicemen in nationalist projects as well as their struggles for benefits is not unequivocal. Cf., Adrienne M. Israel, “Ex-Servicemen at the Crossroads: Protest and Politics in Post-War Ghana”, The Journal of Modern African Studies 30:2 (1992), 359–368. 7 Eugene I. A. Schleh, “The Post-War Careers of Ex-Servicemen in Ghana and Uganda”, The Journal of Modern African Studies 6:2 (1968), 203–220. 8 Although Okete J. E. Shiroya argues that in Kenya, ex-servicemen played a significant part in Kenyan nationalism, the evidence to support this thesis has since been seriously contested by many scholars. See Okete J. E. Shiroya, “The Impact of World War II on Kenya: the role of ex-servicemen in Kenyan nationalism” (PhD dissertation, Michigan State University, East Lancing, 1968); see also Israel, “Ex-Servicemen”, 360, quoting David L. Easterbrook, “Kenyan

180  Obert Bernard Mlambo Askari in World War II and their Demobilization, with Special Reference to ­Machakos District”, in Bismarck Myrick, David L. Easterbrook and Jack R. Roelker, Three Aspects of Crisis in Colonial Kenya (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University, I975). 9 Killingray argued that in the rest of East Africa, the evidence to support the thesis that veterans formed a cohesive group and that their grievances were translated into organized political activity within nationalist movements is very thin; see Killingray, “Soldiers, Ex-Servicemen”. 10 Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans, 91. See also Norma Kriger, “Zimbabwe’s War Veterans and the Ruling Party: Continuities in Political Dynamics”, in Staffan Darnolf and Liisa Laakso (eds.), Twenty Years of Independence in Zimbabwe: From Liberation to Authoritarianism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 104–121, 68. 11 Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe (CCJPZ) and Legal Resources Foundation (LRF), Breaking the Silence: Building True Peace. Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands 1980 to 1988 (Harare: Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe, 1997), 32. 12 As quoted in Zvakanyourwa Wilbert Sadomba, War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution: Challenging Neo-Colonialism and Settler and International Capital (Harare: Weaver Press, 2011), 70. 13 Ibid. 14 Sadomba, War Veterans, 16. 15 See Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans, 105. 16 Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 207–249. 17 Joann McGregor, “The Politics of Disruption: War Veterans and the Local State in Zimbabwe”, African Affairs 101:402 (2002), 9–37; Rory Pilossof, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers’ Voices from Zimbabwe (Harare: Weaver Press and Claremont, UCT Press, 2012). 18 Cf. Lord Sachikonye, When A State Turns On Its Citizens: 60 Years of Institutionalised Violence in Zimbabwe (Oxford: African Books Collective, 2011); T ­ erence O. Ranger, “Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle over the Past in Zimbabwe”, Journal of Southern African Studies 30:2 (2004), 215–234; McGregor, “The Politics of Disruption”; Robin Palmar, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977). 19 James Muzondidya, “Jambanja: Ideological Ambiguities in the Politics of Land and Resource Ownership in Zimbabwe”, Journal of Southern African Studies 33:2 (2007), 325–341, 325. 20 According to Norma Kriger, ex-fighters figured in the accounts of rural people as brutal bullies during the liberation war. The same men after the war, both wittingly and unwittingly, violated those outside the liberation movement, especially in work places. See Norma Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), xxi, 163. 21 Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans. 22 Ruth Ginio, The French Army and its African Soldiers: The Years of Decolonization (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), xxi. 23 After independence, the government of Zimbabwe itself seemed to serve the interests of the Western powers. Cf. Sadomba, War Veterans, 68. 24 Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Introduction: Mugabeism and Entanglements of History, Politics, and Power in the Making of Zimbabwe”, in Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Mugabeism?, 1–25, 1.

Veterans, decolonization and land expropriation  181 25 Robert G. Mugabe, Inside the Third Chimurenga: Our Land is Our Prosperity (Harare: Office of the President and Cabinet, 2001). 26 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Introduction”, 16. 27 Chimusoro Kenneth Tafira, “Mugabe’s Land Reform and the Provocation of Global White Antiblack Racism”, in Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Mugabeism?, 203–216, 215. 28 www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-136292 (accessed 8 July 2013). 29 See Ranger, “Nationalist Historiography”; and Obert B. Mlambo and Wesley Mwatwara, “History and Memory in the Politics of Land Redistribution in the Late Roman Republic and Contemporary Zimbabwe (2000–2008)”, Zambezia 39:2 (2012), 1–15. 30 Eldred Masunungure, “Civil-Military Relations in Zimbabwe: Toward Understanding Mechanisms of Civilian Command Over the Military” (paper presented at a conference on Civil-Military Relations in Small Democracies, Sâo José, Brazil, August 1–3, 1996), 1. 31 Alois S. Mlambo, “From the Second World War to UDI, 1940 – 1965”, in Brian Raftopoulos and Alois S. Mlambo (eds.), A History from the Pre-Colonial Period to 2008: Becoming Zimbabwe (Johannesburg: African Books Collective, 2009), 75–114, 78. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 80. 34 Ibid. 35 J. Muzondidya, “From Buoyancy to Crisis, 1980–1997”, in Raftopoulos and Mlambo, Becoming Zimbabwe, 167–200, 167. 36 Alois S. Mlambo, “Mugabe on Land, Indigenization, and Development”, in Raftopoulos and Mlambo, Becoming Zimbabwe, 45–59, 46. 37 William Wolmer, From Wilderness Vision to Farm Invasions: Conservation and Development in Zimbabwe’s Southeast Lowveld (Oxford: James Currey, 2007), 194. 38 James W. Oberly, Sixty Million Acres. American Veterans and the Public Lands before the Civil War (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1990). 39 See for instance Gregory Mann, Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Jessica Schafer, Soldiers at Peace: Veterans and Society after the Civil War in Mozambique (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 40 Norma Kriger, “Zimbabwe’s War Veterans and the Ruling Party: Continuities in Political Dynamics”, in Darnolf and Laakso, Twenty Years, 104–121, 105. 41 Ezra Chitando, “‘In the Beginning Was the Land’: The Appropriation of Religious Themes in Political Discourses in Zimbabwe”, Africa 75:2 (2005), 220–229, 220. 42 McGregor, “The Politics of Disruption”, 9, 17. 43 Ibid., 36. 4 4 David Moore, “Is Land the Economy and the Economy the Land? Primitive Accumulation in Zimbabwe”, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 19:2 (2001), 253–267, 258. 45 Author’s interview with Wevhu, Chiredzi (Zimbabwe), 12 August 2017. 46 Author’s interview with Gidi, Masvingo (Zimbabwe), 20 August 2017. 47 Ibid. 48 Interview with CC, Masvingo, 20 August 2017. 49 Shona word for “young man”. 50 Interview with Mabhunumuchapera, Chiredzi, 12 August 2017. 51 Cf. Sadomba, War Veterans, 75. 52 Mugabe, Inside the Third Chimurenga, 141.

182  Obert Bernard Mlambo 53 Tabona Shoko, “‘My bones shall rise again’: War veterans, spirits and land reform in Zimbabwe” (Leiden: ASC Working Paper, 2006), 68. 54 Mlambo and Chitando, 17. 55 Mugabe, Inside the Third Chimurenga, 109. 56 Mlambo and Chitando, op. cit. 57 For more songs sung by the veterans during their demonstrations for land, see Alec J. C. Pongweni, Songs that Won the Liberation War (Harare: College Press, 1982). 58 Obert B. Mlambo, “Images of Masculinity and Militarism in Veteran Land Movements in Contemporary Zimbabwe (2000–2008) and the Late Roman Republic: Towards a Global History”, in Zifikile Makwavarara, Ruby Magosvongwe and Obert B. Mlambo (eds.), Dialoguing Land and Indigenization in Zimbabwe and Other Developing Countries: Emerging Perspectives (Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications, 2015), 168–183. 59 See Munetsi Ruzivo, “Civil Religion in Zimbabwe: Unpacking the Concept”, in Ezra Chitando (ed.), Prayers and Players: Religion and Politics in Zimbabwe (Harare: SAPES Books, 2013): 6–18. 60 Ali Mazrui, “The Warrior Tradition and the Masculinity of War”, Journal of Asian and African Studies XII (1977), 69–81. 61 www.newzimbabwe.com (last accessed on July 10, 2017). 62 Mugabe, Inside the Third Chimurenga, 128. 63 This was a denunciation of the sanctions imposed by the European Union and America against Mugabe and members of his ruling ZANU-PF party for gross human abuses allegedly committed during the violent land expropriations. 64 Cf. Mugabe, Inside the Third Chimurenga. 65 T. Ncube, “We are Our Own Liberators”, The Mail and Guardian Online (18 February 2011). http://mg.co.za/article/2011-02-18-we-are-our-own-liberators/ (accessed 4 November 2017). 66 This section develops an argument suggested in Obert B. Mlambo and Ezra Chitando, “‘Blair, Keep your England, and Let Me Keep my Zimbabwe’: Examining the Relationship between Physical Space and the Political Order in Zimbabwe’s Land Redistribution Programme (2000–2008)”, The Journal of Pan-African Studies 8:8 (2015), 8–26. 67 See Ika Willis, Now and Rome, Lucan and Vergil as Theorists of Politics and Space (London: Continuum, 2011); Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, translated by G. L. Ulmen (New York: Telos Press, 2003); Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings Vol. 4: 1938–1940, translated by Harry Zohn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); and Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 68 www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/18/zimbabwe.independence (accessed 4 November 2017). 69 Ezra Chitando, “In the beginning was the land”, 224. 70 Ibid. 71 Marcelle Manley, “Land and Soil: A European Commodity in Shona Traditional Perspective”, Journal for the Study of Religion 8:1 (1995), 27–54, 27. 72 www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/18/zimbabwe.independence (accessed 4 November 2017). 73 Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Wendy Willems, “Making Sense of Cultural Nationalism and the Politics of Commemoration under the Third Chimurenga in Zimbabwe”, Journal of Southern African Studies 35:4 (2009), 945–965, 945. 74 www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/ 10944304/Mugabe-calls-for-an-end-to-white-farmers-in-Zimbabwe.html (accessed 4 November 2017).

Veterans, decolonization and land expropriation  183 75 Human Rights Watch, Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe (Harare, 2002). 76 G. Feltoe, “The Onslaught against Democracy and the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe in 2000”, in David Harold-Barry (ed.), Zimbabwe: The Past is the Future (Harare: Weaver Press, 2004), 193–224, 194. 77 Paul Themba Nyathi, “Reintegration of Ex-Combatants into Zimbabwean Society: A Lost Opportunity”, in Brian Raftopoulos and Tyrone Savage (eds.), Zimbabwe: Injustice and Political Reconciliation (Harare: Weaver Press, 2004), 68–78, 71. 78 Ibid. 79 The Daily News (Harare, Zimbabwe), 24 April 2012, 5. 80 Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans, 194. 81 Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (London: Longman, 1996), 261. 82 Cf. Ibid. 83 Ibid. 268. 84 Ibid. 85 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Introduction”, 1–2. 86 Ibid., 2. 87 Henning Melber, “In the Footsteps of Robert Gabriel Mugabe: Namibian Solidarity with Mugabe’s Populism-(Bogus) Anti-Imperialism in Practice”, in Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Mugabeism?, 107–120. 88 William J. Mbangula, “Hands off Zimbabwe, says Nujoma”, New Era, 3 July 2006. 89 Gorden Moyo, “Mugabe’s Neo-Sultanist Rule: Beyond the Veil of Pan-Africanism”, in Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Mugabeism?, 61–74, 61. 90 Ibid. 91 Eric Worby, “A Redivided Land? New Agrarian Conflicts and Questions in Zimbabwe”, Journal of Agrarian Change 1:4 (2001), 475–509, 479.

Part IV

Memory

12 Inconvenient heroes? War veterans from the Eastern Front in Franco’s Spain, 1942–1975 Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

As a consequence of the pro-Nazi alignment of the Franco regime in the ­Second World War, a Spanish Division of Volunteers was set up in early summer 1941 to take part in the German campaign against the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany had helped Franco to win the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and therefore was crucial to enabling the construction of the para-fascist Franco regime. Sending volunteers to fight the Soviet Union was regarded by the Spanish dictator as a way of returning the favour to the Third Reich and as a way to satisfy the strongly pro-German feelings of Spanish Fascists, the military and many Catholics. This decision was in line with ­Franco’s 1940–1942 policy of “non-belligerency”, during which time he clearly expected Germany to win the war. Unlike other foreign units integrated within the Waffen-SS,1 the Spanish contingent enjoyed a special ­status – the 250th Spanish Volunteers Division – of the German Wehrmacht. Hundreds of volunteers joined what would become known as the “Blue Division” (BD), initially composed of around 17,000 combatants. They were recruited by Falange (FET), the Spanish fascist single party, which provided more than half of the rank-and-file soldiers, and the professional army, which supplied the officers and two-thirds of the NCO corps. Most volunteers enlisted were strongly motivated by anti-communism, and up to 20–25 per cent also shared fascist views. High casualties created the need for replacements, and nearly 30,000 more volunteers were sent to Russia throughout late autumn 1943, where they were first deployed at the Volkhov Front and later joined the siege of Leningrad. Almost 5,000 soldiers died, and around 450 became prisoners of the Red Army.2 High survival rates (almost 90 per cent) of BD soldiers also meant that the great majority returned, around 42,000 men, and reintegrated into Spanish society. Contrary to returnees from Waffen-SS foreign units, the BD soldiers were not subject to depuration or reprisals after the end of the Second World War but were almost unanimously regarded as “heroes” by the Franco regime. In theory, BD veterans were free to express themselves in the public sphere and to cultivate their memory; yet this was not always convenient for the strategic aims of the Francoist dictatorship after 1945, which mainly aimed to reposition itself as a Catholic regime and attempted

188  Xosé M. Núñez Seixas to obscure its past sympathy towards the Axis. Veterans from the Eastern Front could pursue their commemorating activities on a lower profile until the mid-1950s. This did not prevent them from playing an increasingly relevant role within the community of Francoist veterans from the Civil War. Although the overall dynamics of the Cold War and the Spanish insertion into the Western bloc had an important impact on the way in which BD veterans remembered their performance on the Eastern Front, their associations were also autonomous agents who developed their activities in an independent way. Thus, there never was an official commemorative narrative of the BD. Instead, memory discourses were influenced by global dynamics and initiatives from below, which underscored the capacity of the veterans to forge their own narratives and shape their public image.3 In November 1941, Spanish officers and soldiers who had served on the Russian front began returning home: some on leave, some wounded or mutilated, some repatriated as undesirables. The Delegación Nacional de ­Excombatientes (National Delegation of Ex-Combatants, DNE), the state organization in charge of Francoist veterans from the Spanish Civil War, assumed the task of providing for the most pressing needs of returnees. ­Beginning in July 1942, the newly established General Office for the BD within the DNE, directed by the decorated Falangist Luis Nieto, became more actively involved in meeting the needs of those who returned from ­Russia. ­Labour Minister José-Antonio Girón, a prominent member of ­Falange and leader of the DNE, announced in March 1943 that state companies would assume “tutelage” of workers who had served on the Eastern Front. After 1944, placements were often channelled through DNE recommendations based on numerous individual petitions.4 This administrative support proved ­especially effective for former prisoners of war, “war children” (those who had been evacuated from R ­ epublican Spain in 1937 to the Soviet Union) and former Republican aviators and sailors retained in Soviet camps, who had been repatriated since April 1954. Through the intervention of the DNE and civil governors, almost all those repatriated were given employment in the diverse organisms and public companies of the state administration.5

A prosopography of BD returnee trajectories The Falange found returnees from Russia to be a source of local leaders and activists who could reinvigorate the structure of the party in the provinces where Francoist ex-combatants were thin on the ground, as was particularly the case in South-East Spain. However, the BD veterans never became an articulated generation that left a uniform imprint on Spanish society. The social heterogeneity of the volunteers also meant that their life trajectories after 1944–1945 were varied. Being recognized as an ex-combatant carried additional advantages when it came to accessing civil service posts in Spain. A quota was reserved for BD disabled soldiers – as well as for veterans of the Civil War, disabled

Inconvenient heroes? War veterans from the Eastern Front  189 Francoist soldiers and those who had been political prisoners in the Republican zone in 1936–1939 – in state civil service exams. Those who chose to pursue university studies were also exempted from tuition and exam fees. In February 1942, the condition of ex-combatant as described in the Law of 25 August 1939 was extended to anyone who had served four months on the Russian Front or been wounded there.6 These modest advantages gave BD returnees access to low- and medium-skill posts, ranging from schoolteachers to chauffeurs as well as to petrol station concessions and jobs in public companies.7 Within the favourable context of integrating Francoist veterans into the civil service workforce, when it came to reinserting oneself into the labour market, each veteran had to make the best of his own skills, professional qualifications and relational networks. Yet the prestige of being a veteran of the Eastern Front had no immediate boosting effect on the political careers of the returnees. Usually, former divisionarios were included in the quota for Civil War ex-combatants.8 The participation of BD veterans in the political power structures of the state administration was more relevant in provinces where there had not been mobilization or recruitment of Francoist combatants until the last months of the Spanish Civil War. Only two ministers in the Franco governments were former BD soldiers: This included the former commander-in-chief of the BD, General Agustín Muñoz-Grandes, who became Minister of the Army (1951–1957) and Vice President of the Government (1962–1967), and Fernando M. Castiella, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1957 to 1969. In 1968, 11 of the 109 members of the National Council of the ­single party were former BD volunteers, and 22 veterans of Russia were members of the Francoist corporative chamber or Cortes (4 per cent of its 530 ­members). These were small proportions but larger than the generational cohort of Eastern front veterans in Spanish society or even the wider group of Francoist veterans of the Civil War. Eastern Front veterans were more numerous at the second level of state administration. Likewise, BD returnees were not especially over-­represented among the directors of the Vertical Syndicate, the single trade union controlled by Falange. From 1942 to 1951, only two of the 54 branch union leaders (3.7 per cent) had served on the Russian Front, but 10.5 per cent (19 of 181) of the provincial syndicate leaders were BD veterans.9 The relative youth of the veterans from Russia, compared to Civil War veterans, made their presence less notable at first in the municipal administrations. Since the beginning of the 1950s, the participation of former divisionarios became more visible: At least 25 BD veterans became mayors in small and mid-sized towns, and many more were town councillors.10 The generation of army officers who finished their training at the M ­ ilitary Academy between 1939 and 1942, and served in the BD represent a separate chapter. The Russian front was one of their first assignments. Some 168 high-ranking officers passed through the BD, all of them professional military men. Many of them had begun their trajectory in the colonial war in

190  Xosé M. Núñez Seixas Morocco, and others had begun in the Civil War. Additionally, 2,030 lowerranking officers and as many as 4,083 non-commissioned officers had been assigned to the Russian front, and many acquired a certain prestige among their colleagues. Medals were earned; at least 218 officers were promoted on the field.11 This enabled them to climb the military ladder and ascend to positions of high command relatively more quickly than cohorts that had remained in Spain. Yet the esprit de corps of the BD veterans did not reach the degree of cohesion that had characterized the so-called “­A fricanists”: veterans of the colonial war in the 1920s. Their short period (10 to 12 months on average) in Russia had left a meaningful but thin lustre on their service records. This informal criterion barely found room in the army for creating specific associations or even for cultivating lasting group bonds. However, thanks to the accumulated promotions for war merits, during the years of the Spanish Transition to democracy (1975–1982), a significant percentage of division and brigade generals in the Spanish army had formerly served in the BD. Seven director generals of the Civil Guard – militarized police corps – between 1962 and 1983 had been officers on the Russian Front.12 At least 300 officers who reached the rank of general in diverse branches of the army had also served in the BD.13 During the Transition years, BD veterans were plentiful among the ­m ilitary top brass, who mainly identified with the maintenance of Francoist values. However, not all of them were hardliners and had more liberal dispositions. In fact, the military commanders who played central roles in the failed coup d’état on 23 February 1981, both those among the coup’s ­protagonists – General Jaime Miláns del Bosch and General Alfonso ­Armada – and those who remained loyal to King Juan Carlos I – General Aramburu Topete, Chief of Army General Staff José Gabeiras and General Guillermo Quintana – all had one thing in common: They had served on the Eastern Front during the Second World War.

Agents of memory: the brotherhoods of the Blue Division In January 1942, the idea of setting up an association for returnees from the Russian Front had already been put forward by the German embassy in Spain.14 The suggestion floundered due to lack of interest on the part of the Franco regime. The Spanish army feared that the veterans might promote radical Falangism and complicate diplomatic relations with the Allies, and even that they could serve as a Trojan Horse for the Third Reich.15 In fact, since late 1942, the German embassy had become sensitive to the petitions of families of Spaniards fallen in Russia. Consular personnel, distressed at what they perceived as a lack of concern for the veterans on the part of the Spanish authorities, attempted to maintain contact with them. However, Spanish authorities did not always react positively.16 Compared to veterans’ brotherhoods of the German Army and its allies,17 or even those of Francoist ex-combatants of the Civil War, the origin of BD

Inconvenient heroes? War veterans from the Eastern Front  191 veterans’ associations was closely linked to the cult to the fallen soldiers. Decisive impetus initially came from widows and daughters of the fallen soldiers, especially those linked to the Falange. The mothers, girlfriends and relatives of those who died in Russia often met after masses for volunteers in Madrid churches. In June 1942, the idea arose to create an association to coordinate administrative work related to pensions and subsidies for veterans and their families. The families of the fallen again took the initiative. In 1943, the Brotherhood of Families of the Fallen Soldiers of the BD was formed with a chapel in a central FET building in Madrid. Gradually, symbolic dates were established in memory of the BD, such as All Saints’ Day (1st November) and 13 July, the anniversary of the departure of the largest volunteer expedition.18 The initiative spread to other cities, like Málaga and Valencia, under the advocacy of the Catholic Church. In 1946, the Brotherhood became  the Brotherhood of the Families of the Fallen of the BD, with activities ­limited to periodical religious acts and the celebration of Mother’s Day on 8 ­December, which included visits to the families of the fallen or captives. In 1953, it became the Brotherhood of the Families of the Fallen Soldiers, P ­ risoners, and Ex-Combatants of the BD (Hermandad de Familiares de Caídos y Prisioneros y Excombatientes de la División Azul), and began dealings that led to the repatriation of prisoners from Soviet camps in April 1954. The return of Spanish POWs was finally secured, thanks to the mediation of the French Red Cross and the favourable circumstances created by the beginning of the Khrushchev Thaw in the Soviet Union.19 The large-scale reception of the returnees drastically increased ex-BD activity as hundreds of soldiers and their families descended on Barcelona to welcome home the released prisoners. However, the deeply emotional impact of the event was not appreciated by the regime.20 The Francoist ex-combatants’ associations of the Civil War worked in coordination with the DNE and in subordination to its guidelines. The burgeoning BD brotherhoods also fit within this structure, with some singularities. First, many of them arose from spontaneous initiatives by groups of BD ex-soldiers. Second, the international isolation of the Franco regime until the mid-1950s did not favour BD returnees, who – unlike Italian war veterans who also served on the Soviet front – were unable to relegitimize their memory within the new Cold War context.21 This became evident in May of 1959, when BD veterans held a reception for a delegation of the ­Condor ­Legion Veterans’ Association. During a religious offering in ­Barcelona, some shouted pro-Nazi slogans, which proved awkward for the West ­German embassy.22 Between 1946 and 1953, the activities of the veterans’ groups were limited to regular Masses for the fallen soldiers and POWs still in Soviet hands. Support for commemorative acts of the brotherhoods in some provinces revealed complicity with provincial leaders of the FET, civil and military governors, local commanders of the Civil Guard and even town mayors, especially those who had served in the BD.23

