The Prague Spring

In 1968, the world changed. This was the year that witnessed the assassinations of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. As the Vietnam War raged on, the world witnessed protests across the world including one in Poland against the communist government in March, student protests in France in May that led to the eventual demise of the de Gaulle government, as well as civil rights protests and disturbances across the United States. The year 1968 also witnessed a period now referred to as Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. While it seemed like the rest of the world was witnessing terror and unrest, for a brief period of time people in Czechoslovakia experienced a loosening of restrictions imposed on them by the communist regime. However, the Prague Spring did not last. In the fall of 1968, Czechoslovakia also saw terror and unrest as the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact leaders invaded the country to bring the Prague Spring and its democratization to an end. This paper will examine the origins of Prague Spring, and its eventual demise.
Czechoslovakia had been treated unfairly in World War II. Forced by the Western allies to cede its Sudetenland border territory to Nazi Germany through the 1938 Munich Agreement, Czechoslovakia lost much of its territory. This event is known as the Western Betrayal in Czechoslovakia because the Czech president at the time, Edvard Benes, had not been invited to the signing of the Munich Agreement by the Western allies, and was forced to give up territory.1 In 1939, the rest of Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Nazis and divided into a puppet Slovakia (much of which was annexed by Hungary) and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. By the end of the war, Czechoslovakia was liberated by United States and Soviet Union forces. Most of the prewar Czechoslovakia was recreated. Following the war, there was large support for communism because of the lack of trust Czechs had for the Western allies due to the Western Betrayal. Slowly, between 1945-48, Czechoslovakia became a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union.
Shortly after Czechoslovakia became communist, the Prague Coup took place in 1948. During this time, popularity of the communists in Czechoslovakia began to loose support because of outside events happening in Eastern Europe at the time. Party members, including premiership Klement Gottwald, moved to gain more power by replacing non-communist police officers with party members. Non-communist cabinet members resigned in protest, and the party member police force took their opportunity to arrest all of their opponents. “They suppressed all non-party newspapers, placed party-members in key-positions, and surrounded Prague with armed activists supported by the Red Army. Finally the Communist Party instituted a Soviet-like constitution.”2 Benes, who was still President at this time and in failing health, resigned in 1948 and died shortly afterwards. Gottwald succeeded him as the new President of Czechoslovakia. Gottwald continued the non-communist purges and arrested thousands of people, many of whom were forced to participate in show trials, and were eventually imprisoned or executed.3
Gottwald continued following Stalin's orders, and succeeded in nationalizing the industry and collectivizing the farms. Stalin sent advisors to Czechoslovakia who helped see to it that the strict policies of the Communist state were being enforced. To his dismay, Gottwald was met with extreme resistance and discontent, especially among party members who were upset “with the Soviet stronghold on Czechoslovak politics.”4 Instead of dealing with the discontent head-on, Gottwald decided to conduct purges within the communist party itself. Both the Foreign Minister Vladimir Clementis and Prime Minister Gustáv Husák were fired from their positions. Clementis was later executed and Husak was imprisoned. During the Gottwald purges, two hundred communists were executed and thousands more were sent to concentration or labor camps, or to mines in the western part of Czechoslovakia.5 Gottwald did not last long as President of Czechoslovakia. He died in 1953, only three days after his devoted Soviet Union leader, Stalin, having caught the Moscow flu at the late Communist leader's funeral.6 Antonin Zapotocky reigned as President for four years, from 1953 – 1957. In 1957, Zapotocky was replaced by the new President Antonin Novotný.
