Total War & Totalitarianism

Total War

• Bloodiest wars in history

• “Total War” – Why?– Nations– Civilians– “No holds barred”

Weapons of Advanced technology

Trench Warfare

Great War of 1914 or World War I

• War to end all wars

• 70 million fought & 8 million died

• Background to war

Map World War I

Background

• Archduke Franz Ferdinand

• “Powder Keg of Europe”

• Central Powers – Austria-Hungary, Germany, Ottoman Empire

• Allied Forces – Serbia, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Russia

Reactions in Literature

Wilfred Owen

• 1893-1918

• British poet

• Sense of cynicism and futility

• Dulce et Dorcum Est (1917)

William Butler Yeats

• 1865-1939

• Irish poet and dramatist

• The Second Coming

Ernest Hemingway

• 1899-1961

• American author

• A Farewell to Arms (1929)

Erich Maria Remarque

• 1898-1970

• Erich Paul Remark

• German solider & author

• All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

Reaction in Art

Grosz, Fit for Active Service, c.1916-17, Modern

BRITANNIA MUST BE MORE CAREFUL HOW SHE WAVES THE RULES

THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT (THIS LATEST SUBMARINE VICTIM MAY BE

THE LAST)

Russian Revolution

Problems in Russia

• War

• Government Corruption

• Weak economy

• 1917 - Revolution

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

• 1870-1924

• Marxist

• Leader of the Russian Socialist Party

• Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

State and Revolution

• Phases of Revolution

• Communist Society

• State disappears

• Harmony in the world

The Result

• Dictatorship over proletariat

• Totalitarian regime

• Twisted form of communism

Joseph Stalin

• 1879-1953

• Secret police favorite weapon

• Strict programs – 15 million people die – “the great terror”

Russian Propaganda

• Promote ideals

• Condemn “modernism”, decadence and bourgeois notions

• Social realism in art

Great Depression & America

Artistic Reactions to Great Depression

Literature

John Steinbeck

• 1902-1968

• American novelist

• Natural/Realist style

• Grapes of Wrath (1939)– Social realism vs.

socialist realism

Artistic Reactions to Great Depression

Art

Social Realism

American Scene Painting

American Scene Painting

Dorothea Lange

• 1895-1965

• Documentary photographer

• Worked with RA/FSA

• Humanizes the consequences of the Great Depression

Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936, Social Realism

Posters

Totalitarianism and WWII

Adolf Hitler

• 1889-1945

• 1933 – Chancellor of Germany & leader (Fuhrer) of National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazi party)

• “Internal enemies”

• Propaganda

Propaganda

World War II

Background

• Axis powers – Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Hungry, Spain & Japan

• Allied countries – 25 nations, France & Britain and after 1941 US & USSR

• Turning moments– 1942 – Defeat at Stalingrad– Naval War– Hitler commits suicide– Surrender

Artistic Reaction to the War

• Literature

• Nihilism and resignation

• Use of gallows humor

Joseph Heller

• 1923-1999

• American novelist

• Catch 22 (1961)– No win situation

Holocaust

Holocaust

Holocaust

Holocaust

Holocaust

Elie Wiesel

• b.1928

• Night (1958)

Artistic Reaction to the War

• Art

• Photojournalism

Lee Miller

• 1907-1977

• Former debutant and fashion model who photographed WWII concentration camps & acts of war

Images

Images by Capa & Cartier-Bresson

Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Social Realism

Film in the War Era

• Film as propaganda

• Used in many countries and in many different genres.

Sergei Eisenstein

• 1898-1948

• Russian

• Promoted communism

• Montage

Movie clip

Leni Riefenstahl

• 1902-2003

• German film maker and later photographer

• Propoganda

Triumph of the Will

Sergeant York

• 1941

• Starring Gary Cooper

• Award winning

Saving Private Ryan

• 1998

• Numerous awards

• With Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Matt Damon