192  Xosé M. Núñez Seixas The notorious solidarity of the BD returnees also found expression in the spontaneous establishment of brotherhoods in several cities. The Alava provincial brotherhood founded in February 1954 proposed to the N ­ ational Delegate of Ex-Combatants and BD veteran Tomás García Rebull the creation of BD associations in all the Spanish provinces. In 1954–1955, taking advantage of the Cold war context, as well as the emotional revival of the memory of the BD generated by the repatriation of prisoners from the ­Soviet Union, another 26 brotherhoods sprang up. They spread throughout Castile, Andalusia and the South-East region, predominately. In June 1956, representatives of 29 local groups converged in Valencia for a first National Convention.24 One of its primary objectives was the creation of a National Federation of BD Brotherhoods. Conference speakers exuded ­anti-communism, religious devotion and loyalty to the founding principles of Francoism. They also defended the fulfilment of the “revolutionary” ­tenets of the Falange, which included a “fair re-distribution of national income; a socio-economic policy that avoided excessive differences among workers”; a gradual dismantling of “pressure groups, cartels, trusts and monopolies”; and the vague goal of “transforming the entrepreneurial structure and ­concept of property”. Achieving these objectives required “a profound reform of the national political structure”. They also petitioned to establish quotas through which ex-BD members could access civil service posts and officially subsidized housing.25 The number of brotherhoods grew steadily after the first conference. Their geographical distribution loosely coincided with provinces under ­Republican control until March 1939; there, BD veterans were more visible in the absence of other Francoist veterans of the Civil War.26 The corporative and mutualistic nature of the organization was reinforced, and they agreed to invite the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to supervise dealings with the Bonn Government to procure German war pensions for disabled ­veterans or families of the fallen soldiers.27 Yet the National Brotherhood of the BD was not official until June 1959, and the provincial associations ­always maintained ample autonomy.28 They published bulletins from 1954 on, which were s­ eldom regular, with the outstanding exception of Blau ­División, the monthly publication begun in 1957 by the Alicante provincial brotherhood.29 Some associations focussed on practical goals, which included interceding to obtain pensions for families of the fallen soldiers, seeking state subsidies for disabled veterans and providing food, medicine and clothing for returnees in need.30 Like their German counterparts, they functioned as both mutual aid associations and employment agencies, procuring modest government posts for veterans or their relatives. Municipalities, provincial governments and other public institutions often assisted as well. Some brotherhoods also granted interest-free loans under generous conditions to members in poverty.31 The vitality of the BD brotherhoods was reflected in their capacity to bring together a significant portion of the veterans in each province: Most of them

Inconvenient heroes? War veterans from the Eastern Front  193 represented between 15 and 33 per cent of returnees at the provincial and local level.32 Their social profile was slightly more popular than that of other Francoist veterans’ associations. Thus, the Santander brotherhood boasted 186 members in 1957, representing some 15–17 per cent of BD veterans in that province (1,088 survived from the total enlistment of 1,195). The middle to lower classes were somewhat over-represented in the social origins of the 159 members who listed their profession, which also reflected the diversity of BD veterans.33 The diffusion of brotherhood mouthpieces was more modest. The most important bulletin published by veterans, Hermandad, distributed 2,940 copies in December 1958 (7–8 per cent of all BD returnees).34 The most active core of brotherhoods was more reduced: In the bulletin Blau Division between 1957 and 2008, 870 veterans were mentioned as contributors, subscribers and associates: This represented around 2 per cent of all of returnees from the Russian front.35

Commemorating the Eastern Front in Franco’s Spain Solidarity among ex-BD volunteers also extended far beyond associative spheres. Their intense camaraderie was infused with bitter disenchantment and a shared sense of superiority over Spanish Civil War veterans: The BD returnees were the “accursed heroes” or even “a generation misunderstood today”, perhaps for having been the defeated among the winners.36 The brotherhoods also assumed the task of maintaining the BD memory through a particularly intense cult to the fallen soldiers. It was sustained by commemorative acts and Masses on specific dates; offerings at Civil War monuments and places of memory; medals bestowed upon veterans, their widows or their descendants; and collective participation in parades and commemorations of the single party FET. However, Eastern Front veterans also cultivated their own commemorative liturgy, which has continued to the present day in semi-public ­gatherings. On chosen anniversaries, they celebrated the memory of the ­departure of the “first division” from Spain in early July (1941), the ­arrival ­ ussian front on 12 October (1941) and especially the Battle of Krasny at the R Bor (1943) on 10 February. The symbolic role of the families of the fallen soldiers remained significant and specific celebrations were held for the mothers of dead combatants: those who lay “in Russia”. Every year, on one of these three dates, Catholic Mass would be said in several cities for the souls still “in Russia”, followed by refreshments and speeches. Some brotherhoods held a monthly Mass for the souls of the fallen, along with several acts on 8 D ­ ecember, the Catholic holiday of the Immaculate C ­ onception. Wherever there was a close relationship with civil or military authorities, these acts included military reviews, speeches and offerings. BD funerals became semi-public ceremonies involving fellow veterans, DNE representatives and officials from local or provincial institutions, especially if they were BD ex-soldiers or relatives of veterans.37 However, attendance

194  Xosé M. Núñez Seixas at religious ceremonies was not always numerous and local or provincial authorities gradually stopped attending. This was also related to the fact that BD returnees, integrated into the community of the “winners” of the Spanish Civil War, could not escape the general tendency towards routinization and decreasing popularity that most commemorations of the Francoist victory and the “heroic deeds” of the Spanish conflict of 1936–1939 also experienced from the late 1940s.38 Moreover, the BD veterans often complained about the scant visibility of commemorations of their fallen comrades. They felt that they had returned as heroes but at the wrong moment. No mausoleum equivalent to the majestic Valley of the Fallen Soldiers, inaugurated in 1959, had been built for those who “still lie in Russia”; though there were plaques in ­m ilitary barracks. The monument to the BD in Albacete, built in 1958 and now removed, was the only commemorative place where floral offerings were made on s­ pecific dates.39 However, the number of streets and squares dedicated to the BD increased significantly during the late Franco years as the ­Spanish combatants at the Eastern Front were regarded as the forerunners, or the early spearheads, of the Cold War. A similar rhetoric was employed by ­German veterans’ associations and even by the Waffen-SS mutual help association in the 1950s.40 Several medium-sized Spanish towns, including Cuenca, ­Vitoria, Gijón and Pontevedra, recognized all BD veterans as “adopted sons” and named streets after the BD in the early 1960s. They were joined by Barcelona in 1966. Streets were named for General Muñoz Grandes in four cities (Jaén, Madrid, Zamora and Zaragoza); streets and squares were also named for local fallen heroes and BD officers in their home towns. Madrid inaugurated a street dedicated to him and another to “fallen soldiers of the Blue Division” in 1958.41 Nonetheless, the presence of the BD memory in street names was significantly less than that of Civil War memory. Streets dedicated to ­Francisco Franco, the 18th July (the date of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936), José Antonio Primo de Rivera (the founder of Falange), José Calvo Sotelo (the main monarchist leader assassinated short before the outbreak of the Civil War) and several insurgent generals that fought against the Spanish Second Republic in 1936–1939 were far more frequent than ­urban reminders of the BD. After the first democratic local elections held in 1979, their number decreased significantly. Still, in 1986, at least 19 cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants, including Madrid, Valencia and Zaragoza, still had street names commemorating either the BD, its fallen soldiers or its “heroes”.42 In 2003, there were still 27 Spanish municipalities (0.32 per cent of the total) with streets dedicated to the BD, including ten cities with more than 60,000 inhabitants. Seventeen municipalities had streets named for Muñoz Grandes and some public schools carried his name into the ­twenty-first century.43 Likewise, at the beginning of the twenty-first century there were still numerous towns with streets named for local BD fallen soldiers. Maintaining

Inconvenient heroes? War veterans from the Eastern Front  195 street names in memory of a unit of foreign volunteers in the Wehrmacht is truly exceptional in Western Europe. However, these constitute a trifling percentage of the Francoist symbols and places of memory that endured beyond 1978. In 2002, some 828 municipalities (10.2 per cent) still had streets named after José Antonio Primo de Rivera, and the name of Franco remained present in 522 (6.4 per cent) Spanish towns and villages.44

Nostalgic narratives: remembering the Russian front (1950–1990) The Soviet victory over Germany was mostly regarded by Spanish veterans as their own and Europe’s defeat. However, the parallel uncovering of the German policy of extermination of the Jews and other peoples forced the former Spanish combatants of the Wehrmacht to keep silent for at least one decade. From 1954 on, interest in the various forms of orthodox worship and the memory of the “re-birth” of religiosity among the Russian people during Spanish occupation gave some former combatants hope that Russia would overcome communism. Certain ex-divisionarios even suggested the possibility of a syncretistic fusion of Catholicism and Orthodoxy that could restore Russia to Christian civilization. In their view, the Russian people had rediscovered “their traditions, through the pain of communist persecution” with the help of the occupying forces.45 The language of social hygiene that was characteristic of the contemporary views of Russia and the Russians by most volunteers in 1941–1944 gave way after the end of the war to a quasiethnographic interest in Russia. Some veterans collected popular legends and stories learnt from the inhabitants of the Volkhov and the Leningrad region. These stories conveyed bucolic images of a pre-revolutionary Russia full of tsars, legendary battles, religious apparitions and peasant customs.46 From 1950 onwards, diverse nuances appeared regarding Russia, which differed from the overwhelmingly stereotyped and negative image of the Soviet Union which was present in the propaganda and the media of the Franco regime. Among veterans a fascination grew for “the immense and mysterious Russia […] a strange people, introspective and religious, notwithstanding state atheism”, who somehow blended “love and hatred, tenderness and harshness, blood and smiles”.47 It became a “kind and apathetic” country that ex-combatants “desired to re-visit under normal circumstances”.48 ­Russian peasants were now remembered as the double victims of the ­Bolshevik terror and the rigours of German occupation, which the Spanish war veterans tried to keep at a distance in their minds. The anti-­communist ideal of 1936–1939 was reinforced by recalling the misery of Russian peasants in the 1940s. Some veteran officers from the Eastern Front, such as Colonel Díaz de Villegas and Captain Teodoro Palacios, offered training seminars for Falangist authorities on the effects of communism in Russia. He did not emphasize the pseudo-Asian apathy of the Russian people, as many divisionarios did in 1941–1944, but the evils of the communist system

196  Xosé M. Núñez Seixas that destroyed families and religion. Returning POWs in 1954 used similar terms when remembering their dealings with Soviet civilians.49 However, some former BD members remained convinced that the Russian people could never change due to their historical experiences, their “anthropological structure and ­racial composition”, their messianic character and their innate lack of permeability to Western values.50 Ramón Serrano Suñer, the former (and Germanophile) Minister of Foreign Affairs, emphasized in 1959 that the Spanish combatants had gone to the USSR to destroy Soviet communism but not the Russian people. Individually, the BD soldiers saw “the enemies they were facing more as victims of the ideological enemy than as the living incarnation of it”. The Cold War had confirmed to them that Soviet communism was the main enemy of Western civilization, European culture and especially Christian values. Soviet communism remained an adversary that held its people in misery and apathy: an image confirmed by sporadic travel narratives of former Division members who visited the USSR prior to 1989.51 Despite the fact that BD veterans had great difficulties coming to terms with the end of the Franco Regime, 20 years later, they considered that the  course of History had confirmed their views. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany and the almost immediate full conversion to the Christian faith of Russia and the other Eastern Bloc countries reinforced this line of argument. “We were right”, stated the title of the memoirs of an active member of the BD Brotherhoods.52 After the fall of communism, former divisionarios re-encountered the Russian people and re-affirmed their convictions of 1941–1943. From their outlook, the eternal Russia had triumphed over communism: It was the essence of a people whom only the Spaniards had perceived thanks to their religious sensibility and absence of racial prejudice. They had gone to the front “to liberate Russians from communism”53; and this was their ultimate victory, as a BD veteran expressed in anachronistic terms through the mouth of a fictitious Russian pope: Someday, God knows when, all this will end […] And the eternal Russia will be rebuilt, though perhaps a bit smaller, reduced to what it was at the beginning of the sixteenth century, […] but more authentic. We have an old term to designate that rebirth, that reconstruction that will someday revive: perestroika.54 With the fall of the Soviet Union, the memory of the BD found closure. The veterans felt fully vindicated regarding their decision to volunteer 50 years earlier. They distanced themselves from the main features of German occupation but took care not to excessively criticize or condemn their former comrades-in-arms. Reluctant to admit any excesses by the German regular army, they ascribed all atrocities to the SS and other “political” units. Washed in the tides of time, the BD remembered itself as cleaner than the

Inconvenient heroes? War veterans from the Eastern Front  197 “clean Wehrmacht”.55 This perception permeated Spanish public opinion and culture; it has endured beyond the nostalgia of Francoism to the present day.

The BD veterans and the twilight of the Franco regime (1970–1977) From the early 1970s, the BD brotherhoods and other Francoist war veterans’ organizations began to decline, though membership of BD descendants or sympathizers and the proximity of radical or dissident Falangist groups and even tiny neo-Nazi groups helped prolong their capacity for survival.56 They maintained close ties with other Francoist ex-combatant organizations, local chapters of the Falange and sometimes with Catholic Action. In the mid-1960s, the BD brotherhoods began to align themselves with the most intractable elements of the regime, known as “The Bunker”. The provincial governor of Alicante and BD veteran Agatángelo Soler-Llorca stated in 1961 that divisionarios had gone to Russia to fight against the root of all Spain’s evils since the nineteenth century, which could be synthesized into internal disunity and anarchy. He lamented the lack of vision among those countries – Britain and the United States – who had not united against the USSR, because that would have avoided decolonization and the spread of communism. Yet he affirmed that as long as BD veterans were alive, Spain would not follow that path, despite worker protests and those who “seek to take over this country in the name of a blasphemous Christian democracy”.57 Likewise, the divisionario journalist and writer Fernando Vadillo wrote in 1968 that another BD was needed “to give the Falange better sense again”, one that kept in step with the concerns of new generations.58 This function fit with the regime goal of fostering ex-combatant organizations as a means of perpetuating the social support that had been created through the mobilization of thousands of soldiers during the Civil War. BD brotherhoods were generally among the most dynamic veterans’ associations, as was reflected in the important role of veterans from the Russian front in the DNE.59 They were also politically active, particularly in the ranks of the hardliners of the regime: At least two of the 13 founders of the radical Francoist journal and publishing house Fuerza Nueva in 1966 were war veterans from the Eastern Front, while Blas Piñar, the charismatic leader of the Spanish extreme right during the 1970s, wrote that the spirit of the BD had “contagion capacity for mobilizing many sleeping souls”. However, the miniscule neo-Nazi groups were most fascinated by those who had worn the Wehrmacht uniform.60 From the early 1970s onwards, the National BD Brotherhood signed several manifestos in favour of the “political order” that arose from the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939.61 Connections between BD veterans and the farright political spectrum were multiple. Thus, one of its most active members, Mariano Sánchez-Covisa, was also the main force behind the far-right violent

198  Xosé M. Núñez Seixas group Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey, which supported “patriotic ­violence”. Similarly, two BD veterans participated in the killing of five left-wing lawyers in Madrid in January 1977, with the aim of destabilizing the process of transition to democracy.62 At the local level, the participation of BD war veterans in Francoist performances was notorious; their masses and commemorations constituted a frame for amassing Francoist supporters. In fact, the years of the Spanish transition to democracy (1975–1978) coincided with a rise in the public activity of the BD brotherhoods, which became an i­ mportant form of mobilizing ex-combatants against political openness. They continued functioning but in an uncoordinated manner.63 Therefore, in December 1976, the National BD Brotherhood recommended the negative vote at the referendum for the Law on Political Reform, which should bring about democracy and put an end to the Francoist political system.64 However, the extreme fragmentation of the far-right groups after 1975 also affected the brotherhoods which, like other ex-combatant ­associations, found it difficult to choose from among the splintered factions of the ­single party, which included ­several ­Falangist groups, Blas Piñar’s new party Fuerza Nueva (FN) and ultra-­Catholic groupings.65 At the first democratic elections held in June 1977, several brotherhoods defended the vote for the 18 July National A ­ lliance, a coalition involving FN and other far-right organizations, including the National Confederation of Ex-Combatants, which had been set up in the 1970s as an umbrella organization for all Francoist ­veterans’ groups.66 Yet FN was perhaps the party that was most interested in appropriating the BD legacy as a synthesis of the so-called “values of 18 July 1936”, that made no great ideological distinctions among Francoist factions, from revolutionary Falangists to Catholics. The connections were evident in ­local spheres. Thus, the party core members in Barcelona came from the local BD brotherhood.67 However, in 1981–1982, some Brotherhood voices, flanked by other Francoist war veterans’ groups, also called for the unity of the “­national right”, including the post-Francoist democratic reformists of Alianza Popular, who refused to merge with neo-Francoists and went their own way. Alianza Popular counted some former leaders of the BD war veterans’ associations among their candidates, such as Carlos Pinilla.68 By then, it was evident that the idealized Falange of the Russian front evoked by Falangist volunteers in 1941–1942 would never return, and several brotherhoods faded away in the 1980s and 1990s. This process ran parallel to the several initiatives developed by Spanish veterans’ groups to “converge” with their former Civil War enemies and establish common platforms. ­Although, most BD brotherhoods never felt tempted to embrace this r­ hetoric, they insisted on distancing themselves from German war crimes and, particularly from 1990, advocated reconciliation with the Russian people and Soviet veterans. Those associations that remained adopted the legal structure of social-charitable foundations. Until the present day, they continue to publish bulletins and their younger members also maintain some presence on internet platforms. Quite often, their activity is welcomed by some sectors

Inconvenient heroes? War veterans from the Eastern Front  199 of the Spanish conservative public sphere. In a parallel way, BD brotherhoods supported some initiatives to repatriate the remnants of fallen Spanish soldiers from Russia after 1990. They also promoted nostalgic war tourism for veterans and their descendants to the former theatres of war in the ­Volkhov region and Saint Petersburg, which still continues today.69

Notes 1 Rolf-Dieter Müller, The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler’s Foreign Soldiers, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012 [Berlin 2007]); Jochen Böhler and Robert Gerwarth (eds.), The Waffen SS. A European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); David Stahel (ed.), Joining Hitler’s Crusade. ­E uropean Nations and the German Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941 (Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 2017). 2 Wayne H. Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany: Collaboration in the New ­Order (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Xavier Moreno Juliá, La ­División Azul. Sangre española en Rusia, 1941–1945 (Barcelona: Crítica, 2004); Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, Die spanische Blaue Division an der Ostfront (1941–1945): Zwischen Kriegserfahrung und Erinnerung (Münster: Aschendorff, 2016). 3 Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, “‘Russland war nicht schuldig’: Die Oostfronterfahrung der spanischen Blauen Division in Selbstzeugnissen und Autobiographien, 1943–2004”, in Michael Epkenhans, Stig Förster and Karen Hagemann (eds.), Militärische Erinnerungskultur. Soldaten im Spiegel von Biographien, Memoiren und Selbstzeugnissen (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2016), 236–267. 4 Ángel Alcalde, Los excombatientes franquistas. La cultura de guerra del fascismo español y la Delegación Nacional de Excombatientes (Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2014), 169–170, 268–278. 5 Archivo General Militar Ávila (AGMAV), C.3770/1 and C.3770/2. See also ­Rafael Moreno Izquierdo, Los niños de Rusia. La verdadera historia de una operación de retorno (Barcelona: Crítica, 2017), 95–198. 6 Boletín Oficial del Estado, 22 January and 5 February 1942, 8 and 17 May 1942. 7 Alcalde, Los excombatientes, 177–178; Luis A. Palacio Pilacés, Tal vez el día. Aragoneses en la URSS (1937–1977), el exilio y la División Azul (n.p.: Comuniter 2013), II, 886–892. 8 Glicerio Sánchez Recio, Los cuadros políticos intermedios del régimen franquista, 1939–1959 (Alicante: Instituto Juan Gil-Albert, 1996), 127–135. 9 Francisco Bernal García, El sindicalismo vertical: burocracia, control laboral y representación de intereses en la España franquista (1936–1951) (Madrid: CEPC, 2010), 276–286. 10 Manuel Salvador Gironés, “Barómetro de la actualidad”, Blau División 44 (March 1963). 11 César Ibáñez-Cagna, “La oficialidad de la División Azul. Un resumen ­estadístico”, Blau División 598 (May 2009). 12 José García Hispán, La Guardia Civil en la División Azul (Alicante: García Hispán, 1991), 77–80. 13 Data from Blau División 539 (June 2004); Roberto Muñoz Bolaños, “Operación Galaxia: la primera intentona golpista de la Transición”, Historia del Presente 20 (2012), 119–142. 14 Reports from Gardemann, (Madrid, 2 January 1942), Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (PAAA), Botschaft Madrid, box 796, Geheimakten, 6/9, and A. Petersen (Madrid, 11 May 1942), PAAA, Sammlung der Berichte, Madrid 553/3, box 761.

200  Xosé M. Núñez Seixas 15 DGS reports (9, 13, 18 and 20 June 1942), Archivo Histórico Municipal de Cádiz, Fondo General Varela, c. 115. 16 Reports from Wagner and Dr. Jaeger (Berlin, 2 and 3 February 1944) and the German cultural attaché (Madrid, 7 January 1944), PAAA, R. 100982. 17 Jörg Echternkamp, “Mit dem Krieg seinen Frieden schließen. Wehrmacht und Weltkrieg in der Veteranenkultur (1945–1960)”, in Thomas Kühne (ed.), Von der Kriegskultur zur Friedenskultur? Zum Mentalitätswandel in Deutschland seit 1945 (Münster: Lit, 2000), 80–95; Jörg Echternkamp and Manfred Hettling (eds.), Bedingt erinnerungsbereit. Soldatengedenken in der Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008); Bert-Oliver Manig, Die Politik der Ehre. Die Rehabilitierung der Berufssoldaten in der frühen Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004); Birgit Schwelling, Heimkehr–Erinnerung–Integration. Der Verband der Heimkehrer, die ehemaligen Kriegsgefangenen und die westdeutsche Nachkriegsgesellschaft (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010). 18 Isabel Uriarte Arbaiza, Las mujeres de la División Azul. Una valerosa retaguardia (Madrid: Barbarroja, 2012), 172–173; Pablo Sagarra, Capellanes en la División Azul. Los últimos cruzados (Madrid: Actas, 2012), 655–660. 19 José Luis Rodríguez Jiménez, “El papel de las familias en las gestiones para la liberación de los prisioneros de la División Española de Voluntarios en la URSS”, Historia del Presente 11 (2008), 141–164. 20 La Vanguardia Española (Barcelona), 2, 3 and 4 April 1954. 21 See Gustavo Corni, Raccontare la guerra. La memoria organizzata (Milan: Mondadori, 2012); Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, “Unable to hate? Some comparative remarks on the war experience of Spanish and Italian soldiers on the Eastern front, 1941–1944”, Journal of Modern European History 16:2 (2018), forthcoming. 22 Birgit Aschmann, “Treue Freunde…”? Westdeutschland und Spanien 1945–1963 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999), 379–382. 23 See David Veiga Chousa, “La Hermandad de la División Azul: un acercamiento al asociacionismo divisionario”, Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar 2:4 (2013), 108–129. 24 La Vanguardia Española, 9 January 1956. 25 Hermandad 7 (August–September 1956). 26 Alcalde, Los excombatientes, 280–282; Sagarra, Capellanes, 985–987. 27 The following year, the National Brotherhood petitioned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to authorize its affiliation with the Verband Deutscher Soldaten and to request aid from Bonn for mutilated veterans and families of the fallen. Two years later, an agreement on war pensions was signed, and it was ratified in the West German Parliament in 1965. See Aschmann, Treue Freunde, 385–391. 28 Tomás Salvador, “II Consejo Nacional”, Blau División 10 (November 1959). 29 See Blau División 534 (January 2004); Sagarra, Capellanes, 985–987. 30 For example, Hoja de Campaña. Órgano de actividades de la “División Azul” de Valencia 9 (March 1961). 31 Hermandad, V:19 (April–May 1961); José M. Puente Fernández, Cántabros en la División Azul (1941–1944) (Torrelavega: Librucos, 2012), 225–226. Examples of practical intercession to secure work for BD veterans in “Ayudas recibidas”, Blau División 2 (July 1957), and “Muchas Gracias”, Blau División 4 (November 1957). 32 Núñez Seixas, Die spanische Blaue Division, 351–352; Santiago Herrero, “Mi Hermandad”, Blau División, 291 (October 1983). 33 Author’s estimate based on Puente Fernández, Cántabros, 210–213, 226–227, and Hermandad de Excombatientes y familiares de caídos de la “División Azul”. Santander. Índice de afiliados. Mayo 1956 (n.p. [Santander]: n.ed., n.d. [1956]). See also Alcalde, Los excombatientes, 314–315, 319–320.

