Tag Archives: politics

Not the Country We Once Were 1.

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For quite some time now, United States government bonds were a global safe-haven when conditions got rocky somewhere else in the world.  This rested upon the belief that the US government could and would pay its IOUs.[1]  It has been easy for the United States to find lenders willing to buy Treasury bonds at lower rates of interest than might otherwise have applied. 

The consequences have been good or bad depending on how you look at it.  Various benefits for the United States flowed from the belief in the reliability of American public credit.  For one thing, the willingness to lend has eased the cost of the big deficits and growing national debt.  Americans have not had to strike a balance between taxes and spending. 

Furthermore, for those individuals who rely upon credit purchases, buying a car, or a house, or a lot of stuff at Walmart has been cheaper.  The reverse of the medal here is that all those foreigners who wanted dollar-denominated bonds raised the value of the dollar relative to the currencies of those other countries.  These “strong” dollars made imports cheapish.  This, too, eased the cost of consumption.[2]  OK, where did these foreigners get the dollars to buy Treasury bonds?  They got them by selling cheap goods to Americans.  Then they buy US Treasury bonds, which raises the value of the dollar, which makes their goods cheaper for Americans and American goods more expensive for everyone. 

Along the way, all those cheap imports first undercut, then destroyed, much of America’s manufacturing base.  If all it had done was wreck the American production of teddy-bears, we could live with that.  However, many of the goods now produced abroad are things like pharmaceuticals, computers, information/communications technology, and automobiles.  Since joining the World Trade Organization in 2000, China has been the main predator stripping the bones of the non-financial and non-entertainment sectors of the American economy.[3] 

As the national borrowing has increased, the size of the debt has grown to very high levels.  The debt can be regarded as solid so long as the United States has the will and the means to pay the interest, at least, on it.  The share of the interest payments in government spending has grown in recent years.  Partly, this reflects the sheer volume of the debt; partly, it reflects the higher interest rates charged to control the inflation. 

However, what if the debt or the interest rate on the debt grow so large, that the interest payment exceeds what Americans are willing and able to pay?  This has been a continual and growing theoretical concern among economists and investors for many years.  People will lend so long as they believe that they will be paid back.[4]  If they lose confidence, then they will try to get rid of their government I.O.U.s.[5]  (I don’t recall hearing any of this discussed in presidential debates.)  It is possible that the recent “retreat” from bonds is the first tremor of an earthquake.    

Or perhaps not.  A large share of the small group controlling global business and financial resources (countries, companies, banks) really dislike the current American economic policies.  So is also possible that this is just a warning shot.  Will people attend to the warning? 

[1] Peter Goodman, “Trump Tariffs Shake Faith In the Safety of U.S. Bonds,” NYT, 14 April 2015. 

[2] Just for fun, go through all your stuff, from underwear to lap-tops and make a list of where everything comes from. 

[3] How do you fight a war with fictional “super heroes” dressed in Spandex and piles of money? 

[4] They will lend even when they suspect that they will not be paid back in full.  Under these conditions, they charge a “risk premium’ in the form of higher interest rates still.  Argentina, a notorious bad bet, pays high rates. 

[5] Maybe something like this.  Fire sale – Margin Call (2011) 

An Episode of Appeasement: The Anglo-German Naval Pact, June 1935 4.

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            Having decided to accept the German proposal for talks on a naval agreement, the government spent the next few months quietly setting the stage.  First, in January 1935, the Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, informed King George V that an agreement might help get Germany back into “the comity of nations.”  In February 1935, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald met with the then very anti-German French Prime Minister Pierre Laval.  The “communique” afterward expressed their hope that talks with Germany would lead to enhanced security in Europe.  In late March 1935, Simon had a preliminary meeting with Hitler in Berlin.  The German dictator told Simon that he was done with the arms limitations imposed by Versailles Treaty.  Germany would expand its army from the 100,000-man limit imposed by Versailles to 500,000 men, begin conscription, and build an air force.  However, Hitler would make commitments to Britain to limit naval forces.  Hitler also announced that Joachim von Ribbentrop, a Nazi schemer, rather than an experienced diplomat, would lead the German delegation in such talks. 

