The Effect of War on the Social Order
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9758433 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hans Speier (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1941 |
| Volume | 218 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 87-96 |
| Publication date | 1941-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7162 • E-ISSN: 1552-3349 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/000271624121800110 |
| OpenAlex | W2021078915 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
The lasting effects of the war on the social order will not only be a result of the political, social, and economic wreckage and dislocation caused by the war effort; but they will also be dependent on the terms of peace to be imposed by the victor upon the vanquished. These terms will be a matter of political expediency at the time of victory, provided we are justified in assuming that considerations of expediency and not the passions of the embittered, suffering masses will determine the conditions of peace. In any case, the social consequences of this war will to a large extent depend on the military and political outcome of the struggle-so will the extent and form of demilitarization as a phase of the conditions of peace. If Hitler should win this war, the social order of Europe, and very probably also that of this hemisphere, will be shaped by him. A British victory will mean a form of life differing from both Hitler's New Order and the kind of social organization which prevailed in the democratic countries before the war. We must, therefore, not only resort to conjectures when we talk about the lasting effects of the war, but we must also consider alternative possibilities which can be stated only in broad outline. Assuming victory by the British, it seems reasonable to predict in any case that the process of scrapping the socioeconomic machinery of militarism after this war and of rebuilding a social order which is both safe and civilized will take about as many years as it took Germany to prepare herself for war. In the past, the periods of demobilization were always longer than the periods of mobilization. Or should we assume that the task of readjusting the social and economic life of several continents to the conditions of peace is of lesser magnitude than that of streamlining the socioeconomic order for war? In addition to the demobilization of military and industrial armies there will be the problem of the millions of people who have been shuffled about a war-torn earth. Restoring the social balance of life in Europe and counteracting the hate, misery, and frustration hidden behind the words enforced migration and concentration camps would be a most arduous task even if the war had stopped yesterday, every soldier had been put to work today, and people could be reading tomorrow the memoirs of the defeated generals. Today there are about two million foreigners working in German industry and agriculture, more than half of them Polish, French, Belgian, and British prisoners of war. There are probably more than 250,000 Italian and probably as 87
Democracy · Economics · Militarism · Order (exchange · Passions · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social order · Sociology · Victory · Law · Philosophy · Post-Communist Economic and Political Transition
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 2003 - 2024 (22) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |