Renegotiating First World War Memory

The British and American Legions, 1938–1946

Ashley Garber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367676407
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000294934
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

First World War-based ex-servicemen's organisations found themselves facing an existential crisis with the onset of the Second World War. This book examines how two such groups, the British and American Legions, adapted cognitively to the emergence of yet another world war and its veterans in the years 1938 through 1946. With collective identities and socio-political programmes based in First World War memory, both Legions renegotiated existing narratives of that war and the lessons they derived from those narratives as they responded to the unfolding Second World War in real time. Using the previous war as a "learning experience" for the new one privileged certain understandings of that conflict over others, inflecting its meaning for each Legion moving forward. Breaking the Second World War down into its constituent events to trace the evolution of First World War memory through everyday invocations, this unprecedented comparison of the British and American Legions illuminates the ways in which differing international, national, and organisational contexts intersected to shape this process as well as the common factors affecting it in both groups. The book will appeal most to researchers of the ex-service movement, First World War memory, and the cultural history of the Second World War.

Part I

1 ‘Do everything possible to keep the peace’¹

Veterans’ duty in the British Legion, 1938–1939

While in the end British politics escaped the Depression-fuelled rise of extremism found in other countries in the early 1930s, its citizens watched the development of dictatorships abroad with great interest, fearing that ideological conflicts could easily turn into military ones. Neither the public nor its politicians wanted another global conflagration. Although united in this conviction, Britain remained divided over how to preserve peace. Strict pacifism garnered significant support in the early 1930s, as did collective security, but even these movements began to splinter in the middle of the decade.² The Spanish Civil War aroused public interest most strongly, while government and military officials also kept watch on Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, the German reoccupation of the Rhineland, and Italian expansionist schemes in North Africa. Politicians manoeuvred throughout the decade to balance rearming Britain’s defences with pulling the economy out of “the Slump” and preventing another European arms race.³

Throughout 1938 and 1939, specific narratives of the First World War were mobilised in British Legion discussions to situate the conflict and its ex-servicemen in relation to a changing geopolitical atmosphere that ultimately led to another war. This chapter analyses British Legion discourses about duty in order to unlock the ways in which Great War memory was adapted to accommodate these developments in real time. It also considers how these adaptations inflected the British Legion charter by influencing the types of work that were seen as appropriate for members and the group itself. Examining debates up to the German invasion of Poland, it sets out a transition in Legion focus from identifying peace-making roles for veterans toward finding a place for ex-servicemen in areas of civil defence, especially in non-militarised roles.

This chapter builds upon existing scholarship on the roles of First World War veterans in Britain’s Second World War effort, extending Jessica Hammett’s work in particular.⁴ Hammett has examined wartime civil defence magazines to identify how First World War veterans discursively positioned themselves and “their” war in relation to the civil defence duties they undertook in the Second World War.⁵ In accordance with Hammett’s findings, Legion veterans turned to their First World War experiences to identify and justify distinctive ways in which the ex-service community could contribute to Britain’s security as the future of Europe became increasingly unpredictable in 1938 and 1939. Legion debates corroborate Hammett’s conclusions regarding the importance of group affiliations. In addition to allowing for the rehearsal and construction of memory narratives, ex-service groups offered vehicles for veterans to secure their social status. Demonstrating their usefulness to the nation in unstable times represented a paramount concern for Legion members, speaking to the importance of the “useful masculinity” model identified by Hammett. By considering a different group of veterans – those of the British Legion – during a different time frame – in the months before the war, rather than during it – this study builds upon Hammett’s research and positions her findings in a broader context.

Finding the lessons of war

Throughout the 1930s, the meaning of the First World War became associated almost exclusively with peace in the British national consciousness, as in the British Legion. Growing disillusionment with the war, embodied in the “war books boom” and reinforced by strained economic and diplomatic dynamics, came to overshadow the rhetoric of previous years. Whereas ‘[i]n the immediate post-war period it was believed that the British soldier had established peace principally by winning’, by the late 1920s, peace had become ‘a lesson to be learnt from suffering and disillusion’.⁶ The memory of the war espoused by the British Legion absorbed this view and increasingly invested the significance of the First World War in its lessons for peace.

This view was likewise absorbed by Great War veterans in other countries, and international and transnational networks of ex-servicemen’s associations were formed as avenues through which veterans could work to support peace. This work took on many different forms for these groups, including at times advocacy for international cooperation and arbitration, national or international disarmament, and the reconciliation of former enemy countries. This flexible understanding of “pacifism” enabled veterans’ organisations to support a variety of peace-building initiatives internationally as well as defence-focussed policies nationally.⁷