Yet no talks began.  The British foreign policy-makers were divided in their attitudes.  Sir Robert Vansittart, the chief British diplomat, believed that Hitler meant to conquer all of Europe, so the best solution was a strong alliance with France, Italy, and even the Soviet Union if necessary.  Anthony Eden, the second-ranking political figure at the Foreign Office, wanted British commitment to Western Europe, but would abandon Eastern Europe; he also put more stock in the League of Nations than in an Italian alliance.  Sir John Simon, the Foreign Secretary, had no views of his own and went where Vansittart pushed. 

The British were busy negotiating the “Stresa Pact” with France and Italy.  Signed on 14 April 1935, it committed Britain, France, and Italy to resist any future German violations of the Versailles Treaty.  The Stresa Pact” could not be squared with a bilateral Anglo-German agreement to violate the naval limits in the treaty. 

At the end of April 1935, the Germans prodded the British by informing them that they had launched new U-Boats and had begun construction of 12 more.  They meant “We’re going ahead; with or without you.”  This got the British moving.  On 29 April 1935, Simon told the House of Commons that Germany had begun building U-Boats; on 2 May 1935, Prime Minister MacDonald told the Commons that he would seek a naval agreement with Germany. 

Things moved fast.  Ribbentrop came to London on 2 June 1935.  On 4 June, he told the British that Germany would accept the 35 percent ratio, but nothing less, and that the British had a few days to decide.  Simon, the Foreign Secretary, walked out in answer to such rude behavior.  Stil, on 5 June the government accepted Ribbentrop’s proposal.  Two days later, Simon left the Foreign Office and Sir Samuel Hoare became Foreign Secretary.  During further discussions, the Germans accepted the British requirement that the German fleet be symmetrical with the Royal Navy.  The two parties signed the completed agreement on 18 June 1935. 

The Anglo-German agreement enraged the French.  Britain had not consulted the French or the Italians.  The agreement of the British and Germans to “legalize” a violation of the disarmament clauses of the Versailles treaty could not be squared with the “Stresa Pact.”  It appeared to fall into the tradition of “Perfidious Albion.”  It’s hard to form an alliance against a common danger when the parties don’t trust each other.  That’s part of the story of appeasement. 

An Episode of Appeasement: The Anglo-German Naval Agreement, June 1935 3.

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            Adolf Hitler’s view of Britain wavered between implacable foe and natural partner in a division of the world.  In Mein Kampf (1925), he castigated Imperial Germany for pursuing a pointless fleet-building program that forced Britain into alliance with its traditional colonial enemies France and Russia.  In the “Hossbach Memorandum” (1937) he described both France and Britain as “hate-filled” opponents who would never accept Germany’s revival.  In 1934-1935 he still had hopes of winning over Britain, if only to disrupt the emerging Franco-British-Italian common front. 

            In November 1934, the Germans told the British that they wanted to reach a bilateral agreement that would allow the Germany navy to rise to 35 percent of the British navy.[1]  The offer simultaneously attracted and disturbed the British.  The Germans seemed bent on rearming in defiance of the Versailles Treaty in any case.  The British most feared German bombing of cities.  An agreement on navies could lead to an agreement on air forces.  So, the German offer deserved consideration. 

Several questions had to be resolved.  First, could Britain tolerate ANY German naval rearmament?  The Royal Navy had to be dispersed to meet its global responsibilities, while a German fleet would be concentrated in the North Sea and North Atlantic.  Could Britain defend itself in Europe against a fleet one-third the size of the Royal Navy? 

