What makes a civilization decline? Is a decline caused by economic or moral faults or do they simply grow old and cannot face the challenges of younger, stronger forces which challenge them? For Britain after World War I, this topic was discussed at various levels of society. Having entered the first world war as a great Empire, within four years the average Brit could see the Anglo colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa clamor for more independence while the crown of the jewel, India, began to make small steps towards independence. What were the causes and could such a decline in power be stopped?
Richard Overy, whose outstanding analysis of World War II, Why the Allied Won has once again created a history that is overwhelming in detail and argument. Beginning shortly after the end of World War I, numerous books, pamphlets and debates centered on the decline of Western civilization. These debates were not shallow exercises, but serious discussions as to causes and possible remedies. Going back to Nietzsche who felt that history was cyclical, was civilization, “merely the current expression of man’s futile efforts to fight the reality of decay with the weapons of illusory order.”? If progress was illusional, then the certainties of the 19th century were null and void. Civilizations, according to Nietzsche come and go, rise and fall, are born and die so there was not a great moral lesson to be learned from the decline of the West. Nietzsche’s thesis became the starting point for Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West which was hugely popular especially in Germany after the war. Unlike Hegel who saw a progression of history, Spengler’s saw civilizations almost like plants, which rise and fall as part of a great cycle. Spengler listed eight ‘ripe’ cultures, “…from the Chinese through the Indian, antique, Arabian and Western” and that each had a cycle of about 1000 years from birth to death.
Other writers such as Egyptologist Flinders Petrie and George Bernard Shaw were pessimistic about the future, but Arnold Toynbee found Spengler as too deterministic and argued that Western Civilization could be saved. In time, Toynbee moved even further stating that only a return to Christian values could save the West.
Overy also discusses the debates that went on regarding the value of war (a regenerative elixir or a mistake that killed off the best and bravest, thus weakening civilization), could the next war be avoided and if not, would it end Western civilization. Then you have the Depression which was taken as the beginning of the end of Western Capitalism and many looked to the Soviet Union for hope as the new promised land. Even the slaughter of millions in the Ukraine and the rise of the Stalinist police state were put aside as necessary to create a wonderful new world.
In short, Overy paints a picture of a civilization which was unsure of itself, of its values and moorings. Was Western civilization a “death ship” sailing rudderless towards a dark future? Could it be saved from itself? A falling birthrate meant an England reduced to half of its population and unable to survive economically or militarily. All appeared to be gloom.
Yet, from this intellectual morass, England found the strength to go forward once again to survive and battle for Western civilization against Nazism. Somehow, despite the intellectuals and elites who were so sure that the end was around the corner, a great leader came forth and called upon the inner strengths of his people to do battle.
In the end, this book seems to parallel our own time when we face a murderous adversary and we seem at times to be so divided on how to battle it and unsure if we can move forward. And in this parallel is the lesson that we can take with us; that a people’s, a civilization only declines when the average man and woman give up hope and their belief that they can persevere.
An outstanding book, full of thought provoking ideas and views. It is an adventure of a unique kind.
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