-
It was in fact the largest
reappropriation of wealth
-
in any society in the 19th century.
-
For thousands of slave
owners in the South,
-
and those in the North whose
businesses benefited from slave labor,
-
this was property that was now
made no longer property.
-
This was property that was now freed
from its encumbrances as such.
-
So people lost assets.
-
You had billions of dollars worth
of assets that were taken from people
-
and given their freedom to be
free individuals as such.
-
Not necessarily to be treated
equally, unfortunately,
-
but to be seen as free
individuals as such.
-
So that's a major economic
transformation, right?
-
People will often say, and here
you've learned something
-
about myths in American history,
-
that in American history, we never
take away people's property.
-
That Americans believe in this sort of
John Lockian sanctity of property.
-
It is in fact not true.
-
Time and again we'll see that at
key moments in American history,
-
property gets shifted.
-
Because you cannot shift power
without shifting property.
-
That's what's underlying
a lot of your comments.
-
Josh referred to this in certain ways,
and did many others,
-
that if you shift economic power,
-
you're shifting property ownership
and property access to some extent.
-
And that's one of they key
transformations that occurred.
-
So many large, powerful plantation owners
-
and northern business people
who rely upon slave labor
-
have now lost that labor,
and lost that wealth as such.
-
That transfers the wealth to others.
-
And it makes smaller business
actors, not necessarily the slaves,
-
but those who have run their businesses
without the use of slavery,
-
it gives them an advantage they
wouldn't have otherwise.
-
It's as if you took the factories away
from the most powerful corporations,
-
it gives the smaller actors
a great deal of exercise.
-
One of the points McPherson is making,
-
he makes this quickly, because he
assumes perhaps more knowledge
-
than he should on the part of his readers,
-
is that the Republican Party,
-
this new party that came to power
with Abraham Lincoln
-
was not the party of the large
economic actors,
-
it was actually the party of
the smaller economic actors.
-
Abraham Lincoln is the classic
example of this.
-
Someone who made his way as an
economic actor from very poor background
-
into being a major
legal figure in Illinois.
-
He represents the rise, the rise of
small economic actors
-
who are not only opposed to slavery
because slavery is immoral in their eyes,
-
they're opposed to slavery because
slavery empowers the biggest actors
-
who own the most property.
-
And in some ways the Republican Party
is trying to reappropriate power
-
not from black to white,
-
but actually from large corporate owners,
from large economic actors to smaller.
-
In the terms that would have been used
a generation earlier,
-
it's a revolt of the shopkeepers,
the small actors,
-
against the large,
the larger actors.
-
Now, the Republican Party will later
come to support corporate development
-
in the United States,
-
but it's coming from a
different origin as such.
-
It will turn to the railroads,
as we'll talk about,
-
in place of the plantations.
-
So you'll get high technology, the first
internet in the United States,
-
which is the railroads, in place
of what was the old technology
-
of the plantation.
-
Juan Carlos. Please.
-
>> It's from Thomas Smith.
-
Is there an estimate for
the amount of money
-
the emancipation of slaves would be?
-
>> Yes there is, and Brooks probably
knows this better than I do.
-
So I'm gonna let you.
>> I don't remember the...
-
>> You don't remember the number?
-
My understanding is that
the number is in the billions.
-
>> It is.
>> And as I understand it,
-
the way to think about it is that
that was probably the largest single asset
-
in addition to perhaps land itself
in the American economy.
-
>> That's right, yeah.
-
So in the decades immediately
before the Civil War,
-
slaves were the most valuable
asset, except for the value
-
of all of the real estate in the
North and the South combined.
-
>> Right.
-
>> So yeah, it was a tremendous,
tremendous economic change
-
that not only affected the South,
but the North as well,
-
because -- not just the labor
of enslaved people,
-
but actually the bodies of
of enslaved people carried
-
just an incredible amount of value.
-
There were mortgage
instruments on these people.
-
Even as scholars here at UT have shown,
-
their dead bodies were
worth a lot of money.
-
There was a cadaver trade.
-
So emancipation had just remarkable
economic consequences,
-
in addition to social and political
and many other consequences as well.