Second, would it be best to shape that rearmament to the kind of German fleet would be easiest to deal with?  Would such a German fleet be symmetrical with the Royal Navy (in battle ships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines)?  Or would it be a “lighter” fleet organized for attacking merchant shipping (lots of submarines and light cruisers, but few battleships)? 

Third, British rearmament would prioritize the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, while German rearmament was already prioritizing the Army (Wehrmacht) and the Air Force (Luftwaffe).  Both the British Army and the Germany Navy got the leftovers.  Expert opinion held that the Germany Navy would not reach 35 percent of the present Royal Navy until 1942.  By that time the Royal Navy would have been greatly expanded.  The Germans would never really catch up.  Seen from this perspective, a naval agreement might be a strategically meaningless concession while perhaps improving the climate of relations between the two countries.  A more meaningful agreement on air forces might follow. 

Fourth, the agreement could create diplomatic problems with the French.  Britain and France were working up a common front with Italy to check further German violations of Versailles.[2]  A bilateral agreement to end the naval disarmament conditions of the multi-lateral Versailles Treaty would be understood in France as both slimy and a betrayal. 

            Committees considered the issues.  They concluded that a German fleet 35 percent the size of the Royal Navy marked the maximum that could be accepted, but it could be accepted.  It would be best to insist upon a symmetrical fleet to short-stop one organized for a “guerre de course.”  A naval agreement should be followed by pursuit of an agreement on air forces.  Finally, “the French be damned” went unspoken, but not unthought. 

[1] Joseph Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933–1939: Appeasement and the Origins of

the Second World War in Europe (1998). 

[2] See No more coals to Newcastle. | waroftheworldblog 

An Episode in Appeasement: The Anglo-German Naval Agreement, June 1935 2.

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            Various “truths” emerged from the early histories of the origins of the First World War.  Prominent among them: arms races lead to war, so—by implication–disarmament would lead to peace.   The reasoning behind this “truth” ran something like the following.  Military equality led to stability.  Military inequality led to instability.  Military inequality could emerge from either countries creating larger armies or from new technologies.  Imbalances of either sort created a sense of insecurity on the weaker side and aggressive behavior on the stronger side.  Building up one’s own power to restore stability became an entrenched response.  Mutual fear and suspicion became entrenched, building up psychological tension.  Linked to this idea of a spiral of power and fear, was a belief that the “Merchants of Death” (MOD) winding-up governments and publics in order to increase their profits.  Corrupt politicians and journalists served the MOD as the agents of influence.  After the war, disarmament became one chief purpose of diplomacy. 

            Therefore, naval armaments remained a live subject after the First World War.  The Washington Naval Conference (1922) had agreed on a ratio of 5:5:3:1.75:1.75 in the number of battleships and battlecruisers between Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy.  The Geneva Naval Conference (1927) tried and failed to strike an agreement on the size and number of cruisers.  The American and British concepts could not be reconciled.[1]  The issues were revived, and this time agreed upon, in the London Naval Treaty (1930).  The countries compromised on different classes of cruisers, while also limiting submarines and destroyers.[2] 

Germany participated in none of these conferences because its navy had been severely limited by the Versailles Treaty.  The Versailles Treaty did allow Germany to replace existing ships once they were at least 20 years old.  The oldest of its battleships had been built in 1902, so by the mid-Twenties, Germany designed a new type of ship, the “Panzerkreuzer” (or “pocket battleship”).  When the wartime Allies learned of these ships, they tried to prevent their construction.  Germany offered to not build the ships in exchange for admission to the Washington naval treaty with a limit of 125,000 tons.  The Americans and British were willing to appease German demands, but the French refused. 

Meanwhile, Germany argued that either all countries should disarm or Germany should be allowed to rearm to the level of other countries.  The League of Nations and many right-thinking people took this argument at face value, so it sponsored a World Disarmament Conference (1932-1933). 

