Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?: The Transformation of Modern Europe
By James J. Sheehan. 304 pp. Houghton Mifflin, 2008. $26.
Renowned historian James J. Sheehan of Stanford University has produced a well-written and informative history of Europe’s twentieth-century cultural transformation. Specifically, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? examines how European attitudes toward military institutions and the waging of war have changed fundamentally over the last hundred years, and especially since World War II.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Europe’s militaries and the traditional values they embodied were highly regarded. War was considered a legitimate political activity, and military success was a source of pride and an integral part of national identity. All of that shifted in the wake of two devastating world wars, however. Most Europeans now see military institutions as necessary evils, and they regard armed conflict as an artifact of a morally misguided era, an inexcusable failure of diplomacy rather than a natural continuation of political intercourse. In short, Europeans have created what Sheehan and others refer to as the “civilian state,” where the military is tolerated rather than esteemed.
So what triggered this dramatic transformation? Sheehan argues that there were two main causes. First, the widespread devastation and loss of life brought about by two world wars, particularly the second, gave Europeans a different, more sober appreciation for war and its relationship to the state. Notions of honor and glory went up in smoke, like so many of Europe’s cities. Second, the cold war and the fear of a nuclear Armageddon created an abiding sense that if another general war occurred, it truly would be Europe’s last. Hence, the focus shifted to avoiding war. Europe’s states still owned large militaries, but now those militaries were united under a common cause in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and their most important function was to deter military action. As the decades wore on, European states relinquished their overseas possessions, such as French Algeria, as those territories proved too costly, economically and politically, to retain. Statesmen began to put more emphasis on domestic affairs, instituting policies to promote economic growth and preserve peace. War was no longer the central characteristic of national identity. Instead, states were measured by how well they saw to the welfare of their citizens.
Sheehan’s answers are not unique, but they are largely on target. He correctly points out that this shift in attitudes is not global, but European only. Even the United States, which did not suffer the same loss of life and property as Europe, has an altogether different view of war, as America’s willingness to use military power to advance its interests abroad has recently shown. In many places in the world, war is not just a legitimate political instrument; it’s the preferred one. What that reality might mean for the new European states, which have grown abhorrent toward war, is not clear. Europe, as Sheehan says, is not an island unto itself, and can never be. Its contemporary problems of immigration, urbanization, and social integration are steadily increasing. If it wishes to extend its current era of economic prosperity, it will have to remain engaged internationally. The future of the civilian state, as Sheehan argues, will be determined along Europe’s ill-defined “frontier, where affluence and poverty, law and violence, peace and war, continually meet and uneasily coexist.”
Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? is aimed at general readers, but is well suited for undergraduate history or political science courses as well. Specialists and World War II enthusiasts will find some graphic, if sweeping, accounts of the war’s events; however, they will not find much they did not already know. Most of the book’s historical narrative can be found in greater detail in other texts. Nevertheless, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? conveniently pulls together the major events of modern Europe into one coherent tale, and is thus worth having.
Originally published in the March 2008 issue of World War II Magazine. To subscribe, click here.