Inconvenient heroes? War veterans from the Eastern Front  201 34 “Tirada y difusión de Hermandad”, Hermandad, II: 6 (November–December 1958). 35 Author’s own elaboration, based on Blau División, 1957–2008. 36 “Treinta años de una gesta”, Los Sitios, 24 October 1971. 37 Arriba (Madrid), 15 June 1969. 38 S. Nieva Yarritu, “Seguimos solos y aislados”, Hermandad, IV:16 (October–­ November 1960). On routinization, Carlos Fuertes Muñoz, Viviendo en dictadura. La evolución de las actitudes sociales hacia el franquismo (Granada: Comares, 2017), 38–51. 39 For example, the writer Álvaro de Laiglesia and the Nazi refugee Otto Skorzeny: “Se conmemora en Albacete el XXVI aniversario de la entrada en combate de la División Azul”, Los Sitios, 13 October 1967. 40 Karsten Wilke, Die “Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit” (HIAG) 1950–1990. Veteranen der Waffen-SS in der Bundesrepublik (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2011), 17–19; Madeleine Hurd and Steffen Werther, “Waffen-SS veterans and their sites of memory today”, in Böhler and Gerwarth, The Waffen-SS, 331–355. 41 Blau División 11 (January 1960) and 31 (March 1962); Virginia López de Maturana, La reinvención de una ciudad: poder y política simbólica en Vitoria durante el franquismo (Bilbao: UPV/EHU, 2014), 272–77; La Vanguardia Española, 11 February 1966. 42 Guía Código Postal-España (Madrid: Ministerio de Transportes, Turismo y Telecomunicaciones, 1986). 43 Instituto Nacional de Estadística, inquiry DM 437/2003. 44 Monserrat Duch i Planas, ¿Una ecología de las memorias colectivas? La transición española a la democracia revisitada (Lleida: Milenio, 2014), 97–116. 45 Guillermo Alonso del Real, “Un sargento español ante la Virgen de Kazán”, ABC (21 May 1955); Manuel Atienza Espija, “Recuerdos de Rusia”, Hermandad, V:17 (December 1960–January 1961). 46 See, for example, the book of short tales by Fernando Bendala, Leyendas del lago Ilmen (Madrid: Viuda de Juan Pueyo, 1944) as well as several of the largely fantastic recreations of Russian life by Luis Riudavets de Montes, Estampas de la Vieja Rusia (recuerdos de un voluntario de la División Azul) (Madrid: n. e., 1960). For contemporary views characterized by cultural racism, see Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, “Russia and the Russians in the Eyes of the Spanish Blue Division Soldiers, 1941–4”, Journal of Contemporary History 52:2 (2017), 352–374. 47 Manuel Álvarez de Sotomayor, Generación puente (Alicante: García Hispán, 1991), 160–161. 48 Juan Salas Iñigo, Aquella Rusia (Zaragoza: Mira, 1988), 93; Hermandad, II:4 (July–August 1958). 49 José Díaz de Villegas, La División Azul en línea (Barcelona: Acervo, 1967), 50–57; “El comandante Palacios, en la Escuela Diplomática”, ABC, 23 March 1956. 50 José García Luna, Las cartas del sargento Basilio (Barcelona: Pentágono, 1959), 38–39, 121; Miguel Martínez-Mena, “Pensar y vivir de un pueblo, con el cual los divisionarios simpatizamos”, Blau División 56 (April 1964). 51 Ramón Serrano Suñer, “Hacia un patriotismo europeo”, ABC, 29 September 1959; Manuel Salvador Gironés, “Cosas de por allá”, Blau División 54 (February 1964); José A. Vidal y Gadea, “Notas de un viaje a la URSS (III y último)”, Blau División 197 (December 1975); Vicente Mas, “Dos viajes a Rusia”, Blau División 537 (April 2004). 52 Arturo Espinosa Poveda, ¡¡Teníamos razón!! Cuantos luchamos contra el comunismo soviético (Madrid : Fundación División Azul, 1993). See also “Navidad 89”, Blau División, 365 (December 1989), and José Viladot, “Hict et Nunc. Nos dan la razón. ¡El comunismo es culpable!”, Blau División, 366 (January 1990).

202  Xosé M. Núñez Seixas 53 Statement of Angel Salamanca, representative of the National Brotherhood of the Blue Division, in La Vanguardia, 13 October 2004. 54 Enrique de la Vega Viguera, Rusia no es culpable. Historia de la División Azul (Madrid: Barbarroja 1999), 33–34. See also Miguel Salvador, “Carta a mi amigo Iván”, Blau División, 375 (October 1990). 55 See Núñez Seixas, “Russland”; Valeria Possi, “La narrativa testimoniale nella letteratura spagnola e italiana sulla campagna di Russia”, Artifara 16 (2016), 203–216; Jesús Guzmán Mora, “Visiones de Rusia en la narrativa española: el caso de la División Azul” (PhD thesis, University of Salamanca, 2017). 56 For example, some contributions in the Blau División bulletin in the early 1970s. See “Acto fundacional del Círculo Español de Amigos de Europa (C.E.D.A.D.E.)”. Blau División 166 (May 1973). 57 Agatángelo Soler Llorca, “Nuestra presencia en Rusia”, Hermandad V:18 (February–March 1961). 58 P. Rodríguez, “El libro de la semana”, Los Sitios, 24 January 1968. 59 In May 1962, during the wide coal miners’ strike in Asturias that challenged the Franco regime, the Asturian BD Brotherhood was ready to mobilize its 800 affiliates to replace the striking miners and maintain order; see Alcalde, Los excombatientes, 320. 60 “Asamblea de la Hermandad de la División Azul”, Fuerza Nueva 8 (4 March 1967); Blas Piñar, “La División Azul”, Blau División 112 (December 1968). A flyer handed out by the minuscule Spanish National-Socialist Party in October 1977 described the BD combatants as “our torch and our path”. See “Felicidades”, Blau División 223 (February 1978). 61 For example, on the occasion of the Burgos trial of ETA members (“Comunicados de alféreces provisionales y excombatientes de la División Azul”, Informaciones, 5 December 1970). In several towns, there were marches in favour of Franco, led by leaders of the BD Brotherhood (Madrid, 30 December 1970). 62 “Cara a cara con Sánchez Covisa”, Blau División 226 (May 1978). 63 Alberto Sabio Alcutén, Peligrosos demócratas. Antifranquistas vistos por la policía política (1958–1977) (Madrid: Cátedra, 2011), 221; “Hermandad Nacional. Llamada general, o toque a arrebato”, Blau División 251 (June 1980); César d’Entralgo, “Et pluribus unum”, Blau División 269 (December 1981). 64 El Alcázar (Madrid), 14 December 1976. 65 See Vicente Mas, “Carta abierta a: Pedro Conde, a Diego Márquez, a Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, a Blas Piñar, a tantos y tantos más…”, Blau División 214 (May 1977); José Luis Rodríguez Jiménez, Reaccionarios y golpistas. La extrema derecha en España: Del tardofranquismo a la consolidación de la democracia, 1967–1982 (Madrid: CSIC, 1994), 195–231. 66 In the Alicante province, two out of ten congressional candidates of the Alianza Nacional 18 de Julio were former divisionarios, including the provincial Brotherhood leader Vicente Mas: see Blau División 215 (June 1977). 67 Ernesto Milà, Ultramemorias. Retrato pintoresco de 40 años de extrema derecha (Madrid: Eminves, 2010), I, 178–179 and 253. 68 J. Santamaría Díez, “Carta abierta a mis camaradas lectores de Blau”, Blau División 269 (December 1981); Carlos Pinilla Turiño, Como el vuelo de un pájaro (Madrid: Publisalud, 1987). 69 See, for example, Mariano Triviño, “Viaje a los antiguos frentes”, Blau División, 398 (September 1992); Fernando Garrido Polonio and Miguel A. Garrido Polonio, Nieve roja. Españoles desaparecidos en el frente ruso (Madrid: Oberon, 2002).

13 Memory, authority and anti-war politics of French veterans of the Algerian war of decolonization (1954–1962) Hugh McDonnell

In February 2017, at the height of the French presidential election campaign, eventual victor Emmanuel Macron told the Le Figaro newspaper that France’s 132-year colonization of Algeria included “crimes against ­humanity”. Arriving in the southern town of Carpentras shortly after, he was welcomed by angry, jeering pieds noirs – representatives of the 1 million European settlers and their descendants, “repatriated” from North Africa to mainland France with the termination of French rule in Algeria in 1962. The episode was a snapshot of the passion and rancour that the memory of the Algerian War still provokes in France today.1 Given the tumultuousness of the conflict, this is unsurprising. Lasting nearly eight years between 1954 and 1962, the French-Algerian War is often viewed as the paradigmatic war of decolonization. Birthing an independent Algerian nation, it was also the epicentre of political upheaval in France as the post-war Fourth French Republic fell on the streets of Algiers. General De Gaulle’s 1958 assumption of presidential powers in that context laid the constitutional foundations of France still in place today. Yet the conflict was only recognized as a war in France in 1999. This was certainly not a question of the scale of the conflict – notorious violence on both sides cost up to a million lives. Rather, because Algeria had been incorporated as an integral part of France in 1848, this was, for the French state, an exercise in internal “pacification”. The intensity and protracted nature of the conflict saw France deploy 2 million soldiers, more than 1.2 million of whom were conscripts, to subdue the Algerian nationalist forces, principally of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN). By the cessation of hostilities in 1962, veterans of the war composed over 10 per cent of the active male population in France. The violence associated with the military campaign into which they were thrown gave rise to a whole infrastructure of dissent in the metropole. And the ­i mpact of the war on such a sizeable section of French youth gave rise to veterans’ associations to champion veterans’ rights. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the overlap of these two phenomena. Furthermore, in the past couple of decades, there has been a surge of interest in the specific area of memory of the Algerian War.2 Much less attention, however, has been paid to how memory was utilized at the time of the war or in its

204  Hugh McDonnell aftermath. This chapter picks up on this absence by examining three actors distinguished by the articulation of veteran experience with critique of the war: the Fédération nationale des anciens combattants en Algérie, Maroc et Tunisie (National Federation of War Veterans from Algeria, ­Morocco and Tunis, FNACA); General Jacques Pâris de Bollardière, the only active senior officer to condemn openly the use of torture during the Algerian War; and the use of veterans’ testimonies and memory in Esprit and Les Temps modernes, two rival and leading journals of the French left. This is not to claim that these actors were most representative of the French veteran experience.3 On the contrary, according to Benjamin Stora, almost 70 per cent of all literature published on the Algerian War between 1962 and 1982 is pro-Algérie francaise, while the overwhelming majority of veteran memoirs have been written by mid-level or high-ranking officers as well as pieds noirs.4 This included a diverse range of French veterans’ memoirs of all perspectives, reflecting on the methods and meaning of the war. Certainly, there were memoirs that were highly supportive of the cause of French Algeria and the role of the French Army during the war. One thinks here of works like Jean-Yves Alquier’s 1957 Nous avons pacifié Tazalt or, above all, Jacques Massu’s 1971 La Vraie bataille d’Alger.5 Alquier used his book extolling the success of the French war effort as a launching pad for a rival veterans’ organization to the FNACA – the Union nationale des combattants d’Afrique du nord (National Union of Soldiers of North ­Africa, UNCAFN), of which he was a co-founder and the first president. He was, as it happened, arrested in 1961 on suspicion of belonging to an OAS (­Organisation de l’Armée Secrète) network. Massu’s memoir, for its part, was a classic statement of unrepentance for the use of torture during the ­Algerian War on the grounds of its efficacy. As we will see, this was a key point of reference for Bollardière. Nonetheless, the fact that the actors considered in this chapter articulated critiques of the war from the vantage point of those who had waged it guaranteed a strong impact in French public discourse. We will see that each of these important actors in the anti-war movement invoked memory to various degrees and timescales, ranging from immediate testimony of serving in Algeria, the memory of the Second World War or the memory of the longer history of the French Republican army. Besides serving to situate and make sense of their experience of the Algerian War, this use of memory also served to leverage sufficient authority to move what seemed like a quiescent French public in the face of the unacceptable violence of the war.

The Fédération nationale des anciens combattants en Algérie, Maroc et Tunisie In his groundbreaking study of the FNACA,6 Anndal Narayanan shows that the organization’s establishment in 1958 was driven in large part – like other veterans’ organizations that emerged from 1957 onwards – by the disjointed

Memory, authority and anti-war politics of French veterans  205 return of soldiers and the common subsequent feeling of isolation and invisibility before an indifferent French public. FNACA was also engaged with the bigger political picture, however. The historical moment of its launch is significant, coinciding with the fall of the French Fourth Republic and ascension to power of General de Gaulle. The group’s founding leaders feared that the concentration of powers in the new Fifth Republic around the General would further diminish the voice of Algeria veterans in pursuit of their aims.7 Since most of the founding leaders of FNACA were conscripts or reservists, they had little access to political power. Its dearth of political connections contrasted with that of the UNCAFN, which at least until the later years of the war – when its unyielding pro-French Algeria position became a liability in the context of the “invention of decolonization” – found ready ears in political corridors.8 However, the leadership of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, editor of L’Express and the author of a much-publicized testimony of his time in Algeria as a conscript, was a boon to the FNACA.9 As for its own politics, in one sense, the FNACA played these down, emphasizing its ecumenism: “with us, there is every shade of opinion, philosophy and belief”, as the January 1961 editorial stressed.10 Its prioritization of making peace in Algeria, although characteristic of much of the French left, was presented as the expression only of a common “desire to live in peace” across political or religious divides.11 Nonetheless, the reputation of the FNACA as a left-leaning organization stuck. Notwithstanding, FNACA’s stance was clearly distinct from contemporary Algerian veterans’ movements, which corresponded much more closely to the, perhaps stereotypical, image of veterans’ politics being solidly rooted in the right, notably, the FNACA’s rivals, the UNCAFN. More broadly, radicalized rightist veterans joined in the spirit of May 1958, with the return of de Gaulle understood as the safeguarding of French Algeria.12 And notoriously, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s activism as a returned paratrooper brought together disenchanted Algeria veterans with various sections of far-right politics. The FNACA was quite clear about its two core political goals, constantly reiterated in L’Ancien d’Algérie. Its first issue, in December 1958, listed its defining traits as “-capable of defending the rights of former soldiers; -­independent of all pressure and all influence; -capable of telling the country the truth about the drama experienced in Algeria and which conscripted comrades experience each day”.13 A particularly striking two-page chart in the November 1960 issue reiterated the point for readers in even pithier terms: “Defence of the material and moral rights of veterans” and “For a peaceful and negotiated solution to the Algerian problem”.14 However, in contrast to French veterans of the First and Second World Wars and to Resistance members,15 veterans from FNACA faced a much more difficult task in establishing their own moral authority. Carving out their own authority as authoritative witnesses of the war in Algeria in the wider and competitive world of French veterans’ associations was one of the main tasks that FNACA undertook.16 Here, I will examine precisely what authority the

206  Hugh McDonnell ­ NACA claimed and how it attempted to accrue more for what it described F as “a slow and difficult period of construction”.17 While organization building and the aspiration to represent all Algerian veterans were higher priorities in the discourse of the FNACA, in the pages of L’Ancien d’Algérie the organization also claimed the special authority that should be accorded to the veteran as a participant-witness. The discussion here focusses on this aspect, given its pertinence to the mobilization of veteran memory. The most important mode of signalling and promoting the authority of the FNACA was emphasizing the special authority of the conscript as a witness. In its mobilization of memory, the FNACA drew on the civic tradition of the French Army so that enlistment had particularly strong resonances in terms of citizenship. It is instructive that the first page of the inaugural issue of December 1958 stated in no uncertain terms that the war “is far more a personal affair for us than for the colonels and colonists”.18 This conviction of division between conscripts and career officers was accentuated in the pages of the journal in the wake of the short-lived Generals’ Putsch in Algeria in April 1961. In this view, it was the conscripted soldier who was something of a synecdoche for the French nation, that is to say, the part that represents the whole. A corroborating powerful example was the full-page announcement in the March 1962 L’Ancien d’Algérie announcing, “100 veterans of Algeria address the nation”, followed by a list of demands, including peace and self-determination for Algeria.19 Indeed, the veteran himself was represented as the bearer of a specific and special kind of symbolic capital that came from the combination of first-hand experience of the Algerian War and engagement within the historically prestigious French Army. As set out in the inaugural edition of L’Ancien d’Algérie, “France has the right to know the truth. There is no one better suited than us to tell it”.20 Instructively, Servan-Schreiber’s importance was attributed not to his editorship of L’Express but first and foremost to his veteran status.21 It is striking that the FNACA conveyed authority here primarily in terms of transmitting the memory of the veteran as victim. As its charter published in the January 1962 L’Ancien d’Algérie put it, “the recognition of our status as veterans and victims of war is a right that we demand”.22 And as powerfully expressed in the same issue, We, veterans of Algeria, after months and months spent waging war; We, veterans of Algeria, who still hear the cries of the dead and the groans of the wounded; We, still young men in terms of age, but prematurely aged by the bloody adventure that we experienced […] We, veterans of ­Algeria, have had the experience of the war carried out on the other side of the Mediterranean. We know what we have suffered in body and mind. It is the very future of our country which is in question.23 This language of victimhood was quite distinctive from that of the “vanquished” – the preference of, among others, Jean-Marie Le Pen in his

Memory, authority and anti-war politics of French veterans  207 contemporaneous activism in the name of fellow Algeria veterans.24 Rather than deriving authority from the steadfast refusal of defeat, for the FNACA, suffering conferred credibility to its political insight – in this instance, in terms of bringing the OAS to heal and negotiating terms for peace with the Algerian provisional government (GPRA). What is more, it conferred a right to challenge the very decontestation of the conflict as not a war at all but simply a domestic peace-keeping operation. Countering this official line in January 1961, L’Ancien d’Algérie retorted that “this war is not pacification, is not ‘a bit of a scrap’, is not a war of national defence. For us veterans of Algeria, it is a reality”.25 Claims as first-hand witnesses were articulated with a complicated position regarding the French Army. We have seen that the FNACA was vociferously opposed to diehard pro-French Algeria officers. On the other hand, the Fédération was keen to position itself positively in the lineage of the prestigious tradition of the French Army. In part, this harked back to the revolutionary pedigree of the institution, the tradition of the levée en masse and its concomitant connotations of patriotic citizenship. In a positive review of writer Jules Roy’s testimony of his time serving in Algeria, it was commented that in a language devoid of excess, Jules Roy affirms and defends the true traditions of the French Army […] And it is true that in reading the book, one understands more than ever the urgency of this Peace. We who undertook this war are profoundly convinced of this.26 A further related tendency – no less problematic for being uncynical – was a kind of presumption of a priori innocence on the part of conscripts. This was not only the case in the sense that veterans had been compelled to enlist in the French military. Additionally, there was very little indication that veterans might have been complicit in the violence in ­A lgeria, which the FNACA itself denounced. Irrespective of their politics or ideology, Bernard Sigg finds that most veterans would come to feel the “vague need for recognition of what [really happened], with its shadows and its dark stains, in all its complex realities”.27 This emergence of the language of the “grey zone” of complicity in historiography and memory was not broached in the pages of L’Ancien Algérie.28 At most, one can detect a faint conceptualization of violence or repression in these terms to the extent that, if broached directly at all, either French army violence or repression tended to be attributed to impersonal structures of racism and colonialism.

General Jacques Pâris de Bollardière The FNACA leader Servan-Schreiber served under General Jacques Pâris de Bollardière – the only active senior officer to condemn openly the use

208  Hugh McDonnell of torture during the Algerian War. This highly decorated General’s experience as a veteran of the Resistance in the Second World War and in Indochina proved to be a vital guiding ethos and point of authority in his own campaign against the Algerian War. As we will see, his intervention in support of Servan-Schreiber’s denunciation of the methods underpinning the French war effort was the catalyst for the consolidation of his opposition to the war. Bollardière – like Le Pen, a native of Brittany – cut his teeth in ­February 1940 when he was assigned to the 13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade and promoted to captain. He took part in the Battle of Narvik before arriving back in France in time to witness the debacle of the French armies, culminating in the June 1940 armistice with Germany. Choosing to continue the fight from abroad, Bollardière crossed the English Channel on a fishing boat and was thus among the very first to join Charles de Gaulle in the wake of his famous call of 18 June 1940 to continue the fight. Bollardière was accordingly sentenced to death by the Vichy regime while he was absent from France. During that time, he fought in Gabon and in ­Eritrea during the East African Campaign – actions that earned him the award of the Compagnon de la Libération. Promoted to Major (commandant) in 1941, he took part in the capture of Damascus that summer and the following year in the Battle of Bir Hakeim and the first ­Battle of El Alamein. He was severely wounded by a mine. Nonetheless, in ­October 1943, he volunteered for Special Forces training and was put on a parachute-training course. In April 1944, he was parachuted into France to take a command in the Resistance maquis in the Ardennes. His units engaged German troops and sustained heavy casualties but made a successful link with the advancing Allied ground forces. In September 1944, Bollardière returned to England. He was then posted to the Red Berets and parachuted into Holland, with his campaign taking him in the end into newly defeated Germany. The Indochina War broke out soon after the end of the Second World War, and he was in command of a paratrooper demi-brigade, taking part in commando actions in Laos, Cambodia and Tonkin. Notably, he was already developing doubts at this stage about the moral efficacy of warfare.29 Bollardière was then posted to Algeria in 1956. Here, the French army’s systematic use of torture in the Battle of Algiers crystallized his growing doubts about the justice of the French mission in North Africa: “this battle of Algiers was to be the touchstone against which my life was to rest…”.30 Doubling down on this rhetoric, he reiterated that “the Battle of Algiers was waiting for me as a final test, at the end of the hard road on which I had undertaken. It compelled me to make a definitive choice and marked a turning point in my life”.31 Bollardière’s initial, explosive intervention was in the form of an open letter in the 27 March 1957 edition of Servan-Schreiber’s L’Express in defence of its coverage of the war and in light of the legal hot water which Servan-Schreiber was in as a result. It is

Memory, authority and anti-war politics of French veterans  209 striking that to do so Bollardière validated the veteran credentials of Servan-Schreiber: You served six months under my orders in Algeria, clearly taking pains, in view of a sincere and objective understanding of reality, to give rise to standards of action that were at once effective and worthy of our country and its Army. I think it highly desirable that, having experienced our activity [­action]  and shared in our efforts, you do your job as a journalist in emphasising to public opinion the dramatic aspects of revolutionary warfare that we are facing, and the terrible danger of losing sight, under the pretext of immediate efficacy, of the moral values which alone have hitherto lain behind the greatness of our civilisation and of our Army.32 Consequently, Bollardière was sanctioned the following month with 60 days detainment. His own illustrious veteran credentials inevitably came into play in his public position and in the reaction to it. His promotion to the rank of General in 1956 was the culmination of his experience in the Free French Army and the Resistance in the Second World War and in France’s war in Indochina. He held fast to the lessons he learned along this road. Indeed, he always insisted that his path from most decorated soldier to an activist in the non-violence movement was not a deviation from but a faithful consistency to the cause of man. It was precisely the issue of torture that foregrounded this struggle, since it was, in his learned experience – above all, in the fight against Nazism – the ultimate degradation of man, victim and torturer alike. In his 1972 memoirs and response to Massu, Bollardière invoked his 30-yearlong military experience to claim his moral authority as a witness: I feel myself directly concerned with the problem of violence. It has imposed itself on me my whole life. For thirty years I was a soldier. I fought in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa. But above all I feel torture like a knife to the heart. I’ve had tortured friends. I’ve had friends who have said they have willingly tortured. I’ve been confronted personally by subversive warfare on both sides – I waged it in the maquis in the Ardennes. I fought against it in Indochina, then in Algeria. I am the witness of things I have seen that do not belong to me in my own right. I’m obliged, along with others, to search for what they mean for us. The meaning that we will give them together touches each of us and all of us.33 In taking his stance against the use of torture in the war, Bollardière did not invoke the memory of Vichy in order to conflate it with the post-war French Republic, but rather to allude to the uncomfortable parallels. As he put it, In 1940, I had been condemned to death by a military tribunal of the Vichy government for having affirmed my will to remain a free man.