Mid-stream, Hitler came to power, abandoned the Disarmament Conference (October 1933), and announced that Germany would rearm in defiance of the Versailles Treaty.  On the one hand, this tipped Britan toward a policy of gradual rearmament (1935-1939).[3]  On the other hand, it led to the creation of the Stresa Agreement (14 April 1935) between Britain, France, and Italy to resist future German violations of Versailles.  Could the “allies” maintain solidarity?  Yet no British leader wanted war.  Could Germany be either deterred or appeased?  

[1] The British wanted more light cruisers for protecting imperial trade routes, the Americans wanted fewer, but heavier cruisers.  The Japanese wanted a ratio of 70 percent of the American fleet, not the same 5:5:3 ratio of 1922. 

[2] One effect of the naval treaties combined with the Great Depression appeared in the collapse of the British shipbuilding industry.  Beating arms into breadlines, so to speak. 

[3] British rearmament in the Thirties. | waroftheworldblog 

Missak Manouchian.

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            Off and on, the Ottoman Empire persecuted Armenians.  Many of the victims sought greener fields outside the empire.  Wherever they went, the emigres stayed in touch with other emigres and with their families at home.  In 1905, some of them established the Armenian General Benevolent Union.  The AGBU raised money to send seeds and farm equipment to Armenians still inside the Empire.  Then came the Ottoman Empire’s terrible genocide of the Armenians.  The AGBU provided much humanitarian aid at the time, but then also established orphanages to care for the hordes of children who had lost their parents.  Later, they paid for the higher education of talented Armenian orphans. 

Missak Manouchian (1909-1944) benefitted from the help of the AGBU.  He lost his parents in the genocide (must have been about 6 years old), grew up in an orphanage in French-ruled Lebanon, and went to France (1925) in search of work.  Eventually, he became a lathe-operator at Citroen near Paris.  Naturally, he joined the Confederation General du Travail (CGT), a trades union group.  He lost that job when the Depression hit France in the early Thirties.  Disappointed, like almost everyone else, in capitalism and parliamentary democracy, he joined the French Communist Party in 1934. 

He also had literary and intellectual aspirations.  From 1935 to 1937, the Party put him to editing an Armenian-language literary magazine, and working on a Party-inspired Relief Committee for Armenia. 

The Hitler-Stalin Pact (August 1939) led the French government to ban the Communist Party when war broke out a few days later.  Manouchian was one among many communists who were arrested.  Like others, he was then released for military service.  Assigned to a unit remote from the front lines, Manouchian was discharged after Germany defeated France in Summer 1940.  He went back to Paris; got arrested by the Germans; got released.  Then there is a gap in what is known of his life.  After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Communist Party went to war in a serious way.  Manouchian seems not to have been involved or involved much in any Resistance work.  The most likely thing is that he did some writing for clandestine newspapers. 

Things changed in February 1943.  Boris Milev, a Bulgarian Communist living in France, recruited Manouchian for the group being led by Boris Holban.[1]  In Summer 1943, Manouchian replaced Holban as head of the group.  In September 1943, Manouchian ordered a team to kill an SS General in Paris.  They did and Heinrich Himmler demanded action.  He got it.  Holban had worried that the group’s many young men were careless about security.  He had wanted to back off for a while and increase security.  He had been right.  The Vichy police had already identified some of the group, who led them to many others.  The French arrested 22 members of the group in November 1943.  They were turned over to the Germans, tried and executed in February 1944. 

Much later, an ugly quarrel over responsibility took place in the media.[2]   

Resistance movements were (and are) vulnerable.  They attracted enthusiasts who often were not suited by maturity or temperament or life experience to secret work.  Security services often have the bulge in all these areas, along with superior resources.  It can be a martyr’s game. 

[1] Boris Milev – Wikipedia 

[2] See: Affiche Rouge – Wikipedia and Missak Manouchian – Wikipedia.  These people deserved better. 

A Piece of Resistance.