-
>> Juan Carlos?
-
>> And there is a follow-up asking
whether -- from Joshua (inaudible)
-
asking whether these numbers
are in today's dollars, or in...
-
>> So when we say billions, it's in
the dollars of the 1860s.
-
So that would be trillions --
trillions today.
-
Yeah, the -- my recollection is that
we're in about the $2 billion range
-
for that time.
-
But I think the estimates will vary,
because it's of course
-
what would they actually be
priced at if they were all sold.
-
But the only asset that would have
been more valuable,
-
as Brooks said, than the slaves,
would have been the land itself.
-
And it's quite extraordinary.
-
In people's wills, they would measure
their wealth by their slaves.
-
As Brooks said, they would
mortgage their slaves.
-
So just as you can get a mortgage
on a house or a mortgage on a car,
-
you can get a mortgage on a slave.
-
So yeah, this is in the billions for
the 1860s,
-
it would be the trillions --
the trillions today.
-
And just think about it.
-
What the 13th Amendment does,
-
is it single-handedly takes that
and says it's no longer property.
-
Right? It would be like taking away
land from people today as such.
-
So that's a part of what
makes this a revolution.
-
I also really like the comments that
were made by Evan and others
-
about the cultural elements of this.
-
It's not just about material objects.
-
One of the things we're gonna be
talking about throughout the course
-
is the intersection between material
forms of power and wealth,
-
and cultural forms of power and wealth.
-
And one of the things we do as historians
is we look at how material items
-
are redefined by the cultural
context that they're in.
-
Why is something seen as valuable
in certain contexts
-
and not in other contexts?
-
Why are certain ideas seen as
legitimate at certain moments,
-
and not at other moments?
-
And of course it's not
a straight-line story.
-
Certain moments, certain ideas
will be accepted, then rejected,
-
then brought back again.
-
We've sort of seen that in our own time
in the last four to five years,
-
where certain ideas we thought that
were no longer acceptable,
-
become acceptable again in our society.
-
So part of what makes this the
second American revolution
-
is a cultural shift.
-
And the elements of the cultural
shift that are really important here
-
are surrounding the new voices,
-
voices that get heard in
American society
-
that weren't heard before.
-
Steven Hahn's book is great on this.
-
One of the point's Steven Hahn is
making, in contrast to James McPherson,
-
is that slaves now become part of the
public discourse.
-
Public conversation of American society,
And certain actors, some of whom are
-
famous, like Harriett Tubman and Fredrick
Douglas, but others who are less famous,
-
become part of the way people talk about
and think about their society.
-
The most explicit example of this is what
we talked about in the lecture on
-
reconstruction, the first of those two
lectures, where we talked about
-
the creation of African American schools,
creation of African American churches.
-
How religion, in American Society,
becomes African Americanized,
-
which is to say African American ministers
now rise from what had been slave
-
plantation communities, to become
major religious figures in parts of the
-
South, and even parts of the North,
in coming decades.
-
We'll see this with Booker T. Washington,
as we go forward, and the Tuskegee
-
institute, and the notion of African
American education.
-
We see that with Fisk University,
We see that with Howard University.
-
This is not to say that these institutions
are equal, they aren't.
-
It's not to say that they get the
legitimacy or the resources they
-
should get, they don't, but it is to
say that they become part of
-
the public discussion.
-
They become part of the ways
in which people think about
-
American society, and they
become part of the debates
-
about American society as such.
-
And I hope you all will remember,
this is a really important point,
-
that image we had, I think it
was in the second lecture,
-
the first on reconstruction,
uh where we had the image of
-
all the African Americans elected
to the house and senate.
-
After the Civil War, and this opening.
-
This sense, after the Civil War, that
there was this major transformation
-
going on, and the way people
perceived what it meant to even
-
be an elected representative.
-
It was unthinkable, in the 1850s,
that you would have a senator,
-
or even members of the House of
Representatives,
-
who were African American.
-
It was actually more common, in the
late 1860s, to
-
have an African American in house
or the Senate, than it was until
-
the 1960s in the United
States.
-
Let me say that again, I know I said
it in that lecture, but it's worth
-
remembering.
