Journal of Contemporary History

In 1938, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt became involved in an illegal scheme to circumvent the US arms embargo, which applied to both sides in the Spanish Civil War. Seeking strategies to aid the Spanish Republic against General Franco’s Nationalists, Roosevelt supported a scheme to ship to France aircraft, which would then quietly be trans-shipped to Spain. The scheme was notable for three elements: its colourful nature, involving sending FDR’s alcoholic brother-in-law to Paris as a secret emissary; its deep flaws and ignominious collapse; and its importance as an indication of Roosevelt’s changing perceptions of the Spanish Civil War and his ideas about creative policy-making in a deeply constrained domestic and international environment.

Between November 1943 and May 1944, Freya Stark, the noted writer, Arabian adventurer and wartime propagandist, undertook a publicity tour of the United States on behalf of the British Ministry of Information. The objective of her trip was to defend Britain’s wartime Palestine policy, especially the 1939 White Paper and its severe restriction on Jewish immigration into Palestine. Since its implementation, the White Paper had been subject to criticism and attack from the entire Jewish world, not only the Zionist movement. Indeed, Stark’s trip was initiated, organized and sponsored by Whitehall as an attempt to counter anti-White Paper agitation in the United States which, by this time, was being blamed for strains on the Anglo-American alliance. Stark’s dedication to her task of spreading pro-White Paper propaganda among the general public, the media and political élite highlights her fiercely anti-Zionist position as well as her negative attitude to Jews and Judaism in general. But her trip also clearly shows the determination of the British foreign policy élite to make the fight against Zionism a wartime priority, in stark contrast to its indifference and insensitivity towards the annihilation of Europe’s Jewish populations that was occurring at the same time.

This article focuses on the ideological and political role of Social Democracy in the enactment of eugenic policies in Sweden during the 1930s and 1940s. At first sight, these policies, which could be defined as ‘welfare eugenics’, are in contrast to the ‘racist’ romantic and mythically-based eugenic policies often promoted by conservatives and national socialists. This article analyses this claim by focusing on the productivist reasoning of eugenics. It maintains first and foremost that although the ideological core of Swedish Social Democracy remained reformist and universalistic, there were strong tendencies towards a Fabian concept of industrial democracy and an exclusionist concept of social welfare. This was the basis for social eugenics: a welfare community for ‘the fittest’. Second, it stresses the role of Social Democracy in ensuring a broad basis of support for social policies in general appealing to the concern for national popular quality with which members of the right-wing bloc could identify. Special attention is paid to the efforts to achieve a parliamentary majority in favour of a blend of biological and social concepts rendered legitimate by scientific arguments. The article suggests that when reformist socialism stresses the values of productivity, social efficiency and the idea of a healthy society, it erodes the basis of legitimacy for rising social expenditure, providing yet another reason for exclusionist eugenic policies. In this way, in spite of its universalist credo, Social Democracy moved closer to more problematic examples of national socialism.

This article is concerned with aspects of the career of Jorian E.F. Jenks, a senior figure in the British Union of Fascists, close associate of Oswald Mosley, and author of his party’s agricultural and rural policy. The fundamental keystone of this policy would be the creation of a vibrant, secure community of peasant owner-occupiers whom the fascists believed would represent the seedbed of civilization — the well-spring of creativity and culture. Linked to the notion of regenerating the countryside and rural life, fascist policy embraced a rural-nostalgic, anti-modernist organicist theme wherein a farming community supporting a native craft tradition would represent an eternal and enduring order. After the second world war Jorian Jenks threw in his lot with the burgeoning organicist cause, becoming a leading player in the Soil Association and editor of its journal Mother Earth until his death in 1963. His postwar books and journalistic efforts indicate that he never entirely cast off his earlier fascist leanings despite a period of stressful wartime internment. The article suggests that whereas those engaged with the post-1960s organicist renaissance approached the issue from a rather different social, political and cultural perspective, many elements of pre-war right-wing thinking remain entrenched in the present-day organicist ethos.

Consumer culture has moved to the centre of contemporary debates about society, identity and citizenship. This article cuts a critical, comparative pathway through the literature to point to new directions for historical work. Initially driving research, concepts like ‘consumer revolution’, ‘consumer society’ and ‘consumerism’ have become problematic analytical concepts for understanding the changing dynamics, practices and meanings of consumption. Historical research has lost touch with theoretical and conceptual developments in the social sciences. Engaging with recent work on urban spaces, retailing, work-place, scarcity, the state and consumer politics, this article develops perspectives to frame historical debate. Problematizing a stage-theory of global convergence, the article draws attention to divergence and disjunctures. Instead of drawing a contrast between ‘traditional’ culture and ‘modern’ acquisitive, consumerist mentality, it emphasizes the persistence of social and collective dimensions of consumption practices and identities. Instead of privileging a utility-maximizing individual or self-fashioning and self-oriented individual, it points to contingent civic sensibilities and political practices of consumers. To foster dialogue with the growing interdisciplinary field of consumer studies, historians need to broaden their conception of consumption, become more self-critical of invoking an essentialist consumer and unitary western model of consumerism, and instead, be more sensitive of how historical actors have developed their knowledge of consumption and identity as ‘consumers’.

The building of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 greatly increased the number of people who were sent to prison for their opposition to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or for trying to leave it. Shortly after the wall was built, pressure by different groups in the Federal Republic led to the release of some GDR prisoners in exchange for payments to the GDR government. After the first few successful releases, the Federal Republic’s government and the GDR started to institutionalize these release payments in 1964. This system was secretly maintained without any major changes until 1990. Overall, 33,755 prisoners were released from the GDR, for a total amount of 3,436,900,755 DM and 12 pfennigs. This article discusses the advantages and drawbacks of the prisoner purchases for both systems. It questions the common interpretation that the prisoner purchases were a form of blackmail by the GDR and shows that the idea for the scheme originated in the West. It demonstrates that the prisoner purchases were, at some points, a convenient and necessary institution for the Federal Republic’s government and political parties. The research presented here reveals how the emotionally-charged post-reunification period has influenced public perception of the GDR in such an oversimplified way that history has become misrepresented.