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            Nationalism preaches that all the people speaking the same language should be grouped together in one independent country.  Nationalism came to Rumania in the later 19th Century, when part of it escaped from the Ottoman Empire to form the new country.  However, many Rumanian-speakers still lived outside the country.  After Russia collapsed into revolution and civil war during the First World War, Rumania grabbed the mostly-Rumanian territory of Bessarabia (1918). 

            Anti-Semitism walked in daylight in Rumania.[1]  Jews had no rights and could not be citizens.  Most lived in miserable poverty.  A large Jewish community lived in Bessarabia, so the change of borders brought them under Rumanian rule.  In 1923, a new constitution—imposed by the Western powers—granted Jews citizenship.  Nothing else changed.  Many Jews pined for the Soviet Union which they believed to be a socialist utopia where religion didn’t matter. 

            Baruch Bruhman (1908-2004) began life as a Jewish Russian subject in Bessarabia; then became Rumanian.[2]  He rejected everything about the Rumanian state: he joined the illegal Communist Party (1929); went to jail for it (1930); deserted from the army during compulsory service (1932); went to jail for it; did organizational work for the Communist Party; fled to Czechoslovakia one step ahead of the police (1936); went to France to join the International Brigades fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1938), but arrived too late; worked for the French Communist Party (PCF) for a year; and enlisted in the French Foreign Legion under the name Boris Holban when the Second World War broke out (1939).[3] 

            The Germans captured Holban in June 1940, but he escaped in December 1940 and returned to Paris.  In June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union.  All foreign Communist parties were ordered to attack the Germans to divert troops from the Russian front.  The PCF knew that the Germans would shoot a lot of French civilian hostages in reprisal.  Holban had spent his life on the run and had been to war.  The PCF set him to recruiting immigrant workers to kill Germans.  Holban found Rumanians, Hungarians, Poles, and Italians willing to fight the Germans.  Most were Jews and veterans of Spain.  If Germany won, they were doomed. 

            From August 1942 to June 1943, Holban’s group derailed trains, attacked factories, and killed 83 Germans on the streets of Paris.  Both the Germans and the French police hunted the “terrorists.”  Holban fell out with his PCF bosses.  They wanted more attacks; he wanted to slow down while concentrating on security.  In July 1943, Holban was replaced by Missak Manouchian, who accelerated attacks.  Then Manouchian was caught.  The PCF brought Holban back to run a rat-hunt for whoever had betrayed the group (December 1943). 

            Returning to now-Communist Rumania after the war, Holban soon fell into the whirlpool of the Stalinist purges.  Many years later, after he had re-settled in France (1984), he was accused of betraying Manouchian.  A storm followed, but Holban was proved innocent. 

            A puzzle: Was this Jewish resistance or Communist resistance or French resistance? 

[1] Even if vampires did not.  See: Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897); “Nosferatu” (dir. F. W. Murnau, 1922). 

[2] Renee Poznansky, Jews in France during World War II (2001). 

[3] This is very significant.  In August 1939, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin did a deal with German dictator Adolf Hitler.  The Soviet Union would remain neutral in any war between Germany and other countries.  All foreign Communist parties were ordered to oppose their own nation’s war effort.  Bruhman/Holban was defying orders. 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 14.

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            History lessons.  The United States was a high tariff nation for a long time.[1]  By 1929, the average tariff on imported goods was 36 percent.  The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 raised the tariff by 6 percent.[2]  In comparison, the average American tariff under recent administrations has been 2 percent.  Trump’s tariffs elevate that to 23 percent.  So, for the moment, the Trump tariffs have a greater impact than did the Smoot-Hawley tariff.  (Give it a few years and maybe we’ll be living with still-higher Vance tariffs.)  

In 1971, President Richard Nixon wanted foreign countries to revalue the dollar.  To nudge them toward speedy agreement, he imposed a 10 percent surcharge on imports.  He got speedy agreement and the surcharge went away. 