210  Hugh McDonnell In 1957, some days after my return to France, I appeared before the Ministry of National Defence and Secretary of State for War who threatened to throw me out of the Army because I had just written a public letter in the name of respect for man and for our civilisation.34 From his experience of fighting Nazism and its collaborators in Vichy France, Bollardière was also sensitive to the “grey zone” of complicity. In fact, his public letter was motivated by just such a refusal of the complicity of silence or passivity: “my goal had been precisely to break the sordid conspiracy of silence, and to voice [crier] my conviction”.35 Bollardière was typical of other veterans in his observation that conveying the reality of the French war in Algeria to the French public was both a distinctly difficult and urgent task. One reason for this, he suggested, was to be located in the memory of the French public as a whole, whereby France was a priori incapable of inflicting on others what Nazis inflicted on them. Likewise, while not conflating Nazis, the French and – with the war then raging in Vietnam – the Americans, he disputed that radical distinctions could be made between the violence each inflicted: the problem remains if public opinion is ready to take onboard the fact that in Algeria we have all collectively been responsible for I don’t know how many My Lais and Oradours, on a smaller scale perhaps … The German people were formerly confronted with this kind of problem. There, too, men spoke out, documents were published. In France at the time [of the Algerian War], as in Germany previously, opinion was deaf and passive.36 Hence the urgency of the message of Bollardière’s 1972 Bataille d’Alger, bataille de l’homme as a direct response to the publication of General Jacques Massu’s La vraie bataille d’Alger, published the previous year. Bollardière described the release of Massu’s apology for the tactics of torture he employed as commander in the Battle of Algiers: “General Massu’s book awakened a world of memories within me. The sudden upsurge in my memory of this flood of violence, of crimes and lies shook me profoundly”.37 Bollardière mobilized the lessons of his military career and life – aspects which, he emphasized, were inextricably intertwined – to critique Massu’s apology for the use of torture by the French army in Algeria on the grounds of its efficacy. Quite aside from the fallacy of the efficacy argument, Bollardière appealed to memory to persuade his readers that torture was deeply degrading and self-defeating. Strikingly, however, Bollardière again made recourse to the experience of other veterans to make his case. Specifically, he quoted the important 1957 pamphlet Des rappelés témoignent, which brought together, under the auspices of the Comité de résistance spirituelle, testimonies of conscripts blowing the whistle on the violence of “pacification”. Memory here was again instrumentalized as an explosive means of conveying the seriousness of what was happening to readers back in mainland France. A “corporal R” was quoted from August 1956 as saying, “if one day there is a new Nuremberg tribunal, we will all be

Memory, authority and anti-war politics of French veterans  211 condemned. Oradour? We do that every day”. The reference here was to the town of Oradour-­sur-Glane – the scene of one of the most infamous Nazi massacres in June 1944. The Des rappelés témoignent pamphlet also occasioned an important intervention by one of the editors of Les Temps modernes, Jean-Paul Sartre, in that journal in May 1957. This indicates that there were both important overlaps and core distinctions between those in the anti-war movement who were concerned with the testimonies of veterans. While both Bollardière and Sartre emphasized the importance of this 1957 collection of testimonies, the former retained a steadfast loyalty to the best traditions of the French army and French imperialism, whereas the latter, and Les Temps modernes as a whole, took a much more iconoclastic and hostile view of these institutions. In the next section, I will examine how veterans’ testimonies and moral authority were instrumentalized to pursue a more radical political agenda in the pages of Les Temps modernes.

Veterans’ testimonies in Les Temps modernes and Esprit If the signalling and striving to accrue authority for their message was not so acute in Les Temps modernes and Esprit in comparison with L’Ancien d’Algérie, this was in large part because they had already accumulated plenty in the post-war intellectual field in France. Both publications were strongly anchored in the experience of the Occupation during the Second World War and hit the post-war intellectual ground running with reputations as key exemplars of the Resistance spirit of forging a new society out of the old. If the FNACA hesitated to be labelled leftist, and Bollardière simply did not engage with the term, these two journals embraced left-wing ideologies and strove to direct progressive politics in France, whether from the Christian personalist perspective of Esprit or the existentialist and Marxist tendencies grouped together at Les Temps modernes. Both journals channelled this energy into anti-colonial political projects, including early and strong advocacy of negotiation to end the war in Algeria.38 Both enjoyed a political and intellectual clout disproportionate to modest circulation figures of around 10,000.39 Government targeting of the two journals, and the contempt which the French military voiced against them, are suggestive of their perceived leverage over key sections of opinion. Likewise, the military’s preoccupation with such critical outlets was indicated by explicit instructions to soldiers not to speak out on their return lest they fuel critical intellectuals or Communists, and those who did so while still on service faced punishment.40 Additional authority was conveyed in the pages of the two journals by the testimony of veterans. It is notable that testimonial accounts of veterans also appeared in L’Ancien d’Algérie, though not with the same frequency, and the examples chosen were not so explosive in their revelations about French counter-insurgency. Testimonies selected for publication in Esprit and Les Temps modernes, furthermore, often conspicuously mobilized the authority

212  Hugh McDonnell of the deeply entrenched memory of the Second World War, including analogies with fascism or Nazism that were anathema to the FNACA. This was a way both to understand the war and to communicate that understanding to as wide an audience as possible. Examining the marked prominence of historical analogies with Vichy, the German Occupation, Nazism, or the Second World War in general, these were a form of emphasizing violence in Algeria, which served to kick-start a stalled imagination amongst an insufficiently attentive and outraged French public. Furthermore, just as the FNACA concerned itself with its representativeness of veterans, the same question posed itself for the testimonies published in Les Temps modernes and Esprit. While they were typically presented as typical or penned by common veterans, marked political savvy or cultural sophistication in fact distinguished many of these testimonies. If FNACA’s aims were to secure the material and moral rights of rankand-file veterans and to contribute to negotiating a peaceful termination of the war, the aims of Les Temps modernes and Esprit converged with the second of these. Its method was quite different, however, and, in this sense, they were closer to Bollardière in trying to press home the extent of crisis in ­Algeria, for which testimonies of veterans were considered an excellent resource. Prominent aspects of these veterans’ testimonies were the use of memory of the Second World War as well as frequent accounts of a particular culture of military institutionalization’s impacting on French troops, especially conscripts. The consistent indictment of this military culture, and notably its degradation of the imagination and empathy of these young Frenchmen, was a core explanation of the perpetuation of violence in ­Algeria. Curiously, this was denounced repeatedly not simply as immoral or objectionable but explicitly as stupid. What is more, one can discern stronger prefigurations of ideas about the complex complicity characteristic of soldiers that would in later decades come to be conceptualized in terms of the “grey zone” between perpetrators and victims. Historical analogy, then, was a prominent commonality of these soldiers’ testimonies published by Esprit and Les Temps modernes, above all with the Second World War. Some examples were pitched in general terms, others invoked specific incidents or phenomena within that conflict and others referred to movements like fascism: a generic Nazism or fascism alternated with analogies or comparisons to the Gestapo, the SS, the Occupation and genocide. The French fascism that had become synonymous with Vichy was also invoked, but not to the extent of its German counterpart. Nor was France’s experience in the Second World War the only historical reference point in play. The French Revolution was a recurrent motif, although itself often mediated through the conception that this was the tradition defended by the French Resistance against Nazism and domestic fascism. Historical analogy in the accounts of veterans was presented in the two journals as an authoritative language to attempt to bring home the gravity of the war in Algeria to a metropolitan public which seemed not to register the facts

Memory, authority and anti-war politics of French veterans  213 presented to them daily. Accordingly, one of the editors of Esprit, Jean-Marie Domenach, opened his review of Servan-Schreiber’s Lieutenant en Algérie by recognizing the vacancy that imagination needed to fill: “Nothing is more difficult to make real than reality”. And, revealingly, it was precisely historical analogy that he mobilized for the task, following on the thought with the question Who along our roads during these holidays would have an inkling of this Algerian war, through which more than a million young Frenchmen will have soon passed? Same impression as 1939–40, when life went on shielded by the Maginot Line […] Yet men are dying there, the destiny of the nation is being played out there (that’s the only point which official speeches don’t lie about). He reiterated that infamous historical yardstick in announcing that “we are becoming entrenched [on s’installe] like in 1939–40. We are rotting like in 1939–40”.41 Contrary to Domenach’s inference, historical analogy was not only about the rendering of reality. In these testimonies, in any case, it was comparable to the polemic form of rhetoric – not only purporting to describe the world but also intervening in it in order to change it. Unlike the polemic, however, their authority as texts derived not from the forcefulness of prose but from the presumed veracity and respect accorded to their first-hand testimony. U ­ nrivalled epistemic authority was accorded to soldiers’ experience of the conflict and from the prestige derived from the common understanding of enlistment in the army as trans-generational patriotic duty. Being sent to fight in Algeria was, from this perspective, equivalent to the previous generation’s engagement in the Second World War and Resistance. Memory here again overrode the government stipulation that the Algerian conflict was not a war at all. If veteran authorship was, as it were, the guarantee of these testimonies, what did they aim to convey to their readership? Despite editorial policy differences, across both journals, there was a discernible framing of the war in the veterans’ testimonies in terms of an interconnected threefold moral and political crisis: within Algeria itself, first; of French youth, second; and by extension, at the heart of France itself, third. A striking example emphasizing to metropolitan audiences the scale of the first level of crisis – the degeneracy of the Algerian War itself – was the account by Jean-Luc Tahon, “En ‘pacificant’ l’Algérie” in the May–June 1958 edition of Les Temps modernes. He described how inside an army lorry “six Algerian peasants discovered another face of France”. Describing the sound of the ensuing abuse and cries, he recalled that, “it was as if at that moment I again saw the body of a comrade tortured by the Germans in 1944”.42 Other accounts, which detailed encounters with Algerian veterans of the French army, could only have further problematized the presumption of a seamless thread linking resistance to Vichy and the German occupation to the French military campaign in North Africa.

214  Hugh McDonnell The second problem that was consistently flagged up as particularly disturbing over and above the dirty war in Algeria was its effect on a generation of French youth serving there. Indeed, given the sheer number of conscripts passing through the French army it was not an issue that could be contained within that institution. “There is currently in Algeria a vast enterprise of dehumanization of French youth”, as Georges Mattéï put it.43 A primary complaint was that it was distinctly unjust that French youth had to carry the burden and suffer for the legacy of injustices in Algeria compounded over previous generations. Jean-Luc Tahon regretted that, “French youth, sub-machine gun in hand, without ideal or example, are ­being hung out to dry [se faisande] slowly under the Algerian sky”.44 And as his invocation of morality implied, beyond the betrayal and abandonment of this youth were widespread concerns for its degeneration through exposure to the Algerian War, so many aspects of which were redolent of fascism. A dominant narrative in the accounts of veterans pitched well-meaning young conscripts corrupted by hardened career officers or violent paratroopers. The fact that paratroopers were untainted by the Vichy regime, having been established by the Free French in London, highlights the gravity of fascist analogies.45 But, while career officers or paratroopers were more commonly held to be at the root of the rot, the testimonies made clear that the conscripts had been profoundly marked by it and had often embraced it to the extent of internalizing what became a naturalized reflex for torture and gratuitous violence. A letter from a young conscript based in Germany prior to embarking for Algeria, and reproduced as “La ­Gangrène” in the September 1961 edition of Esprit, commented on the passivity and complicity of young appelés, remarking on their resignation to being robots.46 The sentiment was perhaps most powerfully put by Mattéї who, as it happens, was a member of the FNACA before he considered that its anti-war politics were insufficiently strong. Reporting on the apprenticeship in racism as a reflex and the omnipotence [la toute-puissance] of force, he noted that the young men who are fighting today in Algeria are 20 years old; they will all do 18 months in the French army. What are we making of this generation in this breeding ground that is Algeria today? We are paving the ground for the Nazification of my comrades.47 A year later Mattéï referred to the cynicism of those who minimized torture in Algeria by saying that it was nothing new. What was new, retorted Mattéï, was to engage more than a million young Frenchmen in a system of torturers. The sheer scale of the mobilization of French youth that Mattéï pointed to could only have exacerbated this fear of fascism. In turn, it was conducive to rethinking the relation between the military and French democracy; supposedly necessary for its preservation, it seemed more than ever before just as likely to subvert it.

Memory, authority and anti-war politics of French veterans  215

Conclusion Between FNACA, General Bollardière and Esprit and Les Temps modernes there were both strong interconnections – both in terms of aims and ­personnel – and clear divergences. As such, their recourse to war veterans’ moral authority and testimonies to pursue political aims sheds light on useful comparative questions for historians of the French-Algerian War and of veterans’ movements and memory more broadly. For one thing, they allow us to perceive more clearly how differentials in reputation and organizational strength play into the capacity and authority of veterans to make political claims. In this regard, we can see that memory, and particularly memory of the Second World War, was fundamental to the anti-war discourse of all these actors, albeit in differing ways and degrees. The memory of past war experiences allowed for the reconsideration of the meaning of war in Algeria in all the cases examined here. FNACA, General Bollardière and Les Temps modernes and Esprit certainly had common priorities: the plight of French youth, voicing anti-war critique effectively in the context of an indifferent public, intervening performatively in the sense not of describing the status quo in their discourses but trying to overhaul it, foregrounding the connections between the experience of veterans and the very nation itself and, of course, most importantly, advocating an end to the war across the Mediterranean. Yet their very different levels of strength manifested in key differences in the pursuit of their aims. FNACA’s claims for the material and moral rights of veterans and its right to make a contribution to making peace in Algeria were constantly embedded in discourse which affirmed its authority to make such claims in the first place. More precisely, this can be seen as three claims based on growing organizational capacity, representation of all Algeria veterans and the unique authority of the veteran conscript. Nonetheless, it appealed to the history, tradition and memory of the prestige of the French Republican conscript army in its public interventions in order to buttress its claims. In contrast, Les Temps modernes and Esprit was less hesitant in conveying the extent of the crisis that they perceived as unfolding in Algeria and, in turn, back in France. This was to be seen in less deference to the tradition of the army. It was also on this point that they tended to differ starkly with Bollardière, who saw the French army in Algeria as betraying the history of what was a venerable institution. Bollardière naturally used his own credentials as a Resister and Free French army hero in the Second World War to support his claims and defend his critique. But he was just as likely to refer to the authority and credentials of others, including conscripts who lacked the guarantees of his rank, who took an admirable stand against the army’s campaign of “pacification”. A further point of distinction lay in the bolder publication choices of Les Temps modernes and Esprit in comparison with FNACA and its mouthpiece L’Ancien d’Algérie, above all in terms of highlighting a perceived pernicious

216  Hugh McDonnell military culture whose impact on young conscripts was shockingly powerful. Interestingly, this included an adumbration of the kind of complex and systemically induced complicity which would in later decades be conceptualized as the “grey zone”. Yet both Les Temps modernes and Esprit too, like Bollardière, foregrounded the authority of testimonies of veterans and of memory to buttress their message, powerfully invoking analogies with and memories of fascism and Nazism. This served to move a French public that seemed indifferent and to stand out in what were highly competitive intellectual and political fields at the height of this paradigmatic war of European decolonization. This was amply exemplified both in the passion and stamina of the FNACA, in the heat of the prose of testimonies in Les Temps modernes and Esprit, and in both qualities in the interventions of Bollardière.

Notes 1 This chapter has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (637709 – GREYZONE – ERC-2014-STG). 2 See William B. Cohen, “The Sudden Memory of Torture: The Algerian War in French Discourse, 2000–2001”, French Politics, Culture & Society 19:3 (2001), 82–94; Benjamin Stora, La gangrène et l’oubli: mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: Découverte, 1992); Benjamin Stora, “The Algerian War in French Memory: Vengeful Memory’s Violence”, in Ussama Samir Makdisi and Paul A. Silverstein (eds.), Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 151–176; Martin Evans, Algeria: France’s Undeclared War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 339–369. An important exception but one looking specifically at French activists against the war within France is ­Martin Evans, The Memory of Resistance: French Opposition to the Algerian War (1954–1962) (Oxford: Berg, 1997). 3 An excellent source for issues and questions pertaining to French veterans from the Algerian War is Martin S. Alexander, Martin Evans, and J.F.V. Keiger (eds.), The Algerian War and the French Army: Experiences, Images, Testimonies (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). See also Claire Mauss-Copeaux, Appelés en Algérie: la parole confisquée (Pairs: Hachette, 1998); Jean-Charles Jauffret, Soldats en Algérie: expériences contrastées des hommes du contingent (Paris: Autrement, 2011). 4 Stora, La gangrène, 238; Benjamin Stora, Le dictionnaire des livres de la guerre d’Algérie: romans, nouvelles, poésie, photos, histoire, essais, récits historiographiques, témoignages, biographies, mémoires, autobiographies: 1955–1995 (Paris: Harmattan, 1996). 5 Jean-Yves Alquier, Nous avons pacifié Tazalt (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1957); Jacques Massu, La Vraie bataille d’Alger (Paris: Plon, 1971). 6 Anndal Narayanan, “Home from the Djebel: The Making of Algerian War Veterans in France, 1956–1974” (PhD thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2016). Narayanan’s study compares the FNACA with the nationalist, pro-Algérie française Union nationale des combattants d’Afrique du nord (UNCAFN). The comparison is conjoined with a comprehensive and penetrating analysis of veterans’ politics in France more broadly, however, and, as such, it is a highly valuable source for scholars interested in veterans’ politics generally. 7 “Rapport des bureaux nationaux”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (December 1958), 3.

Memory, authority and anti-war politics of French veterans  217 8 For Todd Shepard, around 1961 a narrative of the historical inevitability of Algerian independence had become hegemonic. See Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). 9 Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, Lieutenant en Algérie (Paris: Julliard, 1957). 10 “Editorial”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (January 1961), 1. 11 “Editorial”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (Paris) (November 1960), 1. 12 Narayanan, “Home from the Djebel”, 204. 13 Paul Bebiesse, “Rapport des bureaux nationaux présenté au congrès”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (December 1958), 2. 14 “Projet de programme de la Fédération nationale des anciens d’Algérie”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (November 1960), 4–5. 15 On First and Second World War veterans, see Antoine Prost, In the Wake of War: ‘Les Anciens Combattants’ and French Society, 1914–1939 (London: Bloomsbury, 1992); Chris Millington, From Victory to Vichy: Veterans in Inter-War France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012); Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 16 Narayanan, “Home from the Djebel”. 17 J. P. Prouteau, “Notre congrès”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (January 1961), 4. 18 “Editorial”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (December, 1958), 1. 19 “100 Anciens d’Algérie s’adressent à la nation”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (March, 1962), 4. 20 J. P. Prouteau, “Ce qu’il nous faut entreprendre”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (December 1958), 4. 21 René Pihles, “Nos amis de Corse”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (July–August 1959), 3. 22 “Appel aux anciens d’Algérie”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (January 1962), 8. 23 Ibid. 24 Narayanan, “Home from the Djebel”, 122, 123, 127, 219. This perhaps complicates Enzo Traverso’s thesis about memory in recent decades prioritizing victimhood at the expense of the vanquished, since it is not the likes of these actors who claim that label that he has in mind. See Enzo Traverso, Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 25 “Au travail pour défendre nos droits”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (January 1961), 2. See also “Editorial”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (May 1961), 1. 26 Dante-Dominique Nardini, “La guerre d’Algérie par Jules Roy (Edition Julliard)”, L’Ancien d’Algérie (November 1960), 7. 27 Bernard W. Sigg, Le silence et la honte: névroses de la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: Messidor, 1989), 106. 28 On the emergence of the language of the “grey zone” in Western memory and historiography, particularly from the 1980s onwards, see Enzo Traverso, Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914–1945 (London: Verso, 2016). 29 Jacques Pâris de Bollardière, Bataille d’Alger, bataille de l’homme (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1972), 52. 30 Ibid., 15. 31 Ibid., 22. 32 Bollardière’s letter published on 27 March 1957 in L’Express is reproduced in Jean Toulat, Un combat pour l’homme: Le general de Bollardière (Paris: Centurion, 1987), 74. 33 Pâris de Bollardière, Bataille d’Alger, bataille de l’homme, 10–11. 34 Ibid., 95. 35 Ibid., 160. 36 Ibid., 141. 37 Ibid., 131.

218  Hugh McDonnell 38 Helenice Rodrigues da Silva, “Le Discours d’‘Esprit’ et des ‘Temps modernes’ contre la guerre d’Algérie” (PhD thesis, Université Paris Nanterre, 1991), 276–277, 286. 39 Michael Scott Christofferson, French Intellectuals against the Left: The Antitotalitarian Moment of the 1970s (Oxford: Berghahn, 2004), 77, n. 40. 40 Narayanan, “Home from the Djebel”, 54. 41 Jean-Marie Domenach, “Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber: Lieutenant en Algérie (Ed., René Julliard)”, Esprit (September 1957), 301–303. 42 Jean-Luc Tahon, “En ‘pacificant’ l’Algérie”, Les Temps modernes (May–June 1958), 2099. 43 Georges Mattéї, “Jours kabyles. (Notes d’un appelé)”, Les Temps modernes (July–August, 1957), 159. For details of Mattéï path from veteran of the Algerian War to anti-war activism see Evans, The Memory of Resistance, 105–108. 44 Tahon, “En ‘pacifiant’ l’Algérie”, 2112. 45 John E. Talbot, “The Myth and Reality of the Paratrooper in the Algerian War”, Armed Forces and Society 3:1 (1976), 70. 46 Anon., “La Gangrène”, Esprit (September, 1961), 265. 47 Mattéї, “Jours kabyles”, 159.

