Defeat - When Nations Lose War (Paperback)

This book sets out to summarise in a short work of readable lengths the consequences of defeat on nations that have lost a war. Defeat, whether sudden, unexpected or at the end of a succession of disasters releases passions, recriminations and resentments. The hardship of living conditions can lead to black-marketing, crime, prostitution, with life becoming a struggle for survival. In different ways according to nations' different cultures social cohesion may fragment, sometimes leaving to wildly irrational behaviour exhibiting the night side of the human being. After two general introductory sections, the work centres on seven case studies: the violent passions released in France after 1870-1; the bitter resentment of Germans after 1918; the divisions that increased among Frenchmen after the national trauma of 1940; the rapine and violence of the Soviet entry into Germany, the despair and later partition of Germany in and after 1945; the firm but humane treatment of post-1945 Japan by General MacArthur; the ferocious vengeful bitterness of extremists following the ending of France's war in Algeria in 1962; the division and denials in post-Vietnam United States. A concluding section considers the immediate humanitarian and longer term political and social responsibilities that fall on a victor nation anxious to secure a just and lasting settlement after conflict, either international or asymmetric against non-state actions. Much has been written on the causes and the courses of war. However, little has been written to provide a comparative overview of the results of defeat, especially in Britain which has had no national experience of defeat.