Today.  How serious a blow to the American economy are the Trump tariffs?  Never mind the stock market and the headlines in the New York Times.[3]  The American tariffs (at least the current high rates) aren’t likely to topple a row of dominos.   Most countries aren’t eager to launch a trade war with anyone just because the United States has launched one with everyone.  Most countries remain committed to “globalization” and comparatively free trade. 

What is true of Europeans and non-Chinese Asians is also true of many Americans.  One recent poll reported that 54 percent of respondents opposed the tariffs, while 42 percent supported them.  Pressure from constituents may bring Republican members of Congress off the sidelines, at least on this issue. 

Then what about retaliatory tariffs on American goods?  This sounds a little odd when Americans are being told that tariffs on foreign imports is really a tax on ordinary Americans.  Same goes for tariffs on American goods in foreign countries.  Do democracies abroad suddenly want to impose possibly long-term “tax” increases on their own constituents? 

            So, it is not clear if American tariffs and foreign retaliation are a done deal for the long haul.  Many of the target countries want to cut a deal with the United States.  China is an exception.[4]  It’s fair to say that people are not entirely sure what President Donald Trump wants.  Does he want tariff equality with most of America’s trading partners, while battering the daylights out of China?  Does he want a “fortress America,” as many people believe or hope or fear?  If he does want a “fortress America,” would that system survive the end of his term? 

            In 1932, the British created a system called “Imperial Preference”: low to no tariffs around the members, combined with a high external tariff directed against the Americans.  Could Trump use tariff negotiations to create something similar?  Tariff equality within the bloc and high tariffs by directed against China.   

[1] Greg Ip, “An Unpopular and Survivable Trade War,” WSJ, 8 April 2025. 

[2] However, it denominated tariffs in dollar terms, not in percent of price terms.  As prices fell all around the world in the early Thirties, the absolute cost of the imports increased by much more than 6 percent.  They rose as high as an additional 19 percent above the 36 percent level. 

[3] Wait.  Wall Street and the NYT are on the same side?  The problems of the Democrats in a nutshell.  “We are the people our parents warned us about.” 

[4] It may turn out that Canada is also an exception.  Canadians are the nicest people in the world.  Until they’re not.  In Normandy in Summer 1944, an attacking Waffen SS unit over-ran a Canadian Army field hospital.  They killed everyone.  Then the Canadians counter-attacked and recaptured the hospital.  The Canadians never “captured” any more Waffen SS troops. 

An Episode in Appeasement: The Anglo-German Naval Agreement, June 1935 1.

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            To put it mildly, France and Britain had a long history of conflict.[1]  Beginning in the 1890s, however, Germany’s pursuit of a large navy threatened Britain’s long-standing policy of maintaining naval dominance in order to safeguard the empire.  Britain responded to Germany’s fleet construction by settling many of its outstanding international conflicts and drawing closer to France.  The two countries fought shoulder to shoulder (although not without some elbows being thrown) during the First World War. 

            Once victory over Germany had been won, Britain and France began to drift apart.  First, the Versailles Treaty deprived Germany of a real navy.  The end of German naval power removed a thorn from the lion’s paw.  Britain’s policy turned to other things.[2]  Second, Anglo-American fair words and promises persuaded the French to back off their most extreme demands for guarantees against any revival of German power.[3]  Third, the two countries diverged on policy toward Central and Eastern Europe.  American repudiation of the security guarantee for France made the French all the more determined to strictly enforce the remaining terms.  This led to the Ruhr Crisis and the near-collapse of the German economy.[4]  That added to the chaos in Central and Eastern Europe.   