14 State power, cultural exchange and the “Forgotten War” British veterans of the Korean War, 1953–2013 Grace Huxford In 2012, John Preston-Bell, a former British Army officer who had served during the Korean War (1950–1953), was interviewed about his experiences by a leading UK national museum, the Imperial War Museum (IWM). ­A fter leaving school in 1950, like the majority of men his age, Preston-Bell was required to serve 18 months of conscripted national service in the military.1 That summer, his unit was posted to Korea, where war had broken out in June. Before he was demobilized in August 1951, Preston-Bell saw action at the infamous Battle of the Imjin River (April 1951), the most well-known British action of the war. When he returned to Britain and began an undergraduate degree at Cambridge, he described himself as a “nine-day wonder” whom fellow students treated with great interest. But, he said, “on the tenth day, people [had] forgotten and I forgot too and began living the rest of my life”. He subsequently destroyed all his letters home (“it was all a bit Boys’ Own Paper stuff”) and only sought out other veterans during the 50th anniversary commemorations of the war. As one of a small group of veterans, he returned to South Korea and was astonished at what he saw: They had, in the biblical sense, they had magnified me and I was so grateful to them that they had made my life worthwhile, made my contribution worthwhile and I suddenly realised that what I’d been keeping inside was, I think, love.2 Confronted with the skyscrapers and urban development of modern-day, globalized Seoul, Preston-Bell felt that his military service had been vindicated. He was heartened to see a “buoyant, optimistic, cheerful, wealthy, vulgar society”. He finished by stating his wish that British ­p eople could have exhibited as much gratitude as the South Koreans. For him, as for many other veterans, the British commemorative effort had been woefully small. The first large-scale monument to the war in Britain was only unveiled in 2014, and the most famous Korean War veteran was still a fictitious one – John Cleese’s character Basil Fawlty in the ­t elevision sitcom Fawlty Towers.3 For much of the twentieth century,

220  Grace Huxford as in the United States,4 the Korean War was known in Britain as the “Forgotten War”, and it was seldom memorialized in national remembrance culture. Preston-Bell was one of many Korean War veterans interviewed by the IWM and his case shows us how veterans’ lives – and even their very ­subjectivity – were formed in relation to a seemingly apathetic British public and state. Historians too neglected the subject of the British experience in the Korean War until the late 2000s: it attracted only a few detailed military histories, and post-war British historians tended to overlook it in their analyses of post-1945 Britain as it sat awkwardly alongside the creation of the post-war welfare state.5 Veterans’ history too rarely featured in histories of post-1945 Britain or in late-twentieth-century British politics. But Korean War veterans are an important case study in veterans’ history. Faced with a void in public remembrance, British Korean War veterans developed a distinct memorial culture of their own. From the late 1970s, although the Korean War remained largely forgotten by wider British culture, its veterans claimed a remarkable degree of ownership over the conflict and placed both South Korean gratitude and British “forgetting” at the centre of their wartime remembrance. This chapter explores how this small group of veterans understood, defined and owned “their” war from 1950 to the early twenty-first century. It does so through three interpretive lenses: forgetting, state power and cultural exchange. To most veterans, forgetting seemed the most common response to their service after 1950. Korea’s forgotten status remains the most frequently repeated fact about the Korean War in contemporary Britain.6 But veterans’ post-war lives were also heavily rooted in their changed relationship with the state. Whilst sociologists have explored the state-led transformation of civilian into soldier in depth, few consider the inverse process.7 Korean War veterans were confronted with their changed status in the late twentieth century: they were no longer Cold War warriors but the object of state support in their old age and retirement. Yet it was through organizations like the British Korea Veterans Association (BKVA), Britain’s leading Korean War veterans’ association, that they were able to reclaim some degree of agency. Their associational activities were often consciously transnational, as with the extensive “revisit” programme to South Korea. This chapter thus tells a simultaneously domestic and transnational story about one particular veteran community in the second half of the twentieth century, exploring how it established itself and ultimately how it viewed the British state for which its members had “given their youth”.8 This veteran community forged a particular identity and set of relations as a result of the wider popular forgetting of their conflict. This chapter first examines B ­ ritain’s role in the Korean War before asking how and why it came to be forgotten within British national memory. It then explores the post-war experience of British Korean War veterans and their relationship with the state before highlighting how the

State power, cultural exchange and the “Forgotten War”  221 BKVA offered veterans a new opportunity to reclaim agency and exert an unusual level of influence over the post-­conflict memory of Korea. This chapter is based on extensive research using veteran memoirs, life-writing and oral history interviews. Oral history and veteran history are intimately connected: Alistair Thomson’s Anzac Memories (1994) first used oral history interviews with Australian Great War veterans and demonstrated how the construction of memories and identities shifted over time.9 Thomson’s work continues to be a mainstay for oral historians examining how wartime narratives are “composed” in interview settings. But veteran memories are not always in a state of flux: Juliette Pattison has suggested that testimony can be more “resilient” than oral historians think and that certain identities remain intact throughout the interview process.10 For instance, in the case of Korea, many veterans maintain they are still “forgotten”, even though they have been explicitly recruited by the museum to tell their wartime stories.11 How stable veteran memories are therefore continues to be a matter of debate among oral historians. The interviews at the heart of this chapter were conducted by the IWM between the 1980s and 2000s, and represent an important, if overlooked, evidence base for historians of the Korean War. They emanate from a specific institutional oral history acquisition policy. The IWM’s Department of Sound Records was established in 1972, inheriting the museum’s gramophone recordings, collections of sound effects and 300 cans of interviews from the BBC’s landmark series, The Great War (1964).12 Although the ­museum’s primary focus was gathering interviews with First World War veterans, by the late 1980s, its interviewers began to turn to post-war ­conflicts, including Korea.13 Interviews were conducted either by oral historians from within the museum (including Dr Conrad Wood and military historian Peter M. Hart) or donated by organizations and individuals.14 The IWM’s ­Korean War interviews also form part of an oral history collection that offers the opportunity to access the viewpoints of veterans who have since passed away.15 Interviews with Korean War veterans were produced within charged frameworks of collective memory. It is this context, as much as the war itself, that shaped the veteran experience after the war. The IWM’s collection and curation of oral histories across the last quarter of the twentieth century make it an ideal prism through which to analyze how veteran memories interact with wider collective memory. As the World Wars became more famed within British national life, Korean War veterans repeated their belief that they had been cast aside and forgotten. But their testimonies speak to more than just the cultural amnesia surrounding the war: These far-­reaching interviews highlight how the veterans’ relationship with the ­British state changed profoundly after the war and how the currents of global change shaped their views of Korea and Britain. Furthermore, they describe a ­vibrant and transnational associational culture that to some extent lessened the resentment at their forgotten status.

222  Grace Huxford

Korea: Britain’s “Forgotten War” When the Korean War first broke out in late June 1950, the British people were highly alarmed.16 Coming just five years after the end of the Second World War, some worried that they or their families would be required to fight once again in a total war. This anxiety soon dissipated as it became clear that Korea was a very different conflict. The Communist North, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) had invaded the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the South on 25 June 1950. The two had been separate states since 1948, following the temporary division of the peninsula at the end of the Second World War, with the Soviet Union overseeing the north and the United States overseeing the south. This division had followed 30  years of Japanese colonial rule. Historian Bruce Cumings argued that the war was in effect a civil war, although others have since argued that the international Cold War context was crucial in stoking the tensions and ­influenced the course of the war.17 The United Nations pledged its support to the ROK and, led by the United States, sent forces from member nations to protect the ROK and repel the invasion. Britain was among these forces, first pledging naval support and later troops, eventually forming a central part in the 1st Commonwealth Division.18 The war resulted in over 1,000 British casualties, with a similar number taken as prisoners of war.19 In the first year, British troops were involved in many dramatic advances and retreats up and down in the peninsula, facing the massive Chinese Spring ­Offensive in Spring 1951 as the People’s Republic of China had joined the war in the previous autumn to support the DPRK. It was in April 1951 that one of the most famous British actions, the Battle of the Imjin River, took place, and 527 officers and men of the Gloucester Regiment were taken prisoner in defence of “Gloucester Hill” at Solma-Ri.20 Fighting later concentrated around the 38th Parallel, the dividing line that the United States and ­Soviet Union had first used in 1945, and British troops were involved in ­patrolling, skirmishes and larger battles around this area, such as the Battle of the Hook (May 1953). By this time, the peace negotiations, which had been rumbling on since 1951, resolved the thorny issue of repatriated prisoners of war, and an uneasy armistice was signed between the two sides.21 When British servicemen returned from Korea after the armistice, many felt that their welcome was muted. Some newspapers had been calling it a “slumbering” war during the conflict itself, and commentators noted that English people were more concerned with their cricket team’s victory in the Ashes than the return of their Cold War warriors.22 It was not helped by the scant knowledge of the peninsula in Britain: As one veteran, ­Kenneth Black, put it, “we didn’t even know where the damn country was”.23 ­Preston-Bell claimed that there were “no histrionics” when he arrived back: “I think ­people in England were fed up with war by then. They had the First and Second World War and Korea was an unnecessary war, far away, place where nobody knew, fighting for people one didn’t know why”.24 The sentiment

State power, cultural exchange and the “Forgotten War”  223 that “everybody else had just had a war” was commonly expressed by ­Korean servicemen, both before and after their time in Korea.25 Many were content to “get on” with their pre-service lives, but others found the transition harder. In his interview with Lindsay Baker, Benjamin Whitchurch – a former national service conscript with the Gloucestershire Regiment and a prisoner of war – described heavy-drinking sessions in his local pubs in ­Bristol. Although he returned to the butcher’s shop where he had worked before he was conscripted, it took him a long time to settle back into the “world of living” as he missed the army and had no friends in “Civvy Street”.26 Critical military theorists have noted that this image of the war-ravaged veteran is recurrent in late-twentieth-century Britain.27 The veteran, in returning to “civil society”, is a troubled and contradictory figure: He is, to use Jenny Edkins’s words, “a promise of safety and security” but also of “abuse, control and coercion”.28 We are not surprised – and indeed, perhaps even expect – servicemen to be troubled by their wartime experience and to be a “problem” when they return to civilian society.29 Scholarly analysis has tended to focus on the veteran’s reintegration into society and “solving” this apparently problematic status.30 But this is only one way to analyze veteran experience, and, in the case of Korean War veterans, the cultural and commemorative aftermath of the war is integral to understanding veterans’ responses. I have written elsewhere about why Korea has been forgotten in British culture.31 We can attribute its widespread omission to several factors. First, even during the war itself, the Second World War exerted a discursive dominance that overshadowed Korea. The Second World War became the twentieth century’s most morally unimpeachable war and offered Britain an edifying and unifying moment around which to construct its national identity in the late twentieth century.32 This process was underway even during the 1950s. The Second World War was constantly referenced by those at home and in Korea. This discursive dominance was entrenched even further in national memory by the time of the interviews in the 1980s and 1990s. Another factor that complicated the British experience in Korea was the ambiguous legacy of the Korean War and wider Cold War in Britain. Charles Young has argued that the unclear war aims of the Korean War meant that the war’s ending was not greeted with celebration in the United States, and we can see a comparable response in Britain.33 Korea’s ambiguous position as an international “police action”, together with Britain’s lack of historic ties with the peninsula, widened even further the distance between the British people and the conflict. Korea, like other aspects of the Cold War, failed to capture popular imagination in Britain or to provide a narrative as powerful as the Second World War’s. Although moments of the Korean War – such as the infamous Battle of the Imjin River – represented British stoicism, commitment and even irony (when one British commander famously noted to the American headquarters that the increasingly alarming situation was “a bit sticky”), the war soon slipped from public consciousness.

224  Grace Huxford Korea was thus forgotten before the war even drew to a close. Preston-Bell recalled how “We came back forgotten war soldiers”.34 This sense of being forgotten heightened over time as the memorialization and cultural recognition of the First and Second World Wars became more widespread. One veteran wrote three times to the Queen about their lack of remembrance, noting how his son’s exam papers had questions on the World Wars and Vietnam, but not Korea.35 In particular, Korean veterans resented the lack of public, state-led remembrance. Local memorials were erected (largely instigated by veterans’ organizations) and small monuments were unveiled in 1987 in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral and at the National Arboretum, Staffordshire, in 2000, but it was not until 2014 that a large-scale national memorial was unveiled on the Victoria Embankment in London. Prior to this, many veterans felt excluded from the very state that they had been compelled to defend. This phenomenon is perhaps not unique to Korean veterans: Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Soviet war veterans from Russia and Ukraine not only experienced material loss (with pensions failing to keep pace with hyperinflation, if they were paid at all) but also “suffered from a loss of national and individual self-esteem”.36 The system for which they had fought had been dismantled and their place in national remembrance diminished. Whilst Britain did not experience such a dramatic shift in its political system, the end of the Cold War and Britain’s increasingly nostalgic vision of its past conflicts has arguably made it harder for veterans to make their efforts in an ambiguous conflict seem worthwhile or integral to British national life.

State power and the veteran But the aftermath of war is not just shaped by the cultural context of postwar society: For the veteran, it is built too on a realigned relationship with the state. Sociologist Paul Higgs argues that modern citizenship, predicated on both state and individual responsibilities, excludes those who cannot fulfil their duties and denotes a very different relationship with the state.37 How then do veterans, formerly active defenders of a state, position themselves when they no longer fit that role? To unpick the relationship between state and veteran further, it is first worth examining the terminology used to describe these former service personnel. Christopher Dandeker, Simon Wessely and others have noted that the term “ex-serviceman” is preferred to “veteran” in Britain as the former can describe any man with military experience, whereas the latter implies active (usually front-line) involvement in military operations.38 However, in much post-1945 warfare, this definition presents a problem. The majority of servicemen in twentieth-century warfare could be categorized as “technical specialists”, not infantrymen in hand-to-hand combat.39 However, the term veteran cannot just relate to specific battle experiences and front line action.40 Different chapters in this volume show that veteranhood can be a

State power, cultural exchange and the “Forgotten War”  225 political category too. In the United States, the term “veteran”, although still reliant on military service, implied a new political position (and power) in society after that service ends. By contrast, British “ex-servicemen” have historically wielded no such collective power in society and their label refers to their former status (an “ex” serviceman), rather than a new social or political role.41 Britain’s hesitant relationship with the term “veteran” thus further complicates an already multilayered term. But despite this preference in Britain toward “ex-serviceman” rather than “veteran”, those who served in Korea did refer to themselves as “­veterans”. The purposeful use of the term was exemplified by the founding of the BKVA, an organization that, through its strong links with US and particularly ­Korean veteran organizations, defined itself in a transnational setting rather than simply a British “ex-service” tradition.42 From the start, the BKVA was also composed of a variety of different service personnel. Korean War servicemen had included regulars but also volunteers for the Korean campaign and conscripted national servicemen. National service complicated both Korean veterans’ relationship with the state and their social ­position. As Peter Reese argues, one was less likely to categorize a healthy young man who served two years in his late teens as a veteran, particularly in the immediate aftermath of war. Reese, himself a former conscript, notes that “[a] veteran needed some grey hairs and a limp; a national serviceman joining at eighteen would be released before his twenty-first birthday”.43 Of even more significance to Korean veterans, national servicemen also did not qualify for military pensions due to the length of their service. At the time of the Korean War, service personnel had to have served 16 years from age 21 (officers) or 22 years from age 18 (other ranks).44 As a result, national service conscripts who served two years failed to qualify for pensions. This was a common cause of grievance mentioned in many interviews. Whitchurch described how he and other veterans went to “various places” to complain about their pension: They paid us a lump sum because we were one point under pensionable. Forgotten army, whenever you hear about the Korean War, it’s the forgotten army[.] … Even King George recognised the war but the government wouldn’t. And that’s it. So you get nothing.45 The veteran community, although bound by memories of shared experience, was thus a heterogeneous mix of ages, ranks and periods and terms of service, with different grievances toward the state. To some extent, we can argue that these Korean War veterans were a “problem” for the state. First, veterans were an ageing community. ­Sociologists Jenny Hockey and Allison James argue that in a welfare state, on the whole, when people reach old age they become objects of surveillance instead of active citizens of the state.46 In other words, the state was no longer something to protect but something that offered you protection.

226  Grace Huxford The changed relationship stems largely from the developmental processes at the heart of ageing.47 Whilst this change is not unique to veterans, the transition was perhaps more marked for veterans, and those of the Korean War, given the emphasis placed on their role in protecting the state and democracy in the early Cold War. By the early 1950s, military authorities held that the ideal soldier was a “soldier-citizen”, who was well versed in the details of the democratic system.48 In January 1951, the commander of the Eighth US Army Korea (EUSAK), General Matthew B. Ridgway (1895–1993), asked for a memorandum entitled “Why We Are Here” to be read to all UN servicemen, which reiterated that they were fighting for societal, political and even religious values which underpinned collective Western society.49 Korea was not justified in operational terms but in ideological terms. Nor was this emphasis just restricted to the American leadership. Chief of the Imperial General Staff William Slim said to returning soldiers from Korea, “you have helped to strike a blow in the defence of the free world”.50 For some veterans then, this message contrasted painfully with the lacklustre response from those at home when they returned from Korea and, as they aged, their switch from protector of the state to an object of it. Among injured servicemen, the switch to being an object of state welfare was even more pronounced. In an interview with the IWM, a former NCO in the Northumberland Fusiliers, Thomas Ashley Cunningham-Boothe (1927–2001), argued that his chronic arthritis originated in the cold winter in Korea in 1950/1951, where provision of warm clothing had been poor.51 In an earlier autobiography, he also blamed his condition on malnutrition and other illnesses he contracted during his military service.52 He noted that “It was the price to pay for all my mischief”.53 Cunningham-Boothe produced a significant amount of autobiographical material, from an IWM oral ­h istory interview to poetry to a very frank autobiography. His writing conveys an evident frustration at his changed circumstances. Following ­Korea, ­Cunningham-Boothe served in Hong Kong and spent a year in Canada ­after leaving the British Army. Upon returning home to his mother’s home in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, in the late 1950s, he started to experience great joint pain, keeping to his room and even occasionally shouting embittered insults at passers-by. “My life became one long introspection, serving to distract me from my misery”, he noted: it was an existence full of “Walter Mitty-like escapism”.54 But the case of Cunningham-Boothe also shows another aspect of veteran experience. Arthur Frank argues that illness narratives are often an attempt to regain some sense of agency.55 Cunningham-Boothe’s interview and autobiography certainly describe his reduced circumstances, but he also produced other writing that painted an altogether more positive and ­active picture of veteran life. Under the auspices of a small veteran company, ­Korvet, Cunningham-Boothe wrote and published histories and memoirs of the Korean War. Many other veterans’ memoirs were published by Korvet, primarily with a veteran readership in mind.56 They told stories from the

State power, cultural exchange and the “Forgotten War”  227 “sharp end” and tales of “human endeavour” that only those who had been there would understand.57 Cunningham-Boothe even published his own poetry about the visceral realities of warfare, under the pseudonym “John Briton”.58 In the face of the apparent apathy of the wider public, veterans like Cunningham-Boothe started to write for one another and to develop a small but vibrant community publishing scheme. Through such action, Cunningham-Boothe and others were able to exert a significant degree of ownership of “their” war. It is this veteran agency that forms the final strand of this chapter.

Veteran agency Critical military theorists increasingly acknowledge both veteran agency and their role in the shaping of memory and even academic discourse: As Bulmer and Jackson summarize, the veteran is not simply a “problem” to be solved by scholars or policymakers.59 The first major way that British ­veterans demonstrated their agency in the face of public apathy and a troubled relationship with the state was through the foundation of the BKVA. Mick Geoghegan, who had served with the 14th Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery in Korea, described how in 1976 he became aware that there was no central Korean veterans’ organization. He began to make enquiries at the Korean embassy and, together with an ex-policeman and fellow veteran Alan Moody, began to send out advertisements to local papers or organizations trying to gather other veterans. He recalled how they funded all this themselves, with no public money.60 The organization grew, with different branches forming in London and across the country. Many met in local pubs or British Legion clubs. Barry Summerfield, a former NCO in the 8th King’s Own Irish Hussars, described the moment he walked through the door as “the most incredible experience of my life”.61 The BKVA itself was officially formed at Imphal Barracks, York, on 26 September 1981 and was an amalgamation of the National Association of Korean War Veterans (UK) and the smaller British Korean Veterans Association. Geoghegan, a member of the latter organization, explained that many members wanted to forget the war and “they said do we have to have war in the name, which we wanted to have to say where we had been […] But there was so many people didn’t want war in it, so we dropped the war”.62 Once again, the terminology that the veterans used to refer to themselves was significant and an integral part of their identity as a community: Although keen to include the more active term “veteran”, the group nevertheless decided that the war itself was too unpleasant to include. By 2004, there were 59 branches across the UK.63 In Wessex Branch alone, membership was 60 in 1989, increasing to 151 in 2005 and 185 in 2009.64 The fact that this activity began in the late 1970s and early 1980s is crucial to understanding wider veterans’ history as it was in these decades that many veterans retired from their post-Korea jobs. Psychologist Nigel Hunt

228  Grace Huxford has argued that retirement is a significant moment for veterans. They had “avoided” their experiences throughout busy working and family lives, so retirement is often the first moment that former servicemen address their wartime experience.65 Dan Raschen, a junior officer in the Royal Engineers in Korea, mused about his retirement: “Perhaps it was due to the silence, but now that I had time to reflect on my excursion to Korea, gunfire came quickly to my mind”.66 This sentiment is echoed in the IWM oral history interviews: Summerfield stated that before his retirement he “didn’t have time. My life had taken a different turn”.67 Even very active veterans like ­Geoghegan were caught up with family and work commitments in the late 1970s.68 ­Preston-Bell stated that it was only in his 70s that he acquired the confidence to speak about his military experience and even then, as a former conscript, he did not feel like a “real” soldier.69 Many veterans recalled their involvement in one particular kind of activity: the “revisits” to Korea. Subsidized by the South Korean government, the official trips of the veterans’ organizations back to South Korea began in the early 1980s.70 Many veterans visited on multiple occasions, sometimes with their wives and children.71 For some veterans, the journey itself was part of the adventure: Many of the IWM interviews contain lengthy descriptions of the airplane and its route (which changed over the years after the fall of the Soviet Union and end of the Vietnam War), despite the interviewer’s effort to move discussion onto Korea itself.72 Once again, aspects of veterans’ narratives and anecdotes remained impervious to change in the interview setting. The trips themselves followed a fairly standard format, starting with an official welcome at the airport at Seoul, then visits to key places including “Gloucester valley”, Pusan, Kapyong and the Demilitarized Zone.73 Every returning veteran also got a return visit medal and this, together with the series of events put on for them, prompted many veterans to explain effusively how grateful the South Koreans were. Michael Barker, who served as a private in the 1st Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment immediately after the war, recalled being approached by a man in the street. His initial thought was that he going to be mugged, but then the man, in Barker’s words, said, “Thank you for my country, thank you for my family, thank you for my children, my grandchildren, thank you for coming all that way as young men to save us”.74 Another former British private stated that “all the old boys, the old soldiers, wherever you go there, they stop and salute you. Every shop you go into, if you’ve got your blazer on and that, they give you a discount”.75 Summerfield returned for the first time in 1994 and even said of the South Koreans, “They worship you, they actually worship you. They can’t do enough for you”.76 Part of the gratification veterans felt emanated from the very different response they perceived from British people, but it also centred on the modernizing of South Korea. Many reported how “developed” South Korea, had become in the intervening years, Seoul and Pusan in particular – “everywhere you look there are skyscrapers”.77 The economic “success” of South Korea was all the more marked,

State power, cultural exchange and the “Forgotten War”  229 to veterans and the wider world, by the increasing difficulties in the north of the peninsula.78 South Korea’s modernization and integration into the global economy elicited a specific response from veterans and a commitment to cultural exchange. Preston-Bell was so keen to keep in touch with South Korea and its successes that the British Embassy gave him a “pen-pal” – Mrs Min, a 60-old schoolteacher, with whom he corresponded almost daily. The BKVA too sought to promote transnational links. Until 2006, it funded undergraduate students from Britain to attend South Korean universities, under a joint scheme with the British Legion and the South Korean technology company, Samsung.79 Samsung, in turn, supported some of the “revisits” of veterans.80 In 2012, the BKVA proudly sponsored South Korean artist Jihae Hwang, winner of the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show Best in Show to for “Quiet Time: DMZ Forbidden Garden”.81 ­British veterans of the Korean War purposefully embraced transnational activities in their association, revelling in the development that had taken place in the post-war years and South Korea’s eminent place within the late ­twentieth-century globalized world. As Preston-Bell had stated, “They’d taken my contribution and had made something wonderful out of it”.82

Conclusion In one interview conducted by the IWM in 2007, Fred Brett, a former British national service private in the Royal Norfolk Regiment, described one incident from a “revisit” to Korea. He recalled how when his group visited Gloucestershire Hill, the Brigadier guiding the group started to tell the history of the battle there, but one man kept saying, “He’s got that wrong”. Brett then “said to this chap: … ‘Why do you keep saying he’s wrong?’ He said, ‘See just there? That’s my dug out’”.83 Brett called out to the Brigadier, who had not served in the war, telling him he had got his facts wrong and asking the other veteran to tell his story. Brett reflected on it how “it was quite interesting then to really hear from a normal soldier, really what did happen, because everyone tells a different story”.84 To some extent, all veterans own the memories of “their” war: As Yuval Harari observes, veterans act as “flesh-witnesses” who believe that only those who were physically there and bodily experienced war can truly understand it.85 But, as this chapter has demonstrated, this specific group of veterans forged a particular sense of “ownership”, built on a changed relationship with the state, their omission from cultural memory and the transnational links they sought to create with South Korea in the 1980s and 1990s. Through this combination of factors, veterans were able to exert more agency than veteran history-writing or modern British history has hitherto acknowledged. This is not to argue that all veterans of Korea engaged with the BKVA or its activities: Leading Torpedoman aboard HMS Birmingham, Joe Hardy, stated in a 2008 interview that he had “never been to a meeting” but got all the information he needed

230  Grace Huxford from the newsletter.86 The BKVA was also time-specific: By the mid-2000s, the British Legion had taken over the administration of welfare provision to Korean veterans and in 2013, the BKVA announced on its website that it would hanging up its standards, due to its diminishing membership.87 But once again, the Korean veteran displayed a remarkable tenacity in the face of apathy or discouragement as those remaining who wished to carry on formed the British Korean War Veterans Association (BKWVA), which still continues to this day. Acknowledging veteran agency and the different forms it could take in the post-1945 world should therefore remain a central concern in veteran history-writing of this period.

