Professor Mark Levene on Niall Ferguson

I (Richard Koenigsberg) received the note directly below from Professor Mark Levene--commenting on the LSS Newsletter (below the note): "DELUSIONS OF HISTORIANS" (Niall Ferguson)." This is not the place to evaluate Ferguson's body of scholarship. However, I'd be grateful if LSS Newsletter readers will join Mark in commenting on Ferguson's claim made in The Pity of War: Explaining World War  that the war persisted--men fought--simply because "fighting was fun." (see photos below). I find this statement a bit grotesque. Am I wrong in my judgment? Is there something to be said for the hypothesis that the First World War persisted because men enjoyed it?

If this statement is absurd, how is it possible that a prominent historian can "get away" with making such a fatuous claim?

Ferguson's comment is only one of many bizarre ideas put forth explaining  why the First World War persisted--in spite of continual, merciless slaughter. One sometimes heard at conferences is that Generals "underestimated the power of the machine gun."

Another explanation--more acceptable to some people--is that men "enjoyed killing;" the war was a manifestation of "male aggression;" the masculine tendency toward "violence." What does this mean, exactly? Professor Robert Weiner has pointed out that approximately 75% of casualties were caused by artillery shelling, which means that the "killers" never saw the person they killed. Does this mean they obtained pleasure from loading and firing a cannon or piece of artillery? 

I'd very much like to receive your thoughts, on Ferguson's claim, Professor Levene's note below, and/or on my essay, "DELUSIONS OF HISTORIANS: Niall Ferguson." Please send your reflections to me at rak@LibraryofSocialScience.com. I'll publish the most insightful commentaries, and promote one of your books along with your commentary.

Looking forward to hearing from you. 

Best regards,

Richard Koenigsberg

PS: Mark Levene is probably the world's foremost authority on genocide. Learn more about Mark and his books by clicking here.

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Hi, Richard, et al, 

This is interesting below, but I think in the world of at least British academic history, Niall Ferguson is not rated as ‘brilliant’ except perhaps in terms of seeking and taking the limelight!  That’s not sour grapes …..it’s just that over on your side of the pond ‘celebrity,' academics  would sometimes seem to get a bit over-lionized thanks to their role as ‘public intellectuals’  (that rarely happens here), which might ‘allow’…in this case, as you say…him getting away with not  only a grotesque statement but  one showing a remarkable lack of imagination, let alone empathy.

Here  without having read any historical journal reviews of this particular work, I can only speculate that this particular idiocy may or may not have been passed over because  either as general rule we’re not litinigous, or simply too polite for our own good (??), i.e. we tend to ignore the crass when it is just that-crass.

I can’t speak for the whole community of course…but i suspect that’s closer to the implicit truth of the failing you raise. That said, i suspect if I were to now go away and read some Brit academic journal reviews of the work, the majority of them would be ultra-scathing! Ferguson here is regarded as a historian who is very good at making controversially clever if memorable and sometimes outrageous statements but not much else! 

Anyway, as always thanks for the ongoing flow of consciousness on the bad, ugly and sheer diabolical…

Mark Levene

 Delusions of Historians (Niall Ferguson)
Richard Koenigsberg


To the right are passages describing the experiences of soldiers during the First World War. I could reproduce hundreds like these conveying the horrors of battle. 

Niall Ferguson is a brilliant historian, formerly a professor at Harvard University and now a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

In his well-reviewed, The Pity Of War: Explaining World War I  (2000), Ferguson claims that the war persisted--men fought--simply because "fighting was fun."

The best that can be said about this conclusion--put side-by-side with descriptions like the ones to the right--is that this hypothesis is grotesque. 

Yet within the historical community, Ferguson is "allowed" to make statements such as this without being seriously challenged.

Comfort women were women and girls (Korean, Chinese and Japanese) forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II.

Ferguson's statement that soldiers fought in the First World War because it was "fun" is equivalent to saying that the women of Korea, China and Japan persisted as comfort women because they enjoyed being raped and having sex.

This raises the broader issue of why nation-states during the First World War were allowed to slaughter young men, to the tune of 9 million dead and 21 million wounded.

Young men, it would appear, have been the most victimized, oppressed group of the 20th century. If judged simply by the number of young men sent to be slaughtered in battle, this is obvious.

Most people, however, are unwilling to characterize young men as victims or as an oppressed group--because we prefer to think of soldiers as aggressive warriors, heroes, etc. Young men themselves think of themselves in these terms. They are profound participants in their own oppression.

Please keep this issue of the Library of Social Science Newsletter in your hip pocket. Whenever you are tempted to make statements or write about warfare as a form of "masculinity," male aggression, heroism, etc., simply read the passages above and to the right.

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE
BATTLE OF VERDUN

“Men were squashed. Cut in two or divided from top to bottom. Blown into showers; bellies turned inside out; skulls forced into the chest as if by a blow from a club.”

“You eat beside the dead; you drink beside the dead, you relieve yourself beside the dead and you sleep beside the dead.”

“I saw a man drinking avidly from a green scum-covered marsh, where lay, his black face downward in the water, a dead man lying on his stomach and swollen as if he had not stopped filling himself with water for days.”

“To die from a bullet seems to be nothing; parts of our being remain intact; but to be dismembered, torn to pieces, reduced to pulp, this is the fear that flesh cannot support and which is fundamentally the great suffering of the

Ferguson's statement that soldiers fought in the First World War because it was "fun" is equivalent to saying that the women of Korea, China and Japan persisted as comfort women because they enjoyed being raped and having sex.