Insightful Essays on Wars in the Years Following World War I

Working together during a conference at Notre Dame in 2021, the editors selected twelve essays on military conflicts between 1919 and 1939 to include in this study. The chapters cover well known conflicts, like the Spanish Civil War and the Italo-Ethiopian War, and less studied events like the Rif War, 1921-1926. Curiously, several major conflicts, like the Greco-Turkish War and subsequent Turkish mass murder of Armenians, Near Eastern Christians, and Greeks is left out, as is the Irish War of Independence ending in the creation of the Irish Free State. Unfortunately, the editors also left out Finland‘s successful war for independence, and the unsuccessful bid by Ukraine for independence, with its’ bloody, genocidal consequences. Surprisingly, the Russian Civil War is omitted and American and allied intervention in Russia/USSR. The quality and comprehensiveness of the essays vary significantly.

The worst chapter is Chapter 2 on the Polish Soviet War, 1919-21, which makes no mention of Polish troops murdering 40,000 Jews. Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished, mentions one of many Polish pogroms (p. 90). In November 1918, during a three-day pogrom against Jews in Lemberg (Lviv), Polish troops murdered and wounded hundreds of Jews. (New York Times, Nov. 28, 1918). A massacre of Jews in Pinsk by Polish troops led survivors who migrated to Palestine to create Kibbutz Givat in 1926. By 1921 Polish troops and civilians had murdered 40,000 Jews. While Ian Johnson is indifferent to this genocide, American Jews at the time, even in Schenectady, New York, were not. On May 14. 1919, six hundred Jews gathered at Red Men’s Hall to protest against the pogroms in Poland. Rabbi Solomon Hinden of Adath Israel chaired the meeting, and Rabbi Israel Wolkowitz of Oha Zedek, led the prayer for the victims of the Polish pogroms. The speakers included Father John Reilly, representing the city’s Catholics. The meeting sent telegrams and letters to President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State Robert Lansing. (Schenectady Jewish Community to Robert Lansing, May 16, 1919, Woodrow Wilson Papers) Jews of the Capital District held a mass protest on December 7, 1919, at the Palace Theater in Schenectady, to condemn the pogroms in Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. (Broadside in Yiddish and English “Big Mass Meeting to Protest the Massacres and Pogroms Against Jews” Rosenthal Collection, Rensselaer County Historical Society, Troy, New York) Martin Glynn, former governor of New York and first Irish Catholic governor, wrote “The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop,” condemning the mass murder of Jews in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus (American Hebrew, October 31, 1919) Johnson conveniently omits that, due to the widespread massacres of Jews, President Woodrow Wilson sent a special commission, headed by Henry Morgenthau, to investigate and document Polish deadly antisemitism.

The reviewer has a special interest since his paternal grandmother, aunt, uncle, and father (then 13 years old), managed to escape the antisemitic violence in Poland in 1921 for the comparable safety of Flatbush, Brooklyn. They left a town about 40 miles southeast of Lemberg. Far more famous than my father, 12-year-old Abram Saperstein (Albert Sabin) fled the pogroms in Poland in 1921. The failure of the author to mention the widespread pogroms by Polish troops is an act of antisemitism. It is comparable to the BBC on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2026, in three broadcasts never mentioning Jews and the National Education Association guidelines omitting any reference to Jews in its section on the Holocaust. Omission of Jews from history is an act of antisemitism.

This failure to mention antisemitism is also a fault of Michael Seidman’s piece on the Spanish Civil War. Seidman omits any mention of the virulent hatred of Jews by the Nationalist forces and the antisemitism of Francisco Franco. As Javier Arribas pointed out, “through diverse methods, the Francoist propaganda apparatus spread a highly negative image of Jews.” (Isabelle Rohr, Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust, p. 329) The Falange, part of Franco’s political base during the Spanish Civil War, was deeply antisemitic. In Spanish Morocco, according to historian Isabelle Rohr, “military authorities fined Jews large sums of money to finance the war effort.” (Rohr, p. 104) When the Nationalists won, Franco banned any public Jewish organizations and expressions of Judaism, closing the few synagogues in Spain. Franco banned any Jewish rituals, including circumcisions, bar mitzvahs, marriages, and funerals. On Franco’s orders, even the Jewish cemetery in Barcelona was destroyed. The Nationalists pressured Jews to convert to Catholicism. Once again, the antisemitic ideology of Franco and the Nationalists is omitted and that is unacceptable.

I am somewhat surprised there is no mention of the American volunteers in the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln brigades or For Whom the Bell Tolls or Homage to Catalonia, the best-known works on the Republican side of the Civil War. Curiously, Seidman does not mention the sacrifice of 2,800 American volunteers, one third Jewish, in the Abraham Lincoln and George Washington battalions. One third of the Americans died in combat. Some historians have argued American units fighting for the Republicans suffered more casualties than American military units of comparable size during World War II.