Notes 1 This later went up to two years from October 1950, due to the Korean War. 2 Interview with John Preston-Bell by James Atkinson, 2012. Accession no. 33315, Imperial War Museum (IWM). 3 Joe Shute, “Britain’s Korean War Veterans Win Their Final Fight”, Daily Telegraph (29 November 2014); Fawlty Towers. Directed by John Howard Davies (Series 1) and Bob Spiers (Series 2). Written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, BBC, 1975–1979. 4 Judith Keene, “Lost to Public Commemoration: American Veterans of the ‘Forgotten’ Korean War”, Journal of Social History 44:5 (2011), 1095–1113; see further John Wilz, “Korea: The Forgotten War”, The Journal of Military History 53 (1989), 95–100, and Glenn Steven Cook, “Korea: No Longer the Forgotten War’, The Journal of Military History 56 (1992), 489–494. 5 Some post-war historians mention Korea briefly, see David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–51 (London: Bloombsbury, 2008), 545 and David Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain 1920–1970 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 5. 6 Grace Huxford, “The Korean War Never Happened: Forgetting a Conflict in British Society and Culture”, Twentieth Century British History 27:2 (2016), 195–219. 7 Stephen McVeigh and Nicola Cooper, “Introduction: Men after War”, in Stephen McVeigh and Nicola Cooper (eds.), Men after War (New York: Routledge, 2013), 3–6. 8 Interview with Malcolm Barker by Peter M. Hart, February 2008. Accession no. 30636, IWM. 9 Alistair Thomson, Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend, new edition (­Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2013, orig. edition 1994); Alistair Thomson, “Anzac Memories Revisited: Trauma, Memory and Oral History”, Oral History Review 42:1 (2015), 1–29. See also Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London: ­Routledge, 1994), 22–26; Penny Summerfield, “Dis/composing the Subject: ­Intersubjectivities in Oral History”, in Tess Cosslett, Celia Lury and Penny Summerfield (eds.), Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods (London: Routledge, 2000), 91–94; Juliette Pattinson, “‘The Thing that Made Me Hesitate…’: Re-­examining Gendered Intersubjectivities in Interviews with British Secret War Veterans”, Women’s History Review 20:2 (2011), 245–623. 10 Pattinson, “‘The Thing that Made Me Hesitate…’”, 258. 11 Interview with Benjamin Whitchurch by Lindsay Baker, 2003. Accession no. 26098, IWM; Interview with John Preston-Bell by James Atkinson, 2012. Accession no. 33315, IWM.

State power, cultural exchange and the “Forgotten War”  231 12 Conrad Wood, “Ten Years of the Department of Sound Records of the Imperial War Museum”, Oral History 11:1 (1983), 9–12, 9; see also the IWM Research Blog entries: http://blogs.iwm.org.uk/research/2016/01/the-imperial-war-museumsound-collection and http://blogs.iwm.org.uk/research/2014/09/the-departmentof-sound-records-at-the-imperial-war-museum-london-in-the-1970s/ (accessed 10 May 2017). 13 Margaret Brooks, “The Department of Sound Records at the Imperial War Museum”, Oral History 17:2 (1989), 56–57, 56. 14 Wood, “Ten Years of the Department”, 9. 15 For a methodological discussion regarding archived oral history interviews see April Gallwey, “The Rewards of Using Archived Oral Histories in Research: The Case of the Millennium Memory Bank”, Oral History 41:1 (2013), 37–50; Joanna Bornat, Parvati Raghuram and Leroi Henry, “Revisiting the Archives. Opportunities and Challenges. A Case Study from the History of Geriatric Medicine”, Sociological Research Online 17:2 (2012); Ronald J. Grele, “On Using Oral History Collections: An Introduction”, Journal of American History 74 (1987), 570–578. 16 Matthew Grant, After the Bomb: Civil Defence and Nuclear War in Cold War Britain, 1945– 68 (New York: Palgrave, 2010), 38; Huxford, “The Korean War Never Happened”, 195–219, 208–209. 17 Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2011), 66; William Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 1–3. 18 Jeffrey Grey, The Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War: An Alliance Study (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 104. The UK contributed 58 per cent of the forces for the Division. 19 1,078 British servicemen died and 1,060 taken prisoner. It is estimated that 40,000 British servicemen took part in the Korean War. See Anthony ­Farrar-Hockley, The British Part in the Korean War, Volume II: an Honourable Discharge (London: HMSO, 1995), 420, 486 and 491. 20 Ministry of Defence, “Report of the Advisory Panel of Prisoner of War Conduct after Capture”, August 1955, p. 29. AIR 8/2473, National Archives (Kew). 21 The destination of repatriated North Korean and Chinese POWs, held by the UN, was a recurrent issue throughout peace negotiations: North Korea and China insisted that POWs should be repatriated to their country of origin (in line with the Geneva Convention), but the United States was reluctant to force the return of those unwilling to go back to North Korea or China. Eventually in 1953, it was agreed that 14,235 Chinese and 32,500 North Koreans would not be forced to return. See S. P. Mackenzie, British Prisoners of the Korean War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 134. 22 Daily Mail, 25 June 1952, 1; Bury Free Press, 31 July 1953, 1; Huxford, “The ­Korean War Never Happened”, 212. 23 Interview with Kenneth Black by Conrad Wood, 1998. Accession no. 18022, IWM. 24 Interview with John Preston-Bell by James Atkinson, 2012. Accession no. 33315, IWM. 25 Interview with Robin Bruford-Davies by David Smurthwaite, 10 February 1989. Accession no. 1989-05-163, National Army Museum (NAM). 26 Interview with Benjamin Whitchurch by Lindsay Baker, 2003. Accession no. 26098, IWM. 27 Sarah Bulmer and David Jackson, “‘You Do Not Live in My Skin’: Embodiment, Voice and the Veteran”, Critical Military Studies 2 (2016), 25–40, 27. 28 Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press, 2003), 6.

232  Grace Huxford 29 Especially with the emergence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The term PTSD was ratified by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980, see Edkins, Trauma, 3; Nigel C. Hunt, Memory, War and Trauma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 123. 30 Bulmer and Jackson, “‘You Do Not Live in My Skin’”, 37. 31 Huxford, “The Korean War Never Happened”, 195–219. 32 David Reynolds, “Britain, the Two World Wars and the Problem of Narrative”, The Historical Journal 60:1 (2017), 197–231; Geoff Eley, “Finding the People’s War: Film, British Collective Memory, and World War II”, American Historical Review 108:3 (2011), 818–838. 33 Charles S. Young, “POWs: the hidden reason for forgetting Korea”, in Robert Barnes (ed.), The Korean War at Sixty: New Approaches to the Study of the Korean War (London: Routledge, 2012), 155–170. 34 Interview with John Preston-Bell by James Atkinson, 2012. Accession no. 33315, IWM. 35 The Star (Sheffield), 2 July 2003. 36 Peter G. Coleman and Andrei Podolskij, “Identity Loss and Recovery in the Life Stories of Soviet World War II Veterans”, The Gerontologist 47:1 (2007), 52–60, 52–53. 37 Peter Higgs, “Citizenship and Old Age: the End of the Road?”, Ageing and Society 15 (1995), 535–550; Jenny Hockey and Allison James, Social Identities across the Life Course (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 74. 38 Christopher Dandeker, Simon Wessely, Amy Iversen and John Ross, “What’s in a Name? Defining and Caring for ‘Veterans’: The United Kingdom in International Perspective”, Armed Forces and Society 32 (2006), 161–177. Christopher Dandeker et al. also identify more external factors which shape the definition of veteranhood, including pre-existing civil-military relations and state resource allocation. Their case study of UK provision for veterans in 2006 showed how some wanted veterans to be those who had served “more than one day in the military, because it fitted with the Labour Government’s wider political agenda of tackling social exclusion and would have been easy to implement, see Dandeker et al., “What’s in a Name?”, 168–169. 39 R. W. Connell, “Masculinity, Violence and War”, in Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner (eds.), Men’s Lives (2nd edn, New York: Macmillan, 1992), 181. 40 See Paul Higate, “Theorizing Continuity: From Military to Civilian Life”, Armed Forces and Society 27:3 (2001), 443–460. 41 Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 12. 42 Reuben Holroyd, “‘In the Beginning’ – The Morning Calm”, Morning Calm 60 (2009), 3. 43 Peter Reese, Homecoming Heroes: an Account of the Re-assimilation of British ­Military Personnel into Civilian Life (London: Leo Cooper, 1992), 213–214. ­Dandeker et al. note that the British public support this distinction, with 57 per cent believing that the term “veteran” should only be used to describe those who fought in the World Wars, see Dandeker et al., “What’s in a Name?”, 166. 4 4 www.gov.uk/guidance/pensions-and-compensation-for-veterans (accessed 31 May 2017). 45 Interview with Benjamin Whitchurch by Lindsay Baker, 2003. Accession no. 26098, IWM. 46 Hockey and James, Social Identities, 74. 47 Joan M. Cook, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Older Adults”, PTSD Research Quarterly 12:3 (2001), 1–7; Hunt, Memory, War and Trauma, 140.

State power, cultural exchange and the “Forgotten War”  233 48 Such belief emanated from Second World War education, see Directorate of Army Education, The British Way and Purpose: Consolidated Version (London, 1944). 49 Papers of Lieutenant R. S. Gill, Memorandum by HQ Eighth Army US Army Korea (EUSAK), “Why We Are Here”, 21 January 1951. Docs 13204, IWM. 50 Papers of Lieutenant R. S. Gill, Personal Message from Field Marshall Sir ­William Slim, CIGS, to Officers and Other Ranks of the Army Reserves who are returning to Civil Life after serving in Korea, November 1951, Docs 13204, IWM. 51 Interview with Thomas Ashley Cunningham-Boothe by Conrad Wood, 8 D ­ ecember 1999. Accession no. 19913, IWM. 52 Ashley Cunningham-Boothe, One Man’s Look at Arthritis (Leamington Spa: Korvet, 1993), 13. 53 Ibid., 77. 54 Ibid., 18–25. 55 Arthur W. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), xii. 56 Korvet’s publications included Ashley Cunningham-Boothe and Peter Farrar (eds.), British Forces in the Korean War (Leamington Spa: Korvet, 1988); Ed. Evanhoe, Dark Moon (Leamington Spa: Korvet, 1995) and the memoir of a Korean War “volunteer” John Martin, K-Force: to the Sharp-End (Leamington Spa: Korvet, 1999). 57 Thomas Ashley Cunningham-Boothe, “Drummer Eagles: Fragments of History”, in Cunningham-Boothe and Farrar, British Forces, 93; CunninghamBoothe, One Man’s Look at Arthritis, 3. 58 Ashley Cunningham-Boothe (John Briton), Shapes of War by the Schizogenesis John Briton (Leamington Spa: Korvet, 1999). 59 Bulmer and Jackson, “‘You Do Not Live in My Skin’”, 37. 60 Interview with Mick Geoghegan by Peter M. Hart, July 2008. Accession no. 31425, IWM. 61 Interview with Barry Summerfield by Peter M. Hart, November 2007. Accession no. 30395, IWM. 62 Interview with Mick Geoghegan by Peter M. Hart, July 2008. Accession no. 31425, IWM. 63 John Dutton, The Forgotten Punch in the Army’s Fist: Korea 1950–1953. ­Recounting REME’s Involvement (2nd edn, Aborfield, 2007), 225. 64 Brian Burt, “In the Beginning: Branch Formation Histories: Wessex Branch”, Morning Calm 60 (2009), 15. 65 Hunt, Memory, War and Trauma, 149. 66 Dan Raschen, Send Port and Pyjamas! (London: Regency Press, 1987), 245. 67 Interview with Barry Summerfield by Peter M. Hart, November 2007. Accession no. 30395, IWM. 68 Interview with Mick Geoghegan by Peter M. Hart, July 2008. Accession no. 31425, IWM. 69 Interview with John Preston-Bell by James Atkinson, 2012. Accession no. 33315, IWM. 70 Interview with Mick Geoghegan by Peter M. Hart, July 2008. Accession no. 31425, IWM. 71 Ibid; Interview with John Preston-Bell by James Atkinson, 2012. Accession no. 33315, IWM. 72 Interview with Michael White by Peter M. Hart, November 2006. Accession no. 29065, IWM; Interview with Malcolm Barker by Peter M. Hart, February 2008. Accession no. 30636, IWM.

234  Grace Huxford 73 Ibid. 74 Interview with Malcolm Barker by Peter M. Hart, February 2008. Accession no. 30636, IWM. 75 Interview with Fred Brett by Peter M. Hart, July 2007. Accession no. 30009, IWM. 76 Interview with Barry Summerfield by Peter M. Hart, November 2007. Accession no. 30395, IWM. 77 Ibid. 78 Adrian Buzo, The Making of Modern Korea (London: Routledge, 2002), 144–145. 79 www.bkva.co.uk/samsung.htm (accessed 4 February 2017). 80 Interview with Mick Geoghegan by Peter M. Hart, July 2008. Accession no. 31425, IWM. 81 Alan Guy, “The Royal Horticultural Show”, Morning Calm 67 (2012), 3. 82 Interview with John Preston-Bell by James Atkinson, 2012. Accession no. 33315, IWM. 83 Interview with Fred Brett by Peter M. Hart, July 2007. Accession no. 30009, IWM. 84 Ibid. 85 Yuval Noah Harari, The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture 1450–2000 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 7–8. 86 Interview with Joe Hardy by Peter M. Hart, 2008. Accession no. 30650, IWM. 87 Interview with Mick Geoghegan by Peter M. Hart, July 2008. Accession no. 31425, IWM; www.bkva.co.uk/closure.htm (accessed 22 May 2017).

15 Retracing memories of war South African military veterans as tourists in Angola Gary Baines

War and tourism are not mutually exclusive.1 Studies have shown that the relationship is complex and dynamic.2 Debbie Lisle has recently emphasized the overlap of the tourist gaze and military modes of seeing.3 Lisle attaches considerable significance to the uneven power relations between tourist and host. By her account, soldiers’ tours of duty and pleasure both involve asymmetrical encounters with the Other. In the extant literature, there is considerable slippage between categories such as militourism, battlefield tourism and war tourism. They have not been precisely defined nor clearly delineated. Butler and Suntikul deem it useful to distinguish between war-related tourism that occurs before, during or after conflict.4 But Lisle reckons that temporal distinctions have little explanatory value, that it is far more important to examine relations of power. She describes those with a penchant for visiting unstable situations and running risks as participants in “political tourism”.5 Such travel is usually arranged independently of the circuits of organized mass tourism. This includes the phenomenon of post-war travel by military veterans who visit places where they were previously deployed. However, veteran post-war tourism does not fit neatly into existing ­taxonomies of war-related tourism. It has much in common with what ­Sabine ­ otivated by Marschall calls personal memory tourism,6 a “form of travel m autobiographical memories, focused on retracing previous memorable journeys; the revisiting of destinations associated with key moments in a person’s life”. The “deliberate return to sites associated with one’s past” tends to be an extremely individualized phenomenon so that itineraries are tailor-made for individuals or small groups. Such travel is prompted by personal psychological needs; it frequently involves self-indulgent yet emotionally intense experiences. But in the case of military veterans, it is also informed by political perceptions about the nature of the war experience. Studies of American veterans who return to Vietnam are instructive. They suggest that the motives for doing so are multifold.7 Some veterans participate in redemptive charitable projects and the work of reconciliation.8 Other veterans visit sites to pay homage to comrades killed in action and thereby engage in a form of therapy so as to promote a personal healing process and attain closure.9 Still others, keen on experiential learning attractions, such

236  Gary Baines as museums, heritage sites and monuments, engage in other culturally and historically enriching activities.10 Their responses to such sites apparently entail a mixture of remorse at American war atrocities and an ironic distancing from the partisan manner in which American conduct is interpreted by Vietnamese curators.11 These studies provide pointers but not definitive explanations for all veterans who return to the sites of their war experiences. This chapter examines the experiences of select South African Defence Force veterans who returned to Angola, where they had fought during the late 1970s and 1980s. It interrogates the narratives constructed by two such veterans, both of whom published accounts that trace their journeys to battle sites and former bases. The first journey was undertaken by a group of veterans travelling in a convoy of vehicles that visited sites primarily to pay tribute to the war dead. It resembled a safari. Members of this party reminisced about operations and engagements in which they participated or about which they had acquired some indirect knowledge. The second journey comprised a solo bicycle ride through southern Angola by a veteran who made it his mission to interact with Angolans while visiting battlefield sites. It resembled a pilgrimage in that the cyclist sought some sort of healing from the haunted memories of his war experiences. I will compare the two journeys in an effort to understand why these veterans undertook their respective trips and what meaning(s) they imputed to their experiences. I will do so by examining how these veterans communicated their recollections by way of travelogues.

Angola: from warscapes to memoryscapes The war-torn country of Angola has endured more than 40 years of intermittent fighting. What started as a war of liberation against the Portuguese colonists in the early 1960s morphed into a civil war after their withdrawal in 1975. The war was then escalated by Cold War rivalries and the interventions of South Africa, Cuba, the United States and the Soviet Union on behalf of their respective clients. As many as 400,000 Cuban military personnel rendered service in support of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) between 1975 and 1989.12 During this period, there were relatively few direct engagements between the Cubans and the South African Defence Force (SADF) as the latter concentrated its efforts on providing extensive military hardware, training and support for National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) guerrillas. UNITA and SADF recruits from Angola forged into 32 Battalion bore the brunt of the fighting against the Popular Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA). Indeed, the SADF deployed its own troops in limited numbers so as to avert politically unsustainable numbers of casualties. The chief liberation movements in Namibia and South Africa, namely, the South West Africa Peoples’ Organisation (SWAPO) and the African National Congress (ANC), also became embroiled in the conflict on Angolan soil. External

Retracing memories of war  237 intervention in Angola only ceased with the signing of the tripartite New York accords between Angola, Cuba and South Africa in late 1988. A ceasefire known as the Gbadolite Declaration was signed between the MPLA and UNITA leadership in June 1989. A more comprehensive domestic settlement called the Bicesse Accords was subsequently hammered out. This included stipulations for a permanent ceasefire, monitoring of military formations, the integration of FAPLA and UNITA into the Angolan armed forces and the scheduling of elections. Unfortunately, the agreement broke down following the 1992 presidential elections when Savimbi contested the outcome, despite the UN monitoring mission declaring them “substantially” free and fair. The civil war entered a new, more deadly phase when Savimbi returned to arms. A measure of peace and stability was only restored to the war-ravaged land following the death of the UNITA leader in 2002.13 Given its history, Angola is not well known as a tourist destination. The first ever English-language tourist guidebook, The Bradt Guide to Angola, was published in 2009. A second edition was released in 2013. Updates are offered online, but postings are few and far between, and there have been none on the website since early 2014.14 As far as I can ascertain, none of the better-known publishers of travel guides, such as Fodors, Lonely Planet and Dorling Kindersley, have published a volume on Angola. For all but the most intrepid travellers, Angola remains “undiscovered”. And the i­ mpressions of the seasoned travel writer Paul Theroux, who visited Angola in 2011, will do nothing to change perceptions of the country. Theroux reckoned that the impact of the war had left surprisingly few obvious signs on the landscape in the country’s south-western interior.15 However, his exposure to the ­i mpact of the war was restricted by virtue of his travel route, which was wholly dependent on the existing infrastructure. He noted that there was little literature about Angola’s hinterland apart from outdated war stories. He is clearly not conversant enough with Angolan history to filter out incorrect information passed on by those he encounters and so repeats inaccurate statements in his text. While he was well aware of the trauma that Angolans had been subjected to by the centuries of Portuguese colonialism and the decades of war, his outlook was framed by a privileged tourist gaze. Indeed, Theroux displayed a typical Western tourist sensibility that evinced little regard for the host country. He seemed more concerned with his own security than the plight of ordinary Angolans whose very existence was rendered precarious by poverty, corruption and the use of power by the authorities. The travel agency Uri Adventures attempted to open up Angola to 4×4 enthusiasts as a viable overland destination.16 It subsequently offered a 14-day guided self-drive safari of Angola via Leisure Wheels, an adventure ­motoring magazine.17 In its August 2012 issue, one of South Africa’s leading travel magazines, Getaway, proclaimed Angola safe and well worth the visit as the scenic diversity of the country was second to none on the African continent.18 Some ten years after the cessation of hostilities, Angola was featured as “one of those new frontier travel destinations which has been a

238  Gary Baines closed door for decades by civil wars and non-existent infrastructure”. This article noted that the main roads had been upgraded but that facilities such as hotels and vehicle repair works were virtually non-existent. Prospective travellers were advised to undertake the trip in a 4×4 convoy. The article has inset boxes that provide a brief potted history of the conflicts on Angolan soil and another that advises readers to take precautions to avoid landmines when off the beaten track. Mention is made of abandoned and rusted tanks and armoured vehicles that litter the landscape, bullet-riddled and damaged buildings, neglected monuments and graveyards, and other reminders of the destruction wrought by the war. Yet the overall tone of the piece is positive if somewhat patronizing as it suggests that Angolans are “burying the past” so as to realize the promise of the future. There has been at least one attempt to position Cuito Cuanavale as an Angolan battle site worth visiting (for reasons that I suggest later). In 2006, Greg Mills and David Williams included a chapter on this headline-­catching engagement in their book titled 7 Battles that Shaped South Africa. But unlike the book’s other chapters, which provide fairly comprehensive guides to the sites of the other battlefields, including notes on how to get to these sites and where to stay during visits as well as what memorials and cemeteries to view, the entry on Cuito Cuanavale has no such information. Instead, the prospective traveller to this site is informed that “It was not possible to visit Cuito Cuanavale for the writing of this chapter. Not only are internal (Angolan) airflights infrequent and subject to constant changes, but the terrain around Cuito Cuanavale is still saturated with landmines”.19 In other words, the authors were prepared to suggest the site as a tourist destination but not willing or able to reconnoitre the area themselves. The inclusion of an Angolan battle in a book dedicated to South ­A frican sites recognizes the growing fascination with the “Border War” among the South African reading public. This trend has been fuelled by an extensive literature on the so-called Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. It has acquired near-legendary status and become a metonym for the war on account of the mystique attached to the name and the significance that statesmen, politicians, historians and military veterans ascribe to Cuito Cuanavale. For instance, Fidel Castro went so far as to claim that “the history of Africa would be written as before and after Cuito Cuanavale”.20 And, in expressing gratitude for Cuban solidarity with the African National Congress (­ANC)’s armed struggle against the apartheid regime, Nelson Mandela asserted that Cuito Cuanavale was “a milestone in the history for the struggle for ­Southern African liberation”.21 Cuito Cuanavale became the front line of the Angolan war in 1987–1988 when FAPLA launched an operation to eject UNITA from its stronghold in nearby Mavinga. The SADF went to the rescue of its proxy, repulsed the offensive on the Lomba River and pushed FAPLA back to the Cuito River where the Angolan forces established a bridgehead. The SADF laid siege to Cuito, but FAPLA, reinforced by Cuban detachments, mined the

Retracing memories of war  239 approaches to the floodplain (or Tumpo Triangle). Following delays caused by the rotation of troops, the SADF/UNITA lost the initiative. A protracted war of attrition ensued as the SADF launched repeated frontal assaults on the bridgehead while subjected to artillery barrages and constant bombardment by MiGs (Soviet fighter jets). The stalemate afforded the Cubans an opportunity to consolidate control of southern Angola air space and deploy a division that advanced upon the Namibian border. Consequently, the SADF decided to withdraw from Angola, and negotiations – henceforth involving the Cubans – resumed. Many commentators reckon that Cuito Cuanavale convinced the belligerents that further escalation of the conflict was ill advised (especially as South Africa had a small arsenal of atomic weapons). The agreement that was eventually brokered provided for the withdrawal of South African security forces from Namibia as a prelude to elections in that country and the concomitant withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola. All parties claimed victory.22 Although its outcome and significance is contested, the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale has been valourized by all the belligerents. Analogies have been drawn with Arnhem and Stalingrad.23 Notwithstanding the hype, there can be little doubt that Cuito conjures vivid memories for those who fought there. Indeed, it is a name suffused with significance – even for those who did not participate in the battle. Cuito Cuanavale’s symbolism belies its size; it is a small town with a large footprint.24 Cuito Cuanavale is situated in the Cuando-Cubango province of southeast Angola, an area that the Portuguese dubbed el fin del mundo (“the land at the end of the earth”). Cuito was regarded as a remote, desolate region by the colonialists, and it is still relatively inaccessible and dangerous more than 40 years after Angola obtained independence. Landmines and unexploded ordinance still kill and maim. The area around Cuito is littered with destroyed tanks and armoured vehicles that have been left to the mercy of the elements. Some of these have been corralled into a fenced-off zone called a “peace park”. An attempt was made to create a memorial site in the midst of the remnants of war. Presumably, no irony was intended in the naming of the site. But it amounts to a blot on the landscape, an assemblage of the debris and detritus of war. The hazards of travel have not deterred some SADF veterans from contemplating a trip to Angolan battlefields. At least one adventure company saw the potential to market guided self-drive safaris for these veterans. Organized for the first time in 2007, “The Journey” literally followed the routes – but not the timeline – of SADF cross-border operations into Angola and visited sites synonymous with the war. The 17-day expedition was guided by “experts” on the war drawn from the ranks of the SADF and FAPLA. “The Journey” was repeated for three successive years and became a more sophisticated operation. In its 2010 incarnation, it was accompanied by a retired Lieutenant-Colonel from the Cuban Air Force. The practice of having “experts” from both sides of the conflict was in keeping with its

240  Gary Baines claim that “[t]he intention of the tour is not to justify the war, or project it in a one-sided light”. The tour was advertised as an exercise in reconciliation inasmuch as it promoted contact and mutual respect between former adversaries.25 These trips traversed a countryside still littered with the residue of war, with its tangible imprint. Indeed, the Angolan landscape appears to have been inscribed with signs of violence, suffering and loss. Imaginative ­geographies script a place and, in so doing, make the imaginative real, both materially and performatively.26 Thus, places such as Cuito Cuanavale have been transformed from war (land)scapes to memory (land)scapes by SADF veterans in the past two decades or so.27 Such topographical ­metaphors are useful for understanding that traces of memory have spatial and psychic dimensions. Memoryscapes are more than “an external phenomenon to be ­engaged visually” but can become “a psychic terrain of internalised symbolic meaning”.28 Accordingly, we will need to give attention to how memories of SADF veterans visiting post-war Angola are discursively framed and materially appropriated. The next section of the chapter will examine exactly how two SADF veterans re-imaged and recreated their own memoryscapes.