-
There were more African Americans elected
to the House of Representatives and the
-
Senate, in all state offices in the United
States, especially in the South,
-
after the Civil War, in those first four
to five years after the Civil War,
-
than there was again in the United
States, until one hundred years later.
-
That shows you a revolutionary moment,
when existing assumptions were
-
being questioned and in flux.
-
The way we as historians talk about
revolutions is not as a teleological
-
moment, as a moment where something
is achieved,
-
revolutions rarely, if ever, achieve
what they set out to achieve.
-
A revolution is a moment of flux,
A moment of uncertainty, when things
-
that seem static become movable again.
-
When wealth and cultural power,
the power to set debates,
-
seems to shift.
-
But revolutions are impermanent,
also.
-
And one of the really important lessons
from this second American Revolution,
-
is how much of the change becomes
difficult to maintain.
-
This is true of every revolution.
-
Crane Brinton, a long time ago scholar,
-
made the point that revolutions
have a certain anatomy.
-
They have a certain process
they go through.
-
There's the moment of overthrow.
-
That's the end of slavery.
Victory in the Civil War.
-
There's the moment of opening,
when new actors come forward.
-
He talked about this in terms of
the French Revolution as well.
-
And then there's the moment of
recalibration or restoration,
-
when the old power reemerges
in some ways.
-
The old power is different from
what it was before,
-
but it doesn't go away.
-
It doesn't go away.
-
And one of the stories of lectures
three, four, and five in this course
-
was not how the United States
went back to pre-Civil War times
-
after the Civil War,
-
but how the losers of the war
in some ways were able to capture
-
the postwar society.
-
How the losers, those who had lost
on the battlefield and lost their slaves,
-
were able to regain power --
not completely.
-
Not to turn back the clock,
but also to hold on.
-
One of the things we learn as historians
is that power is sticky.
-
You can have a revolutionary moment
that questions that power
-
and brings new actors in,
-
but the old power actors are able
to hold on for quite a long time.
-
Power is sticky, power has a certain
historical longevity to it.
-
Those who have lost on the battlefield
haven't often lost in society
-
until decades after the battles are over.
-
And that brings us to the second
question I wanted to ask,
-
which is when we say one side
won the Civil War,
-
this is a common debate among
historians, who won the Civil War.
-
We all know who won the battles
in the end, right?
-
We know that Lee surrendered to Grant.
-
But historians will often ask now,
who really won the Civil War?
-
What do we mean by victory?
-
This is a really important point.
-
I've had many discussions with policy
makers at the Pentagon
-
and the State Department and
the White House about this myself.
-
When we say we're going to
win a war, what do we mean?
-
Do we just mean that we're going to
defeat the other side on the battlefield?
-
What does victory look like?
-
What did victory mean in the Civil War?
-
What would victory look like in
a place like Iraq or Afghanistan?
-
What is victory?
-
When we say someone has won a war,
particularly a civil war, what do we mean?
-
How do we evaluate that?
How do we know what victory looks like?
-
One of the points that we
always pursue as historians
-
is how these simple labels hide
a lot of complexity
-
and get us into a lot of trouble.
-
Quite often Americans have thought
that you win a war overseas
-
by defeating the enemy on the
battlefield, and then it's over.
-
But the history of any conflict,
even the conflicts that go very well
-
for American actors, like World War II,
-
would be a story of once
the gun's settling down,
-
more conflict, more difficulty.
-
In fact, as Carl von Clausewitz
himself said, right,
-
one of the great military theorists
of the early 19th century,
-
war is the extension of politics.
-
Which means the war doesn't end
when the guns go silent,
-
because the politics continue.
-
Right? The postwar, the post-battle
-
is often more difficult
than the battle itself.
-
So what is victory?
Who won the Civil War?
-
How do we know?
What do you all think of that?
-
I'd love to hear some thoughts on that.
-
>> Austin Healy says it's peace.
-
Nidhi Patel say they came out on top
with more resources, gained more power,
-
or a larger presence.
-
I'm sorry, Preasha Pendi says
victory is taking over someone's ideas
-
with your own and getting them
to see your ideas.
