THE CULTURAL CAUSES of the WAR Since the Early Years Of

T. CICCARONE /MOD. 5 CLIL/ UNITU 1

THE CULTURAL CAUSES OF THE WAR

Since the early years of the 20th century, there were large segments of the populations in Europe that were favourably disposed to war, especially among the younger generations. Such attitudes arose from ideologies that had been established as early as the end of the 19th century:

a) Nationalism, in which the recovery of national identity moved on to become the need to affirm the superiority of one’s nation over others. With the Imperialism of the European powers at the end of the 19th century, the ideas of fatherland were transformed into a mixture of antidemocratic impulses, imperialistic aggression, authoritarian and racist mythologies. In GERMANY, for example, Pan-Germanism flourished supported by nationalistic notions of a militaristic and imperialistic nature. In FRANCE, the loss of Alsace and Lorreine, following the French defeat of Sedan (1870) during the Franco-Prussian war, encouraged sentiments of Revanchism against the German Empire. In 1910 a group of Italian intellectuals founded the Italian Nationalistic Association, which supported Italian Irredentism. FRENCH, GERMAN, SERBIAN and ITALIAN nationalism all contributed to cause the breakdown of European geopolitical equilibrium which was to influence events throughout the foirst half of the 20th century.

b) The glorification of war as the expression of progress, present in many cultural corrents. Futurism, for example, which saw war as an opportunity to escape from the mediocrity of bourgeois culture and to exalt the values of the new generations.

c) Racism, which claimed to defend national identity against possible contamination from other peoples and cultures that were deemed to be inferior.

d) The application of Darwinism to relationships between states: as there is a law of the survival of the fittest in Nature, aimed at a natural selection, so war between the states is just a sort of “Natural Selection” that leads to the predominance of the people best able to guide the progress of humanity.