Bothma’s battle sites safari The title of the first travelogue is Anderkant Cuito: ‘n Reisverhaal oor die Grensoorlog (Langenhovenpark, 2011) by L.J. Bothma. The Afrikaans title can be literally translated as “The other side of or beyond Cuito: a travel story of the Border War”. Cuito is a shortened form of Cuito Cuanavale, the site of the battle referred to previously. The title suggests a physical place beyond the Angolan town. However, a better rendition would be a space where veterans get to reflect upon the meaning of their war experience, for which Cuito Cuanavale serves as a metonym. The recognition value of the name Cuito is another reason why it was chosen for the title as it was likely to pique the interest of prospective readers, especially SADF veterans. The front cover of the book has a photograph of a bridge that spans the Cuito River. This is the same bridge that the SADF failed to secure and cross during the aforementioned engagement. Bothma (borrowing from Cornelius Ryan’s account of the Battle of Arnhem) calls it “a bridge too far” when he reflects upon the significance of this particular engagement in the Angolan War. In the foreground of the photograph can be seen the ruins of a Soviet tank. The landscape captured in the image is not inert. Indeed, it apparently proved redolent with meaning for those in the party who had actually participated in the battle or had simply read about it. The author of Anderkant Cuito was an officer in 32 Battalion who had previously published Die Buffel Struikel, translated as Buffalo Battalion: South Africa’s 32 Battalion – a tale of sacrifice (2008). This unit history proved a bestseller that drew attention to the plight of former Angolans who had been recruited from the ranks of the FNLA to do much of the front line

Retracing memories of war  241 fighting for the SADF. After the SADF’s withdrawal from Angola (and subsequently, Namibia), 32 Battalion had been summarily demobilized at the behest of then President F.W. de Klerk. They had been offered rudimentary facilities at Pomfret in the arid North-West Province where they struggled to eke out an existence. The white leadership of 32 Battalion felt that they and their black soldiers had been betrayed by the politicians who had negotiated the settlements for an independent Namibia and a democratic South Africa. Bothma was part of a group that handed 32 silver (actually nickel R5) coins to de Klerk in a gesture to signify this betrayal. Nowadays, Bothma earns a living as researcher and writer. The trip was organized through the offices of 61 Mechanised Battalion Group Veterans Association. The party of 19 included 17 SADF veterans – some of whom served in the permanent force (PF) and others who were national servicemen. They held ranks from corporal to general but travelled as equals – except that those of advanced age and higher rank seem to have been treated with due respect. Most of the group were former members of 61 Mech Battalion while a few had served in 32 or Buffalo Battalion. There was apparently a ready acceptance of one another by the veterans of different units. Bothma notes that members of the party accepted one another’s bona fides without question despite their differing service backgrounds and their different paths since the war (163). Some of the group had continued as professional soldiers after the disbanding of their units and/or the SADF, while others pursued civilian careers. Those not yet retired came from the professional class. But the common denominator was a camaraderie borne of their experience in the SADF. The party commenced its 17-day journey in Tsumeb in northern N ­ amibia in October 2010. From here it followed the itinerary that had been piloted by the organizers of “The Journey” tours. It crossed into Angola near ­Ruacana (west of the kaplyn, the man-made boundary between the Ovambo and Okavango Rivers) and headed for Xangongo before following a tar road to Ongiva. From there the group travelled north, along sand tracks to Evale, Mupa, Techumutete and Cassinga. From Indungo then, it carried on to Menongue along poor roads to Cuito Cuanavale – names familiar to SADF veterans, especially members of units such as the Special Forces, 61 Mechanised Battalion and 32 Battalion that participated in most of the fighting in Angola. They camped overnight at many of the battle sites. On the way back, the party stopped at Caiundo and Savate, before crossing the Okavango River near Rundu back into Namibia and returned home via Botswana. Readers do not get to know all members of the party equally well; some remain marginal or shadowy figures. WO “Koos” Moorcroft, former RSM of the army, served as a tour guide. He appears to have been accorded this role on account of his seniority as the oldest member of the party and wealth of experience derived from his lengthy service in the SADF. Occasionally, the party was briefed about SADF operations by those involved in them. Retired

242  Gary Baines General Roland de Vries, a former officer commanding 61 Mech who was regarded as the SADF’s foremost authority on mobile warfare, played a prominent role in such briefing sessions. Reference is made to books, maps, satellite photos and various documents that members of the party had in their possession. In his capacity as the self-styled travelling – rather than resident – historian, Bothma is accorded authority on account of his research expertise. But the authority of experiential knowledge appears to trump all else. The members of the party relate stories based on anecdotes, as well as first-hand knowledge. Certain members of the group were good raconteurs whereas others tended to be listeners. They exchanged homilies and clichéd homespun wisdom such as “the object of war is a better form of peace”. Repeated as a truism, it is a sentiment that echoes the claim that the SADF’s waging of war in Angola/Namibia “bought time” to negotiate better terms for a settlement in South Africa. So, it seems that members of the party not only shared stories occasioned by the intimacy of the journey but also formulated post hoc justifications for the war. In many respects, the veterans’ experience of military life prepared them for the trip into Angola. This included the type of clothing and other kit that members of the group chose to take with them. The party followed a set routine that included morning prayers and inspirational messages. They engaged in plenty of pranks that rekindled memories of male bonding in their previous lives in the army. Such antics amounted to a celebration of masculinity that typifies a martial mentality. They also did a fair amount of drinking and storytelling that revived memories of lost brothers in arms. Bothma records that most of his fellow travellers related stories about the deaths of comrades whom they recalled with fondness as “good guys”, many of whom had died needlessly (157). He recounts emotional moments that brought tears to the eyes of hardened soldiers (160). Such stories were invariably followed by toasts to these fallen comrades. The party also erected wooden crosses inscribed with the names of their fallen comrades at battles sites where they were known to have been killed. The dwelling on maudlin memories, though, has the tendency to efface the violence that makes perpetrators and victims out of soldiers. The journey resembled a safari inasmuch as the convoy of 4×4 vehicles afforded the party mobility and safety in numbers. But instead of viewing the virtually non-existent wildlife in its natural habitat, they gazed upon Angolans in theirs. The members of the touring party objectified their hosts and frequently engaged with them in a patronizing, even condescending, manner. For instance, instead of learning Portuguese in order to communicate with their hosts, they tried to teach them some Afrikaans. Wherever they went, they were regarded with curiosity by Angolans, especially inquisitive children who stood and stared. But they were welcomed and Bothma observes that they never encountered any hostility (152). In certain places, they presented representatives of local communities with wooden crosses that symbolized the loss and suffering they endured at the hands of their

Retracing memories of war  243 erstwhile enemies (including the SADF). They also dispensed gifts such as soccer balls, clothes, sweets to children at various points on the route. Such “handouts” might be interpreted as gestures that sought to make amends for the harm inflicted upon the Angolan people or even belated acts of atonement by SADF veterans who had steadfastly refused to apologize during the public spectacle of the Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) hearings. But it is equally likely that they were the acts of ex-soldiers schooled in “hearts and minds” programmes of the type pursued by armies of occupation during counterinsurgency campaigns. These taught that the loyalty of the local population could be won by acts of kindness rather than by political persuasion, violence and torture. The military mindset was well and truly ingrained. According to one member of the party, “One’s entire life is an operation” (50). In the foreword, Bothma reckons that during their first border crossing into Angola, SADF troops went as innocent young men whereas on the occasion of their recent journey they had travelled as older, wiser men capable of arriving at their own understanding of the Border War. Extending the metaphor, he notes that they arrived at the other side of the bridge on higher ground (vi). He reprises this observation later when he remarks that he returned from his second journey to the border a changed man. Bothma does not elaborate much beyond saying that he has achieved a newly elevated vantage point that transcends the place where he was previously sent by politicians (176). This, presumably, means that with the benefit of hindsight he now has a better appreciation of how his war experiences had impacted upon his weltanschauung. The obvious deduction to be made from this is that Bothma accepts at face value that his own youthful innocence was a mark of political naivety and that he exercised little agency as a soldier as he was obliged to follow orders. Now he is in a position to make decisions and determine the course of his own life. In another revealing metaphor, Bothma likens Angola to certain of his travelling companions. He calls Angola a shattered land in need of healing (53). Likewise, he insists that certain of the SADF veterans have returned to this broken land to obtain healing for themselves. He holds that some have borne resentments because credit was not necessarily accorded to the “right” people for the part they played in critical operations or because politicians treated soldiers as expendable. If we were to extend the analogy of the soldier as a country, he becomes the body politic. When the body has incurred physical and/or psychological wounds on account of its involvement in conflict, then the entire nation is liable to become damaged. A war-weary country is as much in need of healing as veterans experiencing (inner) conflict about their role therein. But Bothma is mistaken to think that a country’s well-being can be measured by the state of health of its veterans alone. The book’s summation describes Bothma’s journey as having three components: first, a physical journey from South Africa to the Angolan front and back; second, a journey in which the author serves as the guide to the

244  Gary Baines reader in interpreting the history of the Angolan/Border War; and third, a journey of the mind in which the author and his companions attempt to make sense of their previous experiences as soldiers in Angola. Bothma’s travelogue pays more attention to a description of the expedition and certain SADF operations in Angola than the journey of self-discovery. This, however, is not the case with the protagonist in another journey to Angola.

Morris’s metaphysical pilgrimage Paul Morris, a SADF veteran, undertook a journey to and from Angola in June 2012. His 1500-kilometre solo bicycle ride commenced at Cuito ­Cuanavale and took him via Kuvango and Lubango to Tsumeb in Namibia. It was an entirely different exercise to the Bothma safari. And his account of his journey published under the title Back to Angola: A Journey from War to Peace in 2014 (by Zebra Press) is a rather more self-reflective than that of Bothma. Morris’s travelogue is tinged with regret and remorse for his role in the Angolan War, whereas Bothma’s is largely devoid of such sentiments. If Morris seems more sincere than Bothma, it is in part because of his familiarity with the language of narrative therapy. Morris is a trained gestalt therapist who practices executive and life coaching. He undertook his bicycle ride in Angola when he was in his mid40s. Although born in the UK, he was called up by the SADF in 1986 at the age of 18 following the passage of the 1984 Citizenship Act that rendered white male foreign nationals resident in the country liable for two years ­m ilitary service in return for citizenship. He describes himself as a “reluctant conscript”, far more concerned with his own survival than deeds of masculine heroism. Morris grew up in a comfortable white middle-class home in Cape Town’s northern suburbs and attended schools that reinforced the patriotic, patriarchal and paternalist values of most English-speaking boys of his generation. This socialization ensured that he was not particularly concerned about the injustices of white minority rule and believed that the military provided the proverbial “shield” behind which the government could reform the political system. After his period of national service, he still dismissed charges that the SADF was upholding apartheid. Only later on in life did he arrive at the conclusion that he had been complicit in preserving white power and privilege as part of the SADF military force that waged war in Namibia and Angola. Morris’s account captures his anxiety and trepidation about returning to Angola in peacetime. He had been warned of the residual anger of Angolans towards (white) South Africans on account of the invasions by the apartheid army. Whereas his previous visit was as part of a military detachment in an SADF armoured vehicle (known as a Ratel), on this trip he was exposed to the vagaries of travelling alone with a skeletal support system. The journey also had an element of spontaneity – each day was unchartered and the

Retracing memories of war  245 end point unknown. Whereas Bothma’s itinerary was carefully planned and made little allowance for the contingencies of travelling in a country whose infrastructure had been wrecked by the war, Morris set himself the target of cycling a minimum of 50 kilometres per day and made allowances for the likelihood of unexpected delays. He often slept in the bush on the side of the road with only his sleeping bag for warmth (9). This made him vulnerable as it exposed him to danger but, equally, to unexpected acts of kindness. For instance, he was invited by adolescent boys to share the warmth of a fire and shelter in a compound that served as their parents’ home. He learned that children were less wary of him than adults and that their perceptions were not shaped by the conflict of their parent’s generation. Morris was reliant on the goodwill and hospitality of Angolans. Indeed, he was overwhelmed by the willingness of people who were largely indigent or lived from hand to mouth to share their very meagre resources. His dependence on his Angolan hosts was a great leveller and so Morris was able to interact with people on more or less equal terms. However, even the most cursory of encounters were made awkward by Morris’s inability to communicate with his hosts on account of the lack of a common language. Yet he did not ride roughshod over the sensibilities of his hosts but respected their customs. For instance, he did not wish to appear discourteous and decline meat dishes offered to him although he was a vegetarian. He returned to ­Angola as a visitor rather than a diehard war veteran or, as he puts it, “Not an old soldier with an unexamined past intent on celebrating morally dubious victories” (8). He clearly had distanced himself from the rationalizations for which the SADF had waged a war in Angola and wished to “make peace with the past” (8). But Morris seems too willing to settle for a ready-made narrative of personal reconciliation and attaining closure. Morris does not employ a linear narrative. He flits between the present and past in a series of flashbacks. He repeatedly refers to his memories of having been deployed in Angola as an artilleryman attached to 61 Mechanised Battalion at the battle on the Lomba River in 1987. This was undoubtedly a key moment in his war experience when his mettle as a soldier was severely tested. Recollections of this event were apparently prompted by a number of incidents during his journey. This was not because the Angolan landscape is undifferentiated but because he was haunted by the ghosts or shades of Angola that accompanied him wherever he went. Although he decided against revisiting the site of the Lomba River, he claimed to have recalled his nightmare when he was on location at Cuito Cuanavale. Still, it is somewhat surprising that he calls Cuito the “dark centre of my history” (76). This only makes sense if we understand Cuito to be a metonym for the Angolan War. Yet Morris’s experience of Cuito Cuanavale left him with mixed feelings. He managed to make an emotional connection with a Cuban veteran working for a construction company at Cuito. Like himself, the Cuban had rendered military service far from home in a foreign country. They had returned

246  Gary Baines to Angola for different reasons but experienced a sense of camaraderie even though they were former adversaries. They were unable to converse on account of the lack of a common language and so had to rely on interpreting one another’s facial expressions and body language. Nonetheless, they made a faltering attempt at communication relying almost entirely on gestures and signs (42–48). On the other hand, Morris was unmoved by memorials erected in tribute to the deceased Cuban defenders of Cuito. He reflects that “maybe the monuments I have built in my mind are more significant to me than those built in concrete” (49). Significantly and contrary to Bothma, he reflected that his journey had more to do with the living than the dead. Morris rationalizes travelling solo as “it creates the intensity and provides the ground from which the richness of the experience emerges” (52). He dismisses fear for his own safety and the shared experience of travelling companions in favour of undertaking a personal journey. But the trade-off is bouts of loneliness; he purposely seeks out the company of strangers. His sense of solitude is palpable at times. And when he is overtaken by debilitating illness and fatigue he is forced to rest in Kuvango for a few days to regain his strength. His only contact with the outside world is via a satellite phone that enables intermittent communication with his wife and other family and friends following his journey. Shortly after leaving Kuvango, Morris faced a choice of whether or not to visit Cassinga and Cuvelai, two sites that have a strong resonance with SADF veterans that served in Angola – even if they had not themselves ­participated in operations at these sites. He decided to give these places a miss as he wanted to leave the war behind. Morris reflects on this turning point in his trip. He writes, …I realise that I want to leave the reminders of war behind. I’m enjoying Angola now, more so for not seeing burnt-out tanks and minefields. I want to see parts of Angola that are not synonymous with the history of the SADF’s involvement in Angola… The trip isn’t meant to be a battlefield tour, a tour of sites from other men’s wars. (154) For most SADF veterans, Angola conjures up memories of war but Morris expresses the wish to forsake voyeurism and make the venture far more personal. He decided to follow his own route to recovery that had begun with consulting a psychotherapist who encouraged him to confront the ghosts of those who had died in the Angolan bush. This episode had resulted in great emotional release from the depths of his being and an end to his “night terrors”. But it still took him some time to recognize that he suffers from post-traumatic stress without the disorder that prevents him leading a normal life. His express wish is that by returning to Angola, he “would put the residual effects of the trauma to rest” (183).

Retracing memories of war  247 Throughout his account of the journey, Morris wrestles with the question of whether or not it amounted to a pilgrimage. At one point, he notes that there is nothing spiritual about the trip to Angola (29). But later admits to the possibility that it may be a search for forgiveness or absolution (34). He also speculates that the journey may be a way of reclaiming an image of masculinity that he had not managed to live up to the requirements of a soldier in Angola (15). The journey was to make sense of his self-image, to confirm who he was. In other words, it amounted to an exploration of own identity. By way of conclusion, he remarks that A pilgrimage…is not about a destination; it’s a process of growth and change that consists of an arduous external journey mirroring a gruelling internal one. This bicycle expedition has been the final, physical expression of a lifelong process of coming to terms with the war. Of healing, I know that my long journey from the battlefields of Angola is over. (250) The revelation obviously might not have been as incremental as Morris suggests in Back to Angola, but there was undoubtedly an unfolding healing process during the journey. In that sense, the journey mirrored a metaphysical pilgrimage.

Conclusion Bothma’s Anderkant Cuito and Morris’s Back to Angola suggest commonalities but also distinctive differences in their journeys. In both cases, the sites that they visited were resonant with meaning for them. This is symbolized by Cuito Cuanavale, the site where their memories of the Angolan conflict are said to have crystallized. Bothma’s engagement with the war was ­backward-looking, whereas Morris’s was forward-looking. Whereas for Bothma Cuito represents the climactic culmination of their tour, Morris commences his account with his journey from the starting point of Cuito. Their revisiting of this and other Angolan warscapes might have conveyed a sense of déjà vu but the familiar was overlaid with new impressions constructed from the experiences of the journey itself. Both Bothma and ­Morris acknowledge that their journeys had spiritual dimensions that created greater awareness of how their war experiences had shaped their growth. Yet such growth was achieved via divergent trajectories: For Bothma, it was primarily about reliving the past from the vantage point of a changed ­political perspective whereas for Morris it was about engaging with the past to map out a new direction in the future. Their memoryscapes were like palimpsests that still bore traces of their previous layers. Veteran tourism enables the retracing and reimagining of memories of military campaigns and operations in which ex-soldiers participated.

248  Gary Baines Bothma and Morris appropriated Angola on their own terms. The makeover of the memories of these SADF veterans was informed by their individual identities and own particular circumstances. They reconfigured their war memories by returning to the country as tourists. Although such memory work is always fashioned and shaped by cultural currents and political contexts, it is invariably motivated by personal experience that is contingent upon memory.

Notes 1 My thanks to Ryota Nishino for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 2 Richard Butler and Wantanee Suntikul, “Tourism and War: An Ill Wind?”, in Richard Butler and Wantanee Suntikil (eds.), Tourism and War (Abingdon: Oxon, 2013), 1–11; Debbie Lisle, “Consuming Danger: Reimagining the War/ Tourism Divide”, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 25:1 (2000), 91–116. 3 Debbie Lisle, Holidays in the Danger Zone: Entanglements of War and Tourism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016). Lisle’s analysis owes much to Teresa Teiawa’s development of the notion of “militourism” that forecloses the global asymmetries of power reproduced by militarism and tourism. See Teresa Tewaiwa, “Reflections on Militourism, US Imperialism, and American Studies”, American Quarterly 68:3 (2016), 847–853. 4 Butler and Suntikul, “Tourism and War”, 2. 5 Lisle is especially critical of John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster (London: Continuum, 2000). She rejects the moral censure implicit in this literature of “dark tourism”, see Lisle, Holidays in the Danger Zone, 192–199. 6 Sabine Marschall, “Personal Memory Tourism and a Wider Exploration of the Tourism-Memory Nexus”, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 10:4 (2012), 321–335; Ibid. “Tourism and Remembrance: The Journey into the Self and Its Past”, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 12:4 (2014), 335–348. 7 Joan C. Henderson, “War as Tourist Attraction: The Case of Vietnam”, International Journal of Tourism Research 2:4 (2000), 269–280; David Espey, “Americans in Vietnam: Travel Writing and the War”, Studies in Travel Writing 8 (2004), 149–178; Christine Schwenkel, “Recombinant History: Transnational Practices of Memory and Knowledge Production in Contemporary Vietnam”, Cultural Anthropology 21:1 (2006), 3–30; Scott Laderman, Tours of Vietnam: Travel Guides and Memory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 8 Nissa Rhee, “Operation Reconcile”, The Christian Science Monitor Weekly, 11 November 2013, 24–32. 9 Frank Baldwin and Richard Sharpley, “Battlefield Tourism: Bringing Organized Violence Back to Life”, in Richard Sharpley and Philip R. Stone (eds.), The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2009), 186–206. 10 Joseph Lemu and Jerome Agrusa, “Revisiting the War Landscape of Vietnam and Tourism”, in Butler and Suntikul, Tourism and War, 246. 11 Butler and Suntikul, “Conclusion”, in Butler and Suntikil, Tourism and War, 291. 12 Fred Bridgland, Cuito Cuanavale: 12 Months that Transformed a Continent (Jeppestown: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2017), 453. 13 Justin Pearce, An Outbreak of Peace: Angola’s Situation of Confusion (Claremont, CA: D. Philip, 2005). 14 https://bradtangolaupdate.wordpress.com/ (accessed 8 June 2017).

