The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery [Hardcover]

Wolfgang Schivelbusch (Author), Jefferson Chase (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0805044213 | ISBN-13: 978-0805044218 | Edition: 1st

A fascinating look at history's losers-the myths they create to cope with defeat and the steps they take never to be vanquished again

History may be written by the victors, Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues in his brilliant and provocative new book, but the losers often have the final word. Focusing on three seminal cases of modern warfare-the South after the Civil War, France in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany following World War I-Schivelbusch reveals the complex psychological and cultural reactions of vanquished nations to the experience of military defeat.

Drawing on responses from every level of society, Schivelbusch shows how conquered societies question the foundations of their identities and strive to emulate the victors: the South to become a "better North," the French to militarize their schools on the Prussian model, the Germans to adopt all things American. He charts the losers' paradoxical equation of military failure with cultural superiority as they generate myths to glorify their pasts and explain their losses: the nostalgic "plantation legend" after the fall of the Confederacy; the cult of Joan of Arc in vanquished France; the fiction of the stab in the back by "foreign" elements in postwar Germany. From cathartic epidemics of "dance madness" to the revolutions that so often follow battlefield humiliation, Schivelbusch finds remarkable similarities across cultures.

Eloquently and vibrantly told, The Culture of Defeat is a tour de force that opens new territory for historical inquiry.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This unusual study compares societies that lost major wars and survived, as opposed to being dismantled by their conquerors. Schivelbusch (Disenchanted Night, etc.) addresses the question of how the American South after 1865, France after 1871 and Germany after 1918 came to terms with what happened to them. He describes a two-level coping process, in each case directed by pre-war elites that successfully manipulated postwar mentalities in order to retain power. The first level involved creating myths that mitigated the psychological impact of defeat: the former Confederacy carefully tended the "Lost Cause"; France scapegoated the empire of Napoleon III; Germany turned to legends of an army undefeated at the front but betrayed by domestic weakness. A second structure of myths focused on regeneration and recovery. In America that involved industry and a restoration of white supremacy (eventually, Schivelbusch finds, acknowledged as appropriate by the North); for France, Republican government, military renovation and imperialism; Germany turned heavily to "modern" fashions (jazz and movies) and dreams of altering what was regularly described as the "disgraceful" Versailles peace settlement. Such dreams, Schivelbusch finds, were more passive speculation than active preparation for revenge: even after Hitler's accession to power, ordinary Germans were reluctant to consider treaty revision if the price would be war. For all three societies discussed here, the best revenge for defeat was seen not as payback but as living well and moving into a positive future. That the eventual results-the murderous lynchings of the Jim Crow South, the horrific scale of death in Nazi Germany-were far from "positive" is well-understood by Schivelbusch, but beyond the scope of this book.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Winners write the history books, says the old adage, but the writer of this history book argues that the defeated ultimately emerge healthier, stronger, and smarter than ever before--that is, if they can avoid fantasies of denial and revenge and learn from their failure (and perhaps their conquerors). Examining the post-Civil War American South, post-Franco-Prussian War France, and post-World War I Germany, this selection explores the recurrent patterns of the vanquished: the myths of cultural superiority surviving military failure, the accusations of battlefield betrayal, the inevitable renewal in the victor's image. In the background are the evolution of "total war" and the increasing influence of wartime propaganda. Schivelbusch is a German cultural historian who has written on such diverse topics as the history of spices and the history of artificial light (as well as a weightier history of postwar Berlin), and he is adept in articulating the psychology of conflict and its aftermath. And although at his best in the nineteenth century, his epilogue insightfully suggests that today's bellicose nations might also learn from their defeats. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1st edition (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805044213
• ISBN-13: 978-0805044218
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,123,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sore Losers Make Bad Medicine, September 1, 2003

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Panopticonman "panopticonman" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery (Hardcover)

THE CULTURE OF DEFEAT, an appraisal of the sociocultural similarities apparent in the American South after the aftermath of the Civil War, France after the Franco Prussian War, and Germany after WWI, is an extraordinary performance. Much more than mere sociology or social psychology, it ranges with bracing erudition and insight across the realms of intellectual history, cultural criticism, and political and economic history, synthesizing across these disciplines to elucidate its main thesis: that these "losing sides" went through nearly the same stages of national consciousness as they sought to come back from defeat, that each put forth an explanation of their failure in similar terms, and each, in the fullness of time, came back as more powerful after their defeats.

Dreamworld, scapegoating, revenge -- these are just a few of the parallel stages these defeated states went through. For instance, Germany, France, the American South, all cultivated a "dreamworld" in the immediate aftermath of their defeats, a period of time where leaders are blamed for misleading the people into a war that could not be won, a time when the defeated nation looks to the victors for recognition of their true goodness and their unfortunate victimization by a corrupt elite. In licking their wounds, new more powerful "us vs. them" discourses were created and served to bind the defeated together in seeking their redemption among nations. The Southernization of U.S. politics, for example, over the past 25 years is emblematic of how the South has indeed risen again. In the short term, it took only a few years (with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan as the enforcement arm of Southern elites) to rewrite the Reconstruction codes as Jim Crow laws and the "lawful" suppression of the African American to be de facto reinstituted against the early injunctions of the victor. As Schivelbusch points out, in a terrible irony, the Nazis looked to these codes for instruction as they planned the demonization and destruction of the Jews.

Unlike Kubler-Ross' famous (and in danger of becoming as trite and omnipresent as the 12 step program) stages of grief, nation states do not apparently move toward acceptance. In the nation state new discourses must be hammered together out of the wreckage of defeat, and new goals and national purposes must be forged out of the ashes. One assumes it is difficult to mobilize a citizenry under the banner of acceptance. Schivelbusch, to this point, interestingly, takes issue with the notion that the cycle of defeat and revenge was broken at last after the Second World War through American munificence with Japan and Germany. Schivelbusch suggests that a form of revenge has indeed been in play in the economic arena.

In his conclusion, Schivelbusch notes it is not much of a stretch to suggest that these same patterns may hold true in the wake of the current U.S. war and that a new, more virulent culture of defeat may be created in the Middle East. In less interesting and compelling fashion, other recent books suggest this has already come to pass. Importantly, what Schivelbusch does is show how Western states, too, use the same language of dreamworld and revenge, and shows how they have embarked on the same paths of retribution and domination.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Macropsychological Aftermath of Defeat in War, January 20, 2007

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Dr. Kenyon B. De Greene "Cat Person" (Woodland Hills, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery (Paperback)

This book is a tour de force in comparative history. Essentially unexplored among the vast number of treatises on war have been the psychological and cultural sequelae emerging from defeat. The author identifies a sequence of societal structural changes following defeat of the Confederate States of America, the Second French Empire (of Napoleon III), and the German Empire (of Wilhelm II). First come shock and denial, then rejection and humiliation of the former leaders, who are held responsible for the debacle. The term "dreamland" describes this situation when the nation feels cathartically cleansed, free of guilt, and hopeful for a return to the status quo ante. There is usually strong identification with the victor and adoption of many of his ideas and practices. However, the defeated nation may deny responsibility for its own defeat, invoking a betrayal from within or a "stab in the back." Next follows a desire and planning for revenge or "revanche." Perhaps the most powerful message conveyed by Schivelbusch is this: The 50 years spanned by the three studies mark the final transition from more or less "civilized" notions of war and peace to the unlimited and unsparing pursuit of 20th Century war--a REBARBARIZATION of the world! In this process, economic forces (massive production) have taken precedence over the military. In his epilogue, Schivelbusch asks if America's post-September 11 war fever is the belated response (revanche) to defeat in Vietnam. Is the situation analogous to that of the Weimar republic? I am a systems theorist (consider my own writings), and I was delighted that Shivelbusch's analysis fits well into the systems framework.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book lacks a main idea, December 13, 2009

By 

Robert Slocum (STAMFORD, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery (Paperback)

This is a a very right-brained, synthesizing effort rather than a narrative of any kind. I'm prepared to love that sort of thing, but in the end this book doesn't work for me.

As to the central theme, the similarities between the South/French/Germans after their losses aren't that tightly marked off, so the whole book lacks focus. It almost comes off as three ninety-page books, and each book is a lot of four and five page riffs on various topics, many of them interesting in themselves and all more or less related. But ultimately I found the effect unsettling and unsatisfying.

That's enough of a problem, but I also felt the story bumped along with an uneven mix of minutiae on the one hand and generalization on the other. I wonder what it would be like if I knew more about the time periods involved here: would I appreciate the writing better, or would I be even more annoyed by the author's glibness?

That said, I now know that slavery would probably have died a natural death but for the spectacular rise of the cotton industry (that's pre-Civil War, but whatever); I learned about the Paris Commune and some of the grandiose pan-European idealizations of the French in the last part of the nineteenth century (starring Victor Hugo); and I discovered that Henry Ford was very popular in post WWI Germany, and how Americanized that nation was in the twenties, particularly Berlin.

But there are probably better places to read about these things.