Caught up in this spirit of veterans’ internationalism, the British Legion developed socio-political policies and programmes rooted in peace-focussed understandings of the First World War. The group worked to address the conflict’s perceived lessons by developing friendships with the ex-servicemen of Britain’s former enemies, especially those in Germany. Since 1921, the British Legion had spurred efforts to create contacts with veterans in former enemy nations, first via the network of Allied ex-servicemen’s organisations in the Fédération Interalliée des Anciens Combattants (FIDAC), and then autonomously. The Legion then led the 1937 establishment of the Comité International des Anciens Combattants (CIP). This work largely reflected the personal agendas and interests of key leaders – especially President Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice, Chairman Major-General Sir Francis Fetherston-Godley, former National Chairman Colonel G. R. Crosfield, former National Chairman Sir Colonel John Brown, and prominent Legion spokesman General Sir Ian Hamilton – more than the concerns of its members. Initially, it was the leaders themselves who undertook the work to sustain the group’s foreign affairs initiatives, especially attending international conferences. Yet more rank-and-file members became involved once the leadership decided to pursue unilateral contact between the Legion and German ex-service groups. Thus, although ‘the ordinary membership of the Legion were little affected by the deliberations of FIDAC’, their participation in work connecting British and German veterans had increased dramatically by the late 1930s. In 1937, for example, Legion members undertook 1,700 trips to European countries on behalf of the programme, and these activities received significant attention in the Journal.⁸

Yet collaborating with ex-servicemen’s organisations from other countries posed serious challenges for the Legion politically – ones that largely went unnoticed or overlooked by its leaders. The rise of Mussolini from 1922 and the subsequent consolidation of Italian veterans’ groups under fascist control, for example, increasingly solidified fascist influence within FIDAC.⁹ The British Legion seems to have inadvertently helped facilitate this development; although the Italian ex-service organisation Associazione Nazionale Combattenti (ANC) was initially excluded from FIDAC for its partisan stance, the British Legion’s Crosfield negotiated its readmission in 1924. Legion leaders like Crosfield failed to recognise that the ANC no longer stood independent from its fascist regime.¹⁰ A similar mistake was made after 1933 with German ex-service groups, which were interpreted by Legion leaders as non-political, but which actually operated as Nazi organisations.¹¹ Such misjudgements were perpetuated by the Legion’s work within CIP. In theory, CIP offered an alternative to existing organisations such as FIDAC, one which was more fully committed to the development of friendly relationships between the former combatants of former enemy nations. In practice, it was dominated by Italian fascist and German national socialist veterans’ groups, whose regimes used it to advance their foreign policy objectives.¹²

In his analysis of these miscalculations, Niall Barr has presented a compelling argument that its leaders’ political naïveté made the Legion a pawn in the advanced propaganda machines operated by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. His analysis demonstrates the extent to which this work developed out of particular interpretations of the First World War in the Legion. Legion leaders were seduced by the lip-service that German ex-servicemen’s organisations, and the Nazi regime more broadly, paid to the rhetoric of peace and the special role of veterans within it, which aligned closely to what these Legion leaders believed themselves.¹³ These men failed to recognise the political calculations behind the special programmes developed by Nazi officials for Legion visits to Germany – including remembrance ceremonies at war memorials and even meetings with Hitler – for the elaborate propaganda stunts that they, in fact, were.¹⁴

This study extends Barr’s work on the Legion’s international programmes by using the Journal as a means to access the debates within the Legion’s ranks over this work and the First World War interpretations underpinning it. As the 1930s drew to a close, debates over the Legion’s involvement in international affairs dominated discussions within the Journal. As stated in the Introduction, national leaders did not exercise complete editorial control over the Journal. As a mediated discursive space, the publication had to take dissenting views into account or it risked alienating members of the group. As such, it is significant that the focus of Journal discussions shifted in the wake of both the so-called Anschluss of March 1938 and the Munich Crisis of September 1938. Although the Legion’s official policy of working with ex-servicemen from former enemy countries was not abandoned until after the Munich Crisis, as Barr points out, evidence in the Journal reveals that understandings of this work began shifting even earlier, in response both to criticisms and the developing international landscape in which British Legion contemporaries were operating.¹⁵

As members and leaders of the group clashed over defining an appropriate relationship with veterans of dictatorial regimes, they were simultaneously debating the First World War memory in which that work was rooted as well as the degree to which that memory should shape the Legion’s work and its charter more broadly. Legion members and leaders alike drew upon the previous conflict to interpret and respond to unfolding geopolitical developments in real time, without knowing what the ultimate course of events would be. Although discussions in the Journal initially emphasised the veterans’ obligation to support peaceful relationships between countries, an alternative role for the ex-serviceman became increasingly championed after events such as the Anschluss. Which service roles were seen to be appropriate for Legion members shifted as events developed, simultaneously shifting the select narratives and lessons of the First World War that predominated in these discourses. As events cast further doubts on the effectiveness and expediency of First World War veterans serving as ambassadors for peace in Europe, memory narratives and lessons about dispelling animosities between nations to prevent wars became increasingly unviable. Discussions about duty began turning more to experiential aspects of wartime service in order to identify and justify ways for Legion members to serve Britain as ex-servicemen. Yet concerns that the limitations of middle age would inhibit Great War veterans from s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index