Retracing memories of war  249 15 Paul Theroux, The Last Train to Zona Verde: Overland from Cape Town to Angola (London: Penguin, 2013). 16 G. G. van Rooyen, “The New Face of Angola”, Leisure Wheels February 2011, https://showme.co.za/lifestyle/the-new-face-of-angola-crossing-the-kunene/ (­accessed 11 September 2017). 17 Fred Strauss, “Revisiting Angola: (Re)Discovering a Great Overland Destination”, 8 October 2010, www.leisurewheels.co.za/4x4-news/revisting-angolarediscovering-a-great-overland-destination/ (accessed 11 September 2017). 18 Dale Morris, “Angola Ahoy”, Getaway 24:5 (August 2012), 36–46. 19 Greg Mills and David Williams, 7 Battles that Shaped South Africa (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2006), 188. 20 David Deutschsmann, “Preface”, in David Deutschmann (ed.), Changing the History of Africa (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1989), vii; Bridgland, Cuito Cuanavale, 437. 21 Anonymous, “Background to the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale”, www.pmpsa.gov. za/PDFS/cuito%20background.pdf (accessed 8 June 2017). 22 Gary Baines, South Africa’s “Border War”: Contested Narratives and Conflicting Memories (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 105–119. 23 The battle of Stalingrad analogy may have been invoked by Soviet strategists. See James Brooke, “Angolans Besting South Africa in a Remote Battle”, New York Times, 18 May 1988. Cf. Peter Polack, The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (Pinetown: Casemate Publishers, 2013). 24 “From Castro to Mandela – a small town with a large footprint”, www.lse. ac.uk/alumni/LSEConnect/articlesSummer2013/alumniAtLarge.aspx (accessed 11 November 2014). 25 www.thejourney.co.za (the site is no longer active). 26 James Duncan and Derek Gregory (eds.), Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing (London: Routledge, 1999), 9. 27 Myriam Jansen-Verbeke and Wantanee Suntikul, “Reflections on the Great War Centenary: From Warscapes to Memoryscapes in 100 Years”, in Butler and ­Suntikul, Tourism and War, 273–287. 28 Brian Osborne, “Constructing Landscapes of Power: The George Etienne Cartier Monument, Montreal”, The Journal of Historical Geography 24:4 (1998), 433.

Index

Abbas, Fehrat 121 Acton, Norman 38, 40 Africa 2, 6, 7, 9–11, 36, 38, 41, 108, 119, 122, 134, 167, 176–9, 209, 237 African Americans 69–72, 76 Afrikaner 53–6, 64–5 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud 158–9, 161 Algeria 2, 7, 9–10, 117–30, 133, 136–8, 140–2, 144, 203–15; Algiers 117, 121–2, 124, 126, 128–9, 203, 208 Algerian War 9–10, 118–20, 125, 203–6, 208, 213–15 Algerian People’s Party 122 Al-Mistury, Abd-El-Aziz 122 Alianza Popular (AP) 198 Amitiés Africaines 122–30 Amort, Čestmír 26 Angola 2, 10–11, 235–48 Angolan War 238, 240, 244–7 anti-fascism 5, 9, 17, 21, 23, 25–6, 27–8 apartheid 6, 10, 53–5, 64, 238, 244 Arab-Israeli Conflict 2; Arab-Israeli War of 1948 36 Aramburu Topete, José Luis 190 Argentina 2 Army Times 41 Arnould, Auguste 128 Asia 2, 6–7, 9, 36–8, 41, 43, 85, 100–1, 103–10, 209 Atherton, William 71 Austria 25, 42; Vienna 17–19, 22, 24, 26–7, 42, 44 Badini-Confallonieri, Vittorio 38 Banfi, Arialdo 21, 23 Bangkok 38 Bautista, Amado 37 Belgium 22, 36–8, 42; Brussels 42 Benjelloun, Mohammed 38 Beran, Josef 20

Bertolini, Renato 26 Best Years of our Lives, The (William Wyler) 39 Blair, Tony 170, 175–6 Blau División 192–93 Blue Division (Spanish Division of Volunteers, 250th Wehrmacht Infantry Division) 9, 187, 190, 194 Bollardière, Jacques Pâris de 204, 207–12, 215 border wars 2, 238, 240, 243–4 Botswana 167, 241 Brazil 1 Britain 1, 2, 34, 53, 100–11, 167, 170, 173–4, 176, 197, 219–25, 229; British Empire 1, 34, 53, 101; London 41–2, 100, 103–4, 106–8, 110, 214, 224, 227 British Foreign Office 41, 45 Bulgaria 19 Calogeropoulos, Georges D. 37 Campaigne, Curtis 37, 40–1 Canada 36–7, 226 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 39 Castiella, Fernando M. 189 Castro, Fidel 2, 168, 238 civil rights movement 6, 69, 76–8, 101; American Civil Liberties Union 76; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 71, 87; Red Power movement 83–4, 87–9 Citizenship 86, 101, 106, 108, 110–11, 118, 168, 206–7, 224, 244 Chaco War 1 Chikalenko 20 Chimurenga 170, 172–4 China 5, 36, 101, 104, 106, 109, 111, 150, 168, 222

252 Index Chinese Civil War 1 Churchill, Winston 4, 125 Cold War 2, 4–9, 17–19, 21, 25, 28–30, 33–8, 40–1, 43–6, 84, 89, 101, 104, 106, 150–1, 168, 188, 191–2, 194, 196, 220, 222–4, 226, 236 Collins, Seaborn 77 Colombia 2 Committee for the Study of Communist Front Organizations 21 Commonwealth 1, 6, 55, 100, 109, 222 Communism 5, 9, 17–23, 25–30, 34, 41, 44, 72, 77, 101, 104, 151, 195, 196–7, 211; anti-communism 5–6, 27–8, 35, 37, 75–7, 104, 187, 192, 195 concentration camps 18, 20, 107; Buchenwald 18, 20, 23; Dachau 18; Sachsenhausen 23; Stutthof 23 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe 29 Congo 2 Construction Jihad (CJ) 150, 152, 154, 159 Cooper, William O. 38 Cordier, Georges 38 Cuba 136–8, 168, 236 Cuito Cuanavale, battle of 238–40, 244–7 Czechoslovakia 21; Prague 18–20 Dahomey 139 Dead Sea 42 Decolonization 4–7, 9, 36, 41, 43–5, 88–9, 104–5, 109, 134, 141, 160–79, 197, 203, 205, 216; colonial war 9, 117–26, 167–75, 189–90 demobilization 3–5, 34, 56, 58–9, 119, 129, 151–3, 158, 172; and unemployment 70–1, 74, 121; and housing 55, 57–9, 74–5, 90, 153, 192 Denmark 20, 23, 36, 43; Aarhus 43; Copenhagen 42 Diar-el-Askris 123–8, 130 Díaz de Villegas, José 195 Disability 36, 43, 118–19, 152, 188, 192 disarmament 29, 41, 151 Disarmament (magazine) 43 Dominion Party (South Africa) 54, 56 Eastern Front 9–10, 187–90, 193–8 Egge, Bjorn 38 Ensch, Rudy 38 Eisenhower, Dwight 35, 78 El Salvador 2

Elections 6, 65, 91, 108, 155, 158, 161, 174–5, 194, 198, 237, 239; veterans’ voting patterns 53–8, 177, 198 entitlement 3, 152, 171 Ethiopia 2 Esprit 204, 211–12, 214–16 Essen 21 Ethnicity 6, 64, 85, 91, 104–5, 110, 135–6, 141, 153, 155–6 EURATOM 22 Europe 1, 3, 5–6, 8, 17, 19, 21–2, 25–30, 34–5, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 56, 78, 100–1, 103–4, 107–8, 110, 173, 195, 209 European Coal and Steel Community 28 European Economic Community (EEC) 22 Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS (FET) 187–9, 191–2, 194, 197–8 Falklands War 2, 10 fallen soldiers, see memory Finland 42; Helsinki 29, 42 Finnish Civil War 1 Flanz, Gisbert H. 45 Football War 2 France 1–2, 7, 9–10, 22–3, 34–6, 38, 42, 102, 117–22, 125, 129–30, 134–41, 144, 203, 206–8, 210–13, 214; Bordeaux 42; French Empire 124, 144; French Fourth Republic 118, 127, 205; French Fifth Republic 127, 205; French West Africa 2, 7, 134, 136; Nice 42; Paris 19, 22, 29, 35, 39, 42–3, 46, 73, 127 Franchet d’Esperey, Louis 122 Franco, Francisco 9, 37, 187–9, 193–7 French Community 137–38 French Foreign Legion 2, 208 Front de libération nationale (FLN) 125–7, 130, 203, 217 Fuerza Nueva (FN) 198 García Rebull, Tomás 192 Gaulle, Charles de 117, 127–30, 203, 205, 208 Gender 2–3, 84, 89, 92, 95, 168 Germany; Berlin 10, 22, 27, 42, 196; East Germany, see German Democratic Republic; German Democratic Republic (GDR) 22–23; Nazi Germany 6, 17, 187, 190; Potsdam 20; West Germany 20–3, 25–6, 28, 191 Ghana 45, 167 GI Bill 74

Index  253 Girón, José-Antonio 188 Glascoff, Donald 72–3 Global South 2, 5, 7, 43, 45–6, 167, 169, 178 Globalization 10, 33, 41, 43–4, 46 Göring, Hermann 44 Gold Coast 136, 140–1 Greece 2, 19, 36–7 Greek Civil War 1 Guinea 7, 134–43; Conakry 138 Hagmajer, Marek 38 Halin, Hubert 28 Harrison, Gilbert 34–5, 38–9 Hashemi Rafsanjani, Akbar 157 Herenigde Nasionale Party (Reunited National Party, HNP) 53–6, 58 Hermandad 193 Hertzog, Barry M. 57 Hess, Rudolf 44 Historiography 3, 7, 84, 89, 207 Hitler, Adolf 22, 44, 175 Honduras 2 Hong Kong 100–1, 104–11 Hungarian uprising 111 Houphouët-Boigny, Félix 135, 140 Ibazizen, Augustin 122 Ibrahim, Datuk Adbil Hamid 38 India 2, 7, 37, 45 Indian community; In South Africa 53, 57, 60–1; In Hong Kong 108 Indian Country 83–4, 86, 88–9 Indian wars 87, 94, 96 Indochina 2, 126, 134, 136, 138, 140, 142, 144, 208–9 Indonesia 45 Indonesian War of Independence 2 Interdoc Network 21 Iran 153–6; Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) 7, 150–62 Iran- Iraq War 2, 150–2, 154–5 Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) 150, 152–6, 158, 161–2 Israel 10, 36–7 Italy 1, 23, 25, 34, 28, 42, 58, 61, 64, 119–20; Florence 42; Rome 19, 22, 29, 36, 42–3 Ivory Coast 7, 134 Japan 1, 6, 105, 107; Japanese empire 1, 107, 222 Jim Crow 69–71, 74, 76 Juan Carlos I, King of Spain 190

Kalkusová, Marie 24 Kenya 167 Kerdavid, Joseph 117–21 Khamenei, Ali 157 Khatami, Mohammad 157 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah 151, 154, 157, 159–60 Knowles, David Trevor 38 Korea; South Korea 2, 10, 37, 42, 219, 220, 228–9; Seoul 42, 219, 228; North Korea 7 Korean War 10, 35, 86–7, 219–23, 225–7, 229–30 Kovpak, Sydir Artemovych 19 Krasny Bor, battle of 193 Kremlin 44, 77 Ku Klux Klan 70, 78 Labour Party (South Africa) 54, 56 Lampe, Maurice 20 Lanschot, Willem Charles van 37–40 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 205–6, 208 Les Temps Modernes 204, 211–13, 215–16 Lhote, Alix 23 Liberia 136. 140 Luxembourg 28, 37 Maastricht 42 Madagascar 136 Manhès, Henri 23 Malan, Daniel François 53, 57, 65 Malaya 103–4 Malaysia 38, 42; Kuala Lumpur 42 Mali 45, 136, 138 Marabastad Riot 61–2 Massu, Jacques-Émile 126, 204, 210 Masculinity 84, 89, 91–2, 95–6, 174, 242, 244, 247; and nationalism 92, 95 Mattéï, Georges 214 Memory 3–4, 7–10, 17–18, 21, 30, 46, 107–10, 150, 160, 187–8, 190–6, 203–4, 206–7, 209–10, 212–13, 215–16, 220–1, 223, 227, 229, 235–6, 240, 247–8; Armistice Day 102–3, 126; battlefield tourism 10, 199, 235–47; fallen soldiers 8–10, 46, 102, 105, 160, 171, 190–4, 242; museums 160, 219, 221, 236; narratives 8–10, 26, 44, 87, 102, 104–7, 109, 170, 176, 188, 195–6, 214, 221, 223, 226, 228, 236, 245; oral history 84, 220–2, 225–6, 228–9; trauma 4, 17, 25, 29–30, 237, 246; see also violence; war memorials 103, 194;

254 Index Cenotaph 103, 105–6, 109; Treptower Park 10 Miláns del Bosch, Jaime 190 Milojevic, Miloje 37 Mollet, Guy 128 Morel, Albert 34–5, 38 Morocco 38, 45, 119, 190, 204 Moroccan War 190 Mozambique 167, 171 Mugabe, Robert 8, 167–70, 172–9 Muñoz Grandes, Agustín 189, 194 Müller, Philipp 21 Muslims 7, 117, 121–2, 126 Namibia 167, 179, 236, 239, 241–2, 244 Nationalism 7–8, 53–4, 64–5, 84, 88–9, 95, 121–2, 134, 136–8, 144, 151–2, 154, 160, 167–8, 171, 173, 177, 203 Native Americans 83–97; Red Power Movement (RPM), see also civil rights movement; American Indian Movement 83, 96 NATO 22, 29, 35, 37 Netherlands 42–3; Rotterdam 42; The Hague 42, 43 Neves, Joseph 37 New Era / Ere nouvelle 39–40 New York Times, The 35, 38 Newcomb, Elliott H. 35, 38–9, 41 Nieto, Luis 188 Niger 136, 139 Nigeria 2, 37, 45, 167 Nkomo, Joshua 168 Norway 37–8 Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) 130 Ossawa Brandwag 55, 65 Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza Shah 154 Pakistan 2, 7, 37 Palacios, Teodoro 195 Parmelan, Roger 38–9 Paulus, Friedrich 22 Peace 1, 3–4, 8, 20–1, 29, 34–5, 38, 40–4, 46, 58, 102, 105, 205–7, 215, 222, 237, 242, 244–5 pensions 56, 69, 100–1, 120–1, 123–5, 127, 130, 137–9, 141, 143, 191–2, 224–5 Pétain, Philippe 118 Philippines 2, 36–7, 42; Manila 42 Pinilla, Carlos 198 Poland 34, 38, 42; Sopot 42; Warsaw 22 Portugal 9

prisoners of war (POWs) 3, 18–21, 29, 36–7, 90, 104, 107, 187–88, 191–2, 222; Prisoners’ camps 18, 20–1 race 6, 55, 59–64, 69, 70–8, 84–5, 89, 92, 168–70, 178; racism 6, 87, 178, 207, 214 Rankin, John E. 71 Reintegration 137, 142, 151–3, 161, 188–90, 223 Religion 2, 196 Resistance 5, 17, 21–9, 34, 76, 89, 91, 96, 160, 173, 205, 208–9, 211–13 Rhodesia 167, 170 Roos, Neil 59, 64 Rouhani, Hassan 158, 162 Russell, Harold 39 Russia 187–91, 193–6, 199, 224; Leningrad 187, 195; Volkhov 187, 195 Russian Civil War 1 Russian Front see Eastern Front San Francisco 72 Sangoulé Lamizana, Aboubacar 141 Seijn, Remco 38 Sékou Touré, Ahmed 134, 137–40, 144 Senegal 139 Serrano Suñer, Ramón 196 Sierra Leone 45 Singapore 103–4, 110 Smuts, Jan 54–6, 63, 65 Somerhausen, Luc 22, 28 South Africa 6, 10, 42, 53–65, 167–8, 179, 236–9, 241–4; Cape Town 244; Durban 57, 60; Johannesburg 42; Pretoria 62 South African Defence Force (SADF) 236, 238–46, 248 South Africanism 53 Soviet Union 1, 5, 9, 17, 21, 25, 29, 34, 36, 44, 150–1, 168, 187–8, 191–2, 195–6, 222, 224, 228, 236 Speidel, Hans 22 Spain 1, 19, 187–8, 190, 193, 197; Alicante 192, 197; Barcelona 191, 194, 198; Madrid 191, 194; Málaga 191; Valencia 191 Spanish Civil War 1, 187–9, 193–4, 197 Springbok (magazine) 55–6 Stalin 37 Stalingrad, battle of 239 Steiner, Wilhelm 26 Switzerland 42; Geneva 46; Lausanne 42 Syria 136

Index  255 Third Reich, see Nazi Germany Third World, see also Global South Tito (Josip Broz, known as) 37 Togo 139–40, 144 Toujas, Jean 21 Treaties of Rome 22 Truman, Harry S. 9, 41 Tunis 121–2, 204 Uganda 167 Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien (UDMA) 121 United Nations 5, 33–5, 151, 168, 222; San Francisco Charter 35, 40, 43 United Party (South Africa) 54 United States 1, 5–6, 8, 34, 36–40, 45, 69–70, 73, 75–6, 83, 85–7, 89, 93–4, 150–1, 171, 197, 220, 222–3, 225, 236; New York 35, 45–6, 75–6, 237; Washington, DC 70, 73, 91 United States State Department 44–5 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 40, 43 Upper Volta 7, 135–6, 141–4 Valley of the Fallen Soldiers (Valle de los Caídos) 194 Vanderbilt Jr., Alfred G. 39–40 veterans; conceptualization 3–5, 25, 224–5; and land distribution 167–73, 176–8; symbolism 5–7, 20, 33–4, 46, 74, 95, 102–3, 105–7, 119, 141–2, 144, 160, 169, 171–8, 191, 193, 239–40, 242, 247; veteranhood 5–6, 224 veterans’ organizations; Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia (ANPI) 45; Association des Anciens Combattants et Victimes de Guerre (Veterans and War Victims Association, ACVG) 119–22, 128; American Veterans Committee (AVC) 34, 73; American Veterans of World War II (Amvets) 34–6, 39; American Legion 5–6, 34, 36. 69–70, 72, 75, 78, 86; British Commonwealth Ex-Services League (BCEL) 109; British Empire Services League (BESL) 34, 36–8; British Korea Veterans Association (BKVA) 220–1, 225, 227, 229–30; British Korean War Veterans Association (BKWVA) 230; British Legion 36–7, 100–7, 108–11;

Brotherhoods of the Blue Division (Hermandades de la División Azul) 191–4, 196–9; Conférence internationale des associations des mutilés et anciens combattants (CIAMAC) 34, 46; Committee of Anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters (Komitee der antifaschistischen Widerstandkämpfer, KdAW) 23; Condor Legion Veterans Association 191; Czechoslovak Union of Freedom Fighters (Svaz bojovníků za svobodu, SPB) 18, 20, 22–4, 27; Czech Partisans’ Union 19; Delegación Nacional de Excombatientes (DNE) 188, 193, 197; Disabled American Veterans 36; European Federation of Ex-Combatants’ Associations (Fédération européenne des associations des anciens combattants, FEDAC) 28; Ex-Services Association of Malaya (ESAM) 103; European Confederation of Ex-Combatants (Confédération européenne des anciens combattants, CEAC) 29; Fédération des associations des anciens combattants franco-musulmans (Federation of French-Muslim Veterans Associations. FAACFM) 121–2, 128; Fédération interaliée des anciens combattants (FIDAC) 34, 46; Hong Kong Ex-Servicemen’s Association (HKESA) 109, 111; Hong Kong Prisoners of War Association 104; International Confederation of Former Prisoners of War (Confédération internationale des anciens prisonniers de guerre, CIAPG) 29; International Federation of Former Political Prisoners (Fédération internationale des anciens prisonniers politiques, FIAPP) 18–20, 34; International Federation of Resistance Fighters (Fédération internationale des résistants, FIR) 5, 17–30, 44; International Federation of War Veterans Organizations, see World Veterans Federation; International Union of the Resistance and the Deportation (Union internationale de la Résistance et de la Déportation, UIRD) 28–9; Légion française des combattants (LFC) 34, 118; National

256 Index Association of Italian Anti-Fascist Political Persecuted (Associazione Nazionale Perseguitati Politici Italiani Antifascisti – ANPPIA) 23; National Confederation of Ex-Combatants (Confederación Nacional de Excombatientes) 198; National Federation of Blue Division Brotherhoods (Federación Nacional de Hermandades de la División Azul) 192–4; National Federation of Deported and Interned Resistance Fighters and Patriots (Fédération Nationale des Déportées et Internés Résistants et Patriots – FNDIRP) 23; Polish Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy (Związek Bojowników o Wolność i Demokrację, ZBoWiD) 22–3; Second World War Veterans Association (Hong Kong) (SWWVA); Springbok Legion 55; Trench Builders Association, Iran (TBA) 150–4, 157–62; Union française des anciens combattants (UFAC); Union nationale des combattants d’Afrique du nord (National Union of Soldiers of North Africa, UNCAFN) 204–5; Union of the Resistance for a United Europe (Union de la Résistance pour une Europe unie, URPE) 28; Union of Victims of Nazi Persecution (Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes, VVN) 23; Veterans of Foreign Wars 34, 36, 69; World Veterans Federation (WVF) 5, 10, 27–9, 33, 35–46; World Veterans Fund Inc. 39–40; Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) 171 Vietnam 2, 7, 46, 88, 90, 94–5, 236; Socialist Republic of Vietnam 7 Vietnam War 6, 10, 83, 85, 87, 89, 210, 224, 228 Violence 4, 6, 73, 91, 93, 118, 130, 168–9, 170–5, 177–9, 198, 203–4, 207, 209–10, 212, 214, 240, 242–3; Oradour massacre 10, 210–11; My Lai massacre 10; Vinkt massacre 22

Volunteers 1–2, 53, 58, 85, 103, 136–8, 141–2, 151–5, 158, 187–9, 193, 195–8, 225; Motivations 85, 143, 151, 168, 171–2, 187 Waffen SS 187, 194 war generation 151–2 warfare 2–3, 17, 21, 92, 157, 208–9, 224, 227, 242; bacteriological warfare 21; psychological warfare 126, 128–30 Warsaw Pact 21 Wehrmacht 22, 187, 195, 197 Weisenborn, Günther 26 Westad, Odd Arne 45 Wickens, Alfred John 37 Will, Hubert 45 Women 1–2, 69, 84–5, 91–3, 95, 103, 168, 171 World Federation of Scientific Workers 19 World Federation of Trade Unions 19 World Peace Council 19 World Union of Students 19 World War I 1, 34, 57, 86, 100–2, 118, 120, 134, 157, 221 World War II 1–6, 8–9, 17, 21–3, 25, 28–30, 33–4, 37, 39, 44, 53, 60, 65, 70–2, 74, 86–7, 100–1, 105–7, 117–18, 122, 127, 129, 131, 134, 136, 142, 144, 170, 187, 190, 204–5, 208–9, 211–13, 215, 222–4 Wourgaft, Serge 28 Yaméogo, Maurice 141 Yugoslavia 19, 27, 34, 42, 45; Belgrade 19, 36–7, 42 Zambia 167 Zimbabwe 7–8, 167–79; Harare 176 Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) 168 Zimbabwe African Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) 168, 169–70, 174–5 Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (ZANLA) 168 Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) 168