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Book Review
Comparative/World
| Wolfgang Schivelbusch. The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery. Translated by Jefferson Chase. New York: Metropolitan Books. 2003. Pp. 403. $27.50.
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| Wolfgang Schivelbusch has distinguished himself as an original historian of culture. An independent scholar who divides his time between Berlin and New York, he has a knack of finding wonderful topics and writing about them with verve and insight. He has published books on the ways railway journeys changed conceptions of time and space; the cultural consequences of artificial light in nineteenth-century Europe; the culture and use of spices, stimulants, and intoxicants; and life and art in Berlin between 1945 and 1948. His new book is a history of the culture of defeat: a thoughtful meditation on the consequences of defeat in the American South after the Civil War, in France following the 1870–1871 military loss to Germany, and in post-1918 Germany. |
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All nations want to be on the victorious side of wars, but being on the losing side is a defining experience that is often more interesting. The history of the victors by the victors tends to be teleological; victory poses few doubts or problems of explanation. But the defeated have to wrestle with their humiliation: they dedicate enormous effort to coming to terms with the significance of their shortcomings. At times, they write their history with that tinge of humanity that comes with sorrow and failure; at other times, they expose the intellectual soul searching and self-criticism that comes with shattered hopes. Most often, they explain and culturally manage the defeat by constructing myths and telling lies, particularly to themselves. |
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Schivelbusch is interested in the myth, memory, and mass psychology generated by defeat, the inner values and inner demons of southern U.S., French, and German societies after their military losses. This is not a book for those looking for a painstaking source analysis or methodological rigor. Schivelbusch's historical canvas is painted with broad strokes, his discussion is dominated by generalizations, and his sources are a large body of secondary literature. Experts in the respective fields will no doubt find certain bibliographical and historiographical omissions. But this book will be rewarding for those who are ready to accept it on its own terms as an original and stimulating study of the modern psychology of defeat in three nations that connects themes often left unrelated. |
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The U.S. South, France, and Germany experienced their defeats very differently, but they did share, according to Schivelbusch, a set of patterns that recurred across time and national cultures. The major one was "a state of unreality—or dreamland" (p. 10). In this state, depression following the defeat turned to euphoria that was usually the result of an internal revolution after the military loss. All blame shifted to the deposed leader or to others, and the losing nation felt free of any guilt. The nations created a myth that constituted the psychological mechanism to come to terms with defeat: the Lost Cause in the South, the French idea of revanche (revenge or redress), and the German belief of being im Felde unbesiegt (undefeated on the field of battle). These myths denied that the nation had been "truly" defeated and postponed the settling of accounts to the future. The defeated nations' myth was that of having lost in battle but won in spirit. The winners are savages: the Yankees in the South, the Prussians in France, the post-1918 African-American occupiers of the Rhineland. |
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