Yet Britain desired a restoration of stability in the region in hopes of creating markets for its troubled economy.  Later (in 1935), a diplomat at Britain’s Foreign Office would observe that “… from the earliest years following the war it was our policy to eliminate those parts of the Peace Settlement which, as practical people, we knew to be unstable and indefensible.”[5]  Anglo-American financial pressure led France to accept a reduction in German reparations to a level that the Germans might be willing to pay, at least for a while.  This was the Dawes Plan.[6]  Then British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain[7] helped negotiate the Locarno treaty (1925).[8]  The treaty offered a general British guarantee of the existing frontiers in Western Europe.  However, the treaty offered nothing similar in Eastern Europe where France sought anti-German alliances among the “successor states” (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia).  If a future Germany attacked one of France’s allies, France would attack Germany.  However, the Locarno Treaty might require Britain to come to the aid of Germany, rather than France.  None of this was “good” from the French point of view.  It was merely the best that could be won under the circumstances. 

French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand tried to make the best of a bad deal.  His approach to the Americans about an alliance produced a meaningless general treaty open to all.  The “Kellogg-Briand Pact” (1928) renounced “aggressive war as an instrument of national policy.”  Even Weimar Germany signed. 

[1] History of France–United Kingdom relations – Wikipedia  Very sketchy, but you’ll get the drift: war, truce, war. 

[2] “Now that I’ve eaten, I see things in a different light.”—Groucho Marx. 

[3] The Americans soon repudiated their guarantee by refusing ratification of the Versailles treaty. 

[4] Occupation of the Ruhr – Wikipedia 

[5] Part of this sprang from the de-legitimation of the Versailles Treaty by people like Keynes and Sydney Fay. 

[6] Stephen A. Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan.   

[7] Older half-brother of the future Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. 

[8] Jon Jacobson, Locarno Diplomacy: Germany and the West, 1925-1929.    

Background to the Nuremberg Trials.

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            Some soldiers (both commanders and their troops) have always behaved atrociously in war-time.  (Take a look at the Old Testament.)  Certain kinds of self-restraint in wartime grew up as a form of self-preservation.  You didn’t want to establish a policy of the victor slaughtering the vanquished if you might lose the next battle.  Still, there were always exceptions to such self-restraint.  People of different social groups within your own society or different races outside your society could not expect such treatment.  Neither European Americans nor Native Americans were much inclined to give the other side quarter. 

            This began to change during the 18th Century.  The Enlightenment established the idea of Humanitarian action.  Many Europeans and Americans turned against traditional practices like the use of torture as part of a judicial inquiry, human slavery, and the intolerance of religious difference.  Then the 19th Century witnessed a number of important reforms: compulsory, free public primary education, and the construction of sewer and clean drinking water systems to conquer diseases are two examples of these reforms.  The same effort to make human life better appeared in warfare.  The International Red Cross exemplified this trend. 

            The new mood led to international agreements (conventions) governing the conduct of war.  The First Geneva Convention (1864) defined the proper treatment of wounded and sick soldiers.  Forty thousand wounded soldiers had been left lying around the battlefield at Solferino.  The Hague Convention (1899) banned bombing from the air, the use of poison gas, and dum-dum bullets.  The Second Geneva Convention (1906) extended the First Geneva Convention to cover sailors in navies.  While the first two Geneva Conventions were generally observed by all countries that fought in the First World War, they often were violated in the Second World War and the Hague Convention has been widely ignored in greater or lesser degree. 

            The Allies were outraged by the behavior of the Central Powers during the First World War.  An effort was made to prosecute Ottoman leaders and commanders for the “crime against humanity” of the Armenian genocide.  This failed because of the obstruction of the Turks.  Also after the First World War, the British and the French tried to prosecute some German leaders for the way in which Germany had conducted war.  The Versailles Peace Treaty required Germany to turn over a number of military and civilian officials for trial by a military tribunal of the victor powers.  The Dutch refused to turn over the Kaiser (who had abdicated in November 1918) and the Germans refused to extradite the men demanded by the Allies.  Instead, a handful of lesser figures were tried at Leipzig in 1921, mostly on charges of mistreating prisoners.  The Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) renounced “aggressive war as an instrument of national policy.”  This made war a “crime against peace.”  Germany signed.  The Third Geneva Convention (1929) set rules for the treatment of prisoners of war. 

