New Political Ideas in the Aftermath of the Great War [Hardcover]

This edited collection presents new research on how the Great War and its aftermath shaped political thought in the interwar period across Europe. Assessing the major players of the war as well as more peripheral cases, the contributors challenge previous interpretations of the relationship between veterans and fascism, and provide new perspectives on how veterans tried to promote a new political and social order. Those who had frontline experience of the First World War committed themselves to constructing a new political and social order in war-torn Europe, shaped by their experience of the war and its aftermath. A number of them gave voice to the need for a world order free from political and social conflict, and all over Europe veterans imagined a third way between capitalist liberalism and state-controlled socialism. By doing so, many of them moved towards emerging fascist movements and became, in some case unwillingly, the heralds of totalitarian dictatorships.

Introduction; Alessandro Salvador and Anders G. Kj?stvedt.- PART I: WAR EXPERIENCE SHAPING IDEAS.- 1. Rediscovering Democracy and the Nation: Hendrik de Man and the Legacy of the Great War; Tommaso Milani.- 2. Between Vienna, Venezuela, and Versailles: The Effects of World War One on the Nationalist Thought of Miloa Crnjanski; John K. Cox.- 3. French Intellectual Fascism and the Third Way: The Case of Bertrand de Jouvenel and Alfred Fabre-Luce; Daniel Knegt.- 4. From Trenches to Corporations: The Making of Harold Macmillans Third Way in Interwar Britain, 19271935; Valerio Torreggiani.- PART II: WAR EXPERIENCE SHAPING POLITICAL MOVEMENTS.- 5. Frontsozialismus der Tat: War Experience as Foundation of Corporatism in the Stahlhelm Veterans' League; Alessandro Salvador.- 6. Social Policy in the Shadow of the Lost War: The Nazi Movement and Labour Cls‹