-
Maria Cadavid says victory means
that you got the outcome they wanted,
-
they changed what they wanted.
-
Catherine Hickok says they lost.
-
Let's see... victory is a shift in power
with some compromise, says Sonali Krish.
-
Um... Oh, you guys are great.
Coming in fast.
-
>> This is terrific, I love it.
Keep them coming.
-
>> There's one interesting, Catherine,
they lost less.
-
>> They lost less, I like that.
They lost less.
-
Right, so the victors are the ones
who lost less than the other side.
-
>> Yes.
-
>> I really like that point.
-
I want to come back to some of these.
-
I don't want to stop talking about these,
but I want to actually build on that point
-
because there's a real insight in that,
-
which is that one way to think about war
is where the combatants,
-
the countries, the entities that are
fighting one another
-
are continually weakening
one another in the process.
-
And the winner is not necessarily
the one who comes out by saying
-
I have this declaration of surrender
from the other side,
-
but the one that is actually in a better
position once the war ends.
-
This is a point we will make when
we talk about World War I.
-
Because the way to understand
World War I,
-
we'll get there I think next week,
-
is that in fact the Germans
officially lose the war,
-
but they lost less than the French
and the British.
-
One of the reasons you get World War II --
-
we're jumping ahead here,
but it's relevant to this comment.
-
One of the reasons you get World War II
-
is the Germans don't really
think they lost the war.
-
The German population and the Nazis
appealed to German citizens
-
saying, "You didn't really lose.
You deserve the spoils of war."
-
And the French and the British are
not in a position to stop them,
-
because the French and the British
have been more weakened by this war.
-
So Catherine's point about those who lost
less is actually a very important point.
-
The declaration of victory often tells you
very little about who won the war.
-
I will tell you that the United States has
declared victory in every conflict
-
it has ever been in.
-
That is not to say we have
won every conflict.
-
In fact, we have not.
-
One of the points of this course is that
all of us who love America
-
need to recognize that we have to learn
from our losses, our failures
-
as well as our successes.
-
We're lucky to have a history of both, and
there's a lot to learn from both as such.
-
More comments though,
on what victory is in war.
-
>> Margaret (inaudible) says it is a
compromise in which the winning side
-
ends up with slightly more.
-
>> I love that comment too.
-
I love that comment, let me build on
that for a second for Margaret.
-
And anyone similar to that one?
-
>> Well just going on kind of the
history of the United States,
-
Grant says victory is a mindset.
-
>> Victory is a mindset, absolutely.
-
I want to come back to both of these
and many of the others from Nedhi
-
and Preasha and Austin and Maria,
and keep having them come in.
-
This point about compromise from
Margaret is a really important one.
-
And it's exactly where I wanted to go.
-
I make reference to this quickly
in one of the lectures,
-
but I want to expand on it here.
-
War is not about total victory.
War rarely is.
-
And one of the ways in which Americans
misunderstand these issues
-
is that we often think that war means
that we get everything we want.
-
If you lose, you must
give us everything you want.
-
The history of warfare shows
just the opposite.
-
Even in World War II,
-
where the United States comes
as close to total victory as possible,
-
even there the Japanese negotiate
after two atomic bombs --
-
we'll talk about this in two weeks --
-
they negotiate to keep the emperor,
and they negotiate actually to restrict
-
many of the things the United States
can do after the war.
-
So there is never total victory.
-
The way to think about war
is an extension of negotiation.
-
War is generally about two, three,
or more sides
-
having an argument over
who gets what.
-
It is similar to Zachary, who you met,
fighting with his sister Natalie,
-
who you haven't met yet.
-
Zachary and Natalie will
rarely turn violent,
-
but sometimes they will turn violent.
-
And the violence is an
extension of negotiation.
-
Neither of my children, I believe,
wants to actually kill the other one.
-
But they will inflict pain as much as
they can to get what they want.
-
So Natalie will try to inflict pain
on Zachary
-
to make Zachary give her what
she wants.
-
It's a form of negotiation.
-
And she will say to Zachary, in essence,
-
"I will stop inflicting pain on you
when you will give me what I want."