            In January 1942 British, American, and Russian lawyers began writing a law that would allow the punishment of Germany’s leaders once Germany had been defeated.  At the Teheran Conference (November 1943), the irrepressible Joe Stalin suggested shooting 50,000-100,000 German officers and letting it go at that.  After the Moscow Conference (later in November 1943), the Allies announced that Germans who had committed atrocities would be sent to those countries where they had committed the crimes for trial, while the top leaders would be judged by the Allies.  Germany surrendered in May 1945.  In August 1945 the victors announced the terms of the trials.  In addition to all those to be tried for “war crimes” as then understood, the Nazi leaders would be tried for “crimes against humanity” (see: Armenian genocide) and “crimes against peace” (see: Kellogg-Briand Pact).  This set the stage for the Nuremberg Trials. 

Scalawag.

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            During the post-Civil War “Reconstruction” of the defeated Southern states, Democrats referred to local Whites who had become Republicans as “scalawags.”[1]  One such was John W. Stephens (1834-1870) of North Carolina.[2]  Stephens had grown up in difficult circumstances[3] and with none of the advantages enjoyed by the middle and upper ranks of Southern society.  He spent some time hawking religious tracts, then found work as a tobacco trader in South Carolina.  Along the way he became a husband, father, and widower with a young child in his care, then once again a husband and father.  He was back in North Carolina when the war began.  With two young children to support, he did not join the rush to the colors.  He spent the war commandeering horses for the army; then worked as an “impressment agent” collecting draftees.  By 1865, there were probably many people in the area who thought ill of Stephens. 

            After the war, Stephens went back to tobacco trading.  However, tumultuous change filled the post-war years.  The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery (1865); the Reconstruction Acts imposing federal controls on former rebel states (1867); the Fourteenth Amendment, granting full citizenship to the freed people (1867); and the Fifteenth Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote (1869), fell as hammer blows on Southern White beliefs.  Democrats responded by organizing the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to roll back Black voting rights and the Republican party.  Many murders occurred in the Piedmont area. 

Stephens cast his lot with the new order.  He joined the Republican party and the Union League,[4] then got a job with the Freedmen’s Bureau.  He worked at organizing the freedmen to vote Republican and gained a reputation as a barn-burner.[5]  This turned him from a much disliked figure of ridicule and into an outright enemy of most Whites.  Like other White Republicans, Stephens suffered ostracism and threats, and went everywhere armed.

            In 1868 the freedmen he had been organizing elected him to the North Carolina state Senate.  That election was contested: the Democrats claimed that their candidate had been elected, while the Republican-dominated state Senate gave the seat to Stephens.  In all this he formed a part of the political machine assembled by Republican Governor William Holden.[6] 

In May 1870, Stephens–foolishly or provocatively–attended a Democratic nominating meeting in his home county.  Lured away by one of the members, Stephens was isolated, over-powered, and murdered.  Governor Holden responded by putting two counties under martial law and sending in reliable militia.  While a host of arrests followed, convictions did not.  Juries would not convict, judges directed trials.  Holden himself was impeached.  Power shifted more and more to Democrats, who eventually went on to impose White supremacy. 

The life and death of Stephens illuminate the reasons for an incomplete Reconstruction.   

[1] Scalawag – Wikipedia casts at least some light on the origin of the epithet. 

[2] Drew A. Swanson, A Man of Bad Reputation: The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North Carolina Reconstruction (2023). 

[3] His father was a tailor with five children who died in 1848. 

[4] Essentially an arm of the Republica party.  There’s an academic study: Michael W. Fitzgerald, The Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics and Agricultural Change During Reconstruction  (1989). 

[5] Not a reference to his political oratory.  He was believed to be organizing the nighttime burning of the barns of former Confederates.  See: the short story by William Faulkner, “Barn Burning” (1939). 

[6] See: William Woods Holden – Wikipedia