Listening to the latest speeches on European sanctions against Russia, one gets the impression of déja vu. It's true in history certain themes always come back, because there is never a definitive solution as in mathematics.
One of our major historians, Giuliano Procacci, dedicated the last years of his historical work to studying the themes of peace and war between the two world conflicts even outside the strictly European scenario. In this context, he paid particular attention to the themes developed by the pacifist movements and to the pre- and post-colonial Arab world. Also noteworthy are his two essays on the contents of school textbooks The controversial memory. Revisionisms, nationalisms and fundamentalisms in history textbooks.
The best known and most cited work of the historian from Belluno is the history of the Italians (Laterza, 1968), which has had many translations and is in many ways the canon book outside Italy for the history of our country. goWare has just republished a profile of Procacci John Giolitti, from whose political action we can draw many useful lessons for today.
Going back to the historical parallels. Reading Procacci's report on the assignment of the Nobel Peace Prize of 1933/34, we find, as if teleported, some themes that still inflame the international debate sparked by the Russian aggression against Ukraine. What have we learned from two terrible world wars and the fierce regional conflicts fought between European nations and developed on European soil? Maybe nothing. It is the eternal return of history.
1933-1934, winds of war
What happens in these two crucial years? Nazi Germany exits the League of Nations (LoN) and begins to put his hand to a titanic rearmament program without making a secret of his own expansionist aims (to reunite the Germans, after the unjust defeat). The Geneva disarmament conference has now been wrecked and postponed indefinitely.
Japan also left the LoN after having invaded Manchuria with a brutal and unpunished military action and, subjugating it, began to have appetites for the Indochinese area.
Wilsonian-style collective security is thus shattered.
THEMussolin's Italyhe is setting his sights on Ethiopia and in Spain the clash between the socialists, who governed in the red two-year period 1931-33, and the conservatives who have returned to power and who will leave it with the victory of the Popular Front in the elections of 1936.
The great depression of '29 is still unfolding its frightening effects, industrial production in the United States is at 60% of the level reached in 2029 and the French are at 74%.
Western powers are petrified in the grip between economic crisis and growing fascism and nationalism.
Yet something is starting to move as evidenced by the debate that leads to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933-34. The award ceremony of the two winners took place on 10 December 1934. Procacci reconstructs in detail the debate that developed there. Here we offer you some edited excerpts from his book on Nobel prizes and world wars.
The Nobel nominations of Norman Angell and Arthur Henderson
After the prizes of 1930 and 1931, the 1932 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded and that of 1933 was postponed to the following year; a silence that is difficult to interpret otherwise than as a sign of uncertainty and which could not therefore, due to the prestige of the award, last long. The various strategies to prevent a second world war, the threat of which now appeared real, were already beginning to take shape and it was necessary to pronounce on them.
The two most popular nominations [both English] were that of Arthur Henderson, a very authoritative Labor exponent, former foreign minister with Mac Donald in 1929 and now president of the Geneva disarmament conference, and that of Norman Angell, the author of the Great Illusion, perhaps the most influential book between the wars along with the Consequences of peace by Keynes.
However, the choice between the two candidates did not present particular difficulties: both belonged to the same political area (Norman Angell too had sat in the Commons from 1929 to 1931 for the Labor Party) and their judgments and assessments of the international situation were not, at this given, divergent, even if diverging positions were beginning to appear with respect to the policy to be followed towards the loss of collective security.
Henderson's position
The point of view of Henderson [awarde of the prize for 1934], which proceeded from the acknowledgment of extreme gravity of the international situationclearly rejected the hypothesis of a return to a choice of splendid isolation or military alliances.
In his opinion, both temptations were rejected because they were the expression of a desperate choice which would have meant a relapse into that policy of balance between rival alliances which had led to the tragedy of the First World War.
The only practicable way remained that of "pooled security", which had its cornerstones in the in-depth support of the Covenant [the founding charter of the League of Nations], in the Briand-Kellogg pact [the multilateral treaty of renunciation of war as a means of settling disputes between nations, signed in Paris in 1928] and in disarmament, starting with the air force and the navy.
The policy to follow could only be that of further strengthening the authority of the Covenant, which remained the pivot of a peaceful foreign policy. In this regard, Henderson explicitly referred to the instrument of sanctions, not excluding, in extreme cases, the use of military sanctions "limited to the minimum necessary".
This measure did not exclude the possibility that, once a climate of trust and disarmament had been established, the delicate problem of revising the treaties could be tackled on the basis of article 19 of the Covenant, also as regards certain frontiers. In this regard, Henderson said he was ready for "any measure which mitigates the difficulties which arise in areas of population of mixed origin and race".
Henderson's, as can be seen, was a position not without nuances and, also, of ambiguity, which reflected, moreover, uncertainties and a mood of suffering which was also expressed in his action as president of the Geneva conference on disarmament, proving inclined to make concessions to the German point of view.
The bottom line was that there were no alternatives to appeasement
Angell's position
Norman Angell [awarded the prize for 1933] assumed as his main point of reference the new edition, precisely from 1933, of the Grand Illusion [first edition 1909, being republished by goWare] to which he entrusted his chances for the Nobel .
In the early pre-war period Angell had spoken out against any British involvement in the Continental imbroglio. Now, however, he had no difficulty in admitting that the situation had changed and that consequently a convinced collective security policy was the new way forward.
A curious reversal of roles had taken place – this is a recurring motif in Angell's writings of these years, whereby those who had once been partisans of the English intervention against Prussianism, of the warmongers, had become supporters of a policy of isolation, while those who, like him, had supported the reasons for non-intervention were now convinced of the need for one common strategy and agreed to prevent war. In short, the hawks had become doves and the pacifists had become bloody pacifists, cursed pacifists covered in blood.
Starting from his criticism of the compliant attitude that the great powers and the LoN itself had held towards the Japanese aggression in Manchuria, Angell would arrive in the following years, after Ethiopia, to the campaign in defense of which he actively participated, and after Spain [in July 1936 Franco's pronouncement kicked off the Spanish Civil War], to move towards a conflict prevention strategy based on the alliance between France, England and Soviet Russia.
In short, the substance was that of working for aanti-fascist alliance, including military, the democratic powers and the USSR.
The case of Ethiopia
As is known, in November 1935 the mechanism of collective security dear to Henderson was actually put to the test and applied against Italy, recognized as the aggressor of Ethiopia, but it is also equally known that its application was timid and partial [yes they decided on sanctions, but not the oil embargo] and as such, substantially ineffective, as the facts amply demonstrated.
At the end of 1935, therefore, there was sufficient material for reflection and rethinking for the prize jury, but this year too passed without being awarded. Many were probably unfavorably affected by it, but there were also those who were pleased.
Mussolini, a few days after the announcement of the postponement of the prize, expressed his satisfaction with the fact that "the dispensers of the Nobel prize did not want to offend humanity by taking into consideration the arsonists, nor the commentators of the Wilsonian gospel".
From Giuliano Procacci, The Nobel Peace Prizes and the World Wars. New edition with the speeches of the Nobel prizes, goWare, 2022, excerpts from pp. 201-211