Quentin Holbert’s account of the Welwel incident and the origins of the Italo-Ethiopian War provides a concise interpretation of what led to the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. Holbert effectively explains why France and Great Britian quietly supported this naked aggression and the failure of the League to take any real actions to support Ethiopia. What is missing is more detailed analysis of the use of chemical warfare by the Italians and the impact of the war on the people of Ethiopia. The war had implications in the United States. African Americans in Harlem formed in February 1935 the Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia, raised money for Ethiopia, and participated in mass demonstrations denouncing Mussolini. Residents of Harlem boycotted Italian- owned stores. African Americans in New York and other cities rejoiced when “Brown Bomber” Joe Louis defeated Italian Primo Carnera on June 25, 1935. African American teenagers roamed the streets of Harlem shouting: “Let’s get Mussolini next.” (Gotham at War, p. 49)

Looking at some of the other chapters, Sultan Alamer’s chapter on the Arabian Peninsula Wars, 1919-1934, analyzes the fight for domination among the seven independent Arab polities in Arabia. The British and Italians had colonial interests in the region but agreed to leave the Islamic holy sites under Islamic control. The kingdoms of Yemen and Najd appeared the most expansionist with Sultan Abdul Aziz al Saud the most successful in conquering neighboring Arab states. Great Britian intervened to prevent the conquest of Kuwait in 1920 since their major concern was indirect control of eastern Arabian shore on the Persian Gulf and access to the Strait of Hormuz. Alamer presents an illuminating account of the intra-Arab conflicts leading to the creation of Saudi Arabia, its domination of the interior of the Arabian Peninsula, and the solidification of the Kingdom of Yemen in the southwest.

Another sound chapter is provided by William Waddell’s account of the Rif War by the Berbers in Spanish Morocco, 1921-26. At the battle of Annual on July 22, 1921, with the Berbers led by Mohamed ben Abd el-Krim, Spain suffered the most serious defeat of a “modern Western army at the hands of a non-Western opponent until the French loss at Dien Bien Phu.” (p. 139) From 1921-1925 Krim successfully resisted Spanish forces and created an independent Rif Republic in the Atlas Mountains. Under the leadership of Franciso Franco for Spain, and the hero of Verdun, Philippe Petain, for France, the colonial militaries forced Krim’s surrender in 1926. This colonial war revealed the costs, human, equipment, and finances, of colonial wars without much benefit.

Covering some of the same ground as Waddell in the chapter on Interwar Conflict in Africa, 1919-1939, Timothy Stapleton discussed the Rif Rebellion agreeing with Waddell that Annual was ”the greatest African military victory over European colonial forces in the twentieth century.” (p. 92)

Stapleton’s main contribution is his emphasis on the Italian brutal offensive against Arab rebels in the Cyrenaica region of Libya in the 1930s. Italians executed as many as 12,000 people a year and committed major atrocities against rural Libyans. Between 60,000 and 70,000 people died due to hunger and dislocation. (p. 99) Stapleton repeats coverage of the Italo-Ethiopian War analyzed by Holbert, without the same level of detail.

Finally, to briefly mention a few other chapters, Bridget Chesterton wrote an illuminating study of the Chaco War, 1932-1935, between Bolivia and Paraguay over control of the Gran Chaco and access to the Paraguay River by Bolivia resulting in a Bolivian defeat. This is the only chapter dealing with conflicts in the Western Hemisphere. Bruce Elleman discussed the complicated events in China, 1928-1937 and the ongoing attempts by the Nationalists to unify China while fighting warlords, the Communist Party and the USSR in 1929, and Japan from 1931. This is a concise, professionally written, and perceptive analysis. Robert Clemm looked at the British use of airpower against anti-colonial and rebel forces in Iraq and British Somaliland. Did the British use chemical weapons against the Kurds in Iraq like a later Iraqi government in the 1980s? Other chapters cover the militarization of the Afghan-Indian frontier; Soviet intervention in Xinjiang during the 1930s; and the Manchukuo Army in China, 1905-1937.

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Our Reviewer: Harvey Strum is a professor of history and political science at Russell Sage College and a former Sherman David Spector Faculty Fellow in Humanities. He previously reviewed Contested Commemoration: The 1876 Centennial, Independence Day, and the Reconstruction-era South, Fugitives: A History of Nazi Mercenaries during the Cold War, From the Battlefield to the Big Screen, Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust, Gotham at War, and The Waffen-SS in Poland, 1939. 

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