-
And Zachary will either inflict more
pain in reverse,
-
or he'll say "I'll give you 50% of what
you want if you stop inflicting pain,"
-
and perhaps they'll come to
an agreement there.
-
War is a form of negotiation.
It's a form of compromise.
-
Juan Carlos.
-
>> Yeah, Rachel Thornton
has a question about it.
-
She says, is total war and genocide
also an extension of negotiation?
-
>> Yeah. So great question, Rachel.
-
And we'll talk about genocide
at the end of the course.
-
The first thing to say about genocide
-
is that genocide is actually
historically rare.
-
We have this image that genocide is
something people do to each other
-
all the time.
-
Genocide is actually an outcome of
changes in the 20th century.
-
It is the mobilization of power by states
that allows for genocide.
-
You can come to -- you can
point to other examples
-
within the Spanish Empire,
for example, but it's the exception.
-
Genocide is the desire to actually
force another people
-
to completely leave the land.
-
It is taking them off the land and
eliminating them as such.
-
Oftentimes it begins by a demand
that they leave of their own volition.
-
And when they will not leave,
then the desire is to actually
-
force them to be removed,
force them to be destroyed.
-
So it's -- it is in a sense an extreme
form of negotiation
-
with an eliminationist ideology.
-
Generally though, genocide is
rare historically
-
because in fact that's not how war works.
-
It takes an enormous amount of power
to actually annihilate an entire people.
-
The reason you see genocide
so infrequently
-
is because it takes so much
power to do that.
-
In general, war is negotiation.
-
War is the effort by different entities
to use violence for political purposes.
-
This comes back to that fellow
Clausewitz, who I mentioned
-
who writes in the early 19th century
-
that war is the extension
of politics by other means.
-
Violence is the extension of
politics by other means.
-
What that means is that
when you win the battles,
-
you are actually negotiating
for political outcomes.
-
And those who lose the battles
still have negotiating power.
-
Even though they have lost the battles,
they are still on the land,
-
they are still in place,
they still need to do things.
-
Even after World War II, the United States
had to allow many Germans
-
to run their society, because there
were not enough Americans
-
who knew enough to run
Germany after the war.
-
The same is true after the Civil War.
-
One of the advantages
the Confederates have
-
is that when they surrender, they are
still in possession of their society.
-
And their society still needs to function,
function for the interests of the North.
-
And the North did not have
the resources nor the will
-
to actually go in and run the South.
-
And so the advantage the southerners
had was the advantage of possession.
-
This is so important we learn this lesson,
-
because it's also the lesson of
Afghanistan and Iraq, right?
-
Defeating the people on the battlefield
-
does not end the negotiation
and the compromise.
-
Because there still are people on the
ground who are defeated
-
who are running that society,
unless you kill them all.
-
Right? Unless you kill them all,
-
which again takes an enormous
amount of effort and resources
-
that most societies
don't want to undertake,
-
and certainly not what the
Civil War was about.
-
It was not an option.
-
It was not an option for the Union
to say after the war,
-
"We're going to kill all the Confederates
and send them away."
-
It was not an option.
-
In fact, they needed those
individuals on the ground
-
to manage the post-slave society.
-
Here's the irony of ironies.
-
The second American revolution creates
a huge population of more than 4 million
-
former slaves who are now
free citizens.
-
Free citizens with voting rights
in 1867, '68.
-
But the southern Confederates
who have lost the Civil War
-
are still the people managing that
society, managing those states,
-
managing those cities,
managing those towns
-
where these former slaves
are now political actors.
-
Just imagine that, right?
-
We don't imagine that, because
our textbooks are so bad
-
at teaching this history, right?
-
Imagine what it was like to be
someone like Woodrow Wilson,
-
growing up the son of a minister
in Stanton, Virginia
-
just outside of Charlottesville where
the University of Virginia is located.
-
His father is a minister to Confederates.
-
His father is a supporter of slavery.
-
By his early teenage years for Woodrow
Wilson, slavery has been eliminated,
-
but his father is still a minister
-
and these institutions that were
maintaining slavery
-
are now responsible for maintaining
a society where there are no slaves
-
and where there are now free black actors.
-
Imagine how difficult that is to manage.
-
Imagine how hard it is to rethink
one's place in society.
-
Imagine the conflict and the continued
compromise that goes on.
-
The way to think about reconstruction
is not that it is postwar,
-
it is a continued struggle over the
management of the very questions
-
that the Civil War was about.
-
Who is going to control whom,
-
who is going to have power in which areas,
-
and how is that to be managed?
-
Any questions or comments
along these lines?
-
I want to make sure I'm not
going too fast here.
-
I know we have a very learned
group of students, so...
-
>> No, I think that Brooks already
answered one.
-
It was pretty good.
>> Good.
-
>> I think that maybe if you
have a comment about this one.
-
It's from Elisa, that she said,
didn't one of the lectures mention
-
that the Civil War changed how all
wars were fought after this?
-
>> Yes.
-
>> That it wasn't a war of negotiation?
-
>> Yes. So a very good point, Elizabeth.
-
The perception of the Civil War --
that's exactly what I said.
-
The perception of the Civil War was that
you could actually fight a total war.
-
That you could in fact use
so much industrial power
-
to force the defeat of the enemy.
-
And it did change the way people
perceived war.
-
Unfortunately it wasn't
the actual practice of war.
-
Which is to say that the image
did not match the reality.
-
The Civil War is the most
important war in the 19th century
-
for influencing World Wars I and II.
-
In World Wars I and II,
the major actors in Europe,
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particularly the Germans,
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believed that they can do to their
neighbors what Lincoln did to the South,
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and do it rapidly.
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They believed they can do this in the
words of one historian,
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by railroad timetable.
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That they can take all this power.
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The image they saw was that the North
was able to use the railroad,
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which we spent a lot of time on
in lecture,
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they were able to use factory production,
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they were able to use
a modern financial system
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to amass so much power, and use that
power and use those resources
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to pummel their neighbors into submission.
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They believe they can do that rapidly.
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So that perception changes
how war is fought.
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The problem is that it underrates
what we're just talking about now.
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How those who get pummeled still
are in compromising
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and negotiating position,
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and it also underrates
the power of defense.
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And the tragedy of World War I is that
the European belligerents are fighting
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a civil war, trying to fight a civil war
of rapid movement
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when all the technological
advantages are to the defenders.
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Which is why in World War I, you'll see
much more death than in the Civil War,
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and you'll see much more death
with less transfer of land,
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less transfer of property as such.
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So the perception of the Civil War,
as I said, Elizabeth,
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and as you summarized very well,
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is that it changes the way
war is fought,
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but the reality of what happens
after the battles
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remains the same political
compromise and negotiation
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where the most powerful military actor
has a lot less political power
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than he or she expects they will have.
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That's really the lesson, right?
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Just 'cause you're more muscled
and stronger,
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just 'cause you have more guns
doesn't mean you can actually get people
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after the war to do what you want to do.
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One of the reasons connecting to
the genocide point,
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why the German military,
why the Nazis,
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and to some extent other
military forces turn to genocide,
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particularly in the second half
of the 20th century,
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is because when they
cannot get populations
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to do what they want them to do,
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they then want to use their military power
to completely annihilate them.
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Hitler's problem is not that he wants
to kill all Jews necessarily,
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he wants all Jews out of Germany
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and out of the lands that Germany
is going to conquer.
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The only way he can get them
out of all those lands
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is to actually exterminate them.
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That's why he turns to extermination.
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Right? The extermination
is the use of power
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and the recognition that he can't
politically negotiate with them
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for what he wants to leave,
that he actually has to destroy them.
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The same will apply when
we talk about Yugoslavia.
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The Serbs and the Croats in
Yugoslavia in the 1990s,
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believe it or not, in the 1990s will
undertake explicit genocidal policies,
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they will undertake explicit
genocidal policies
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because they cannot negotiate
to move people.
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And since they cannot negotiate, they will
use their military power to kill them.
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One way of thinking about this is that --
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this is a point that
the philosopher Hegel made --
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when you actually turn to killing people,
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it is the sign of supreme
political weakness.
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The strong use their military power
to get political advantage.