Novotný had been the Communist Party leader since 1953, after Gottwald died. He later added President to his resume in 1957. He held both positions until 1968. Novotný was “unlikeable and unpopular, yet he became immensely powerful.”7 Novotný had consolidated power and rose to the top of the Communist party. Following the death of Stalin and Khrushchev's subsequent denunciation of Stalin three years later, the Soviet Union along with its satellite states began a process of de-Stalinization. Novotný started this program in Czechoslovakia in 1956. Although the Czech people still faced harsh government restrictions on the arts and media, it was loosened compared to what life was like under Stalin. However, Novotný's de-Stalinization program moved more slowly compared to other countries in the Soviet bloc.8
Soon Novotný began to see small uprising from the people of his country. Wanting a more free press, the Union of Czechoslovak Writers began airing their discontent. “The writers, responsive to the degeneration of the socialist ideal, soon launched an open revolt against the policies of Novotný. ...[the writers] denounced Stalinist governance and demanded changes in accordance with the country's democratic traditions.”9 The uprising was eventually suppressed and the conservatives continued to hold control over the reformers. The Union's gazette, Literarni Noviny, along with several publishing houses were transferred to the Ministry of Culture.10 On May Day 1956, students in Prague demonstrated “demanding freedom of speech and access to the Western press.”11 In reaction to these events, the Novotný government introduced a policy of Neo-Stalinism.12 With revolution in Hungary and disturbances in Poland, Novotný's Czechoslovakia remained strong in the old ways of Stalinism in the late 1950s to early 1960s, easing up very little on restrictions imposed. Novotný retained control over the country for ten years before large unrest began to take hold.
In the first half of the 1960s, Czechoslovakia experienced an economic downturn. Despite Gottwald's attempts at nationalizing the country's industry, the Soviet model did not apply well to Czechoslovakia. The country was already fairly industrialized before World War II. Gottwald and Stalin failed to see that the Soviet model most aptly applied to lesser developed economies, not ones like Czechoslovakia. In effect, the country's economy had become stagnated. Industrial growth was the lowest in all of Eastern Europe.13 The living standards in Czechoslovakia were also the lowest in the Soviet Bloc.14 In 1965, Novotný passed the New Economic Model, attempting to restructure the Czech economy. “The program called for a second, intensive stage of economic development, emphasizing technological and managerial improvements.”15 The model did little but increase demands from the people for political reform.
By 1967, the New Economic Model was a failure and Novotný had lost the majority of his support. Novotný agreed to some limited economic changes for financial stability, and even “rehabilitated” some former communists that had been victims of the Purges a few years early, Husak included. However, he refused to make any political changes in fear that the Slovak population of Czechoslovakia would gain political influence.16 His refusal to make any political concessions led to an alliance between the reformers and Slovaks. All of this came to a head when Alexander Dubček, then the First Secretary of the regional Communist Party of Slovakia, and Ota Šik, the economist who had drafted a version of the New Economic Model, challenged Novotný at the Central Committee of Czechoslovak Communist Party meeting in October, 1967. Dubček gained the support of the majority of party members along with Soviet Premier Brezhnev who, shocked at the wide-spread opposition to Novotný, supported the removal of Novotný.17 On January 5, 1968, after Novotný had Central Committee members of the Presidium vote to whom they would like to elect as First Secretary of the Communist Party, Alexander Dubček succeeded Novotný as the General Secretary of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia.18 Novotný still remained President until March when he was forced to resign and Ludvik Svoboda became President.19
The time period from January to August, 1968, in Czechoslovakia is known as the Prague Spring. Once Dubček came to power, the country experienced a time of great liberalization. Beginning in January when Dubček took power, he began promoting his Action Program that he had been pushing for since 1967.20 In April, Dubček officially launched of the Action Program. In his book The Prague Spring and its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics 1968 – 1970, Kieran Williams writes, “The programme [sic] built on the original assumption that power had to be redistributed throughout the system, and constrained by constitutionalism to allow the renewal of civil freedoms.”21 Williams continues, “The party's leading role in society... was reformulated: the party would no longer demand to be the sole director and decision-maker..., but would strive to earn this prominent position through example, persuasion, and compromise.”22 Among other things, the Action Program guaranteed freedoms of speech, press, and assembly, and a new constitution by the end of 1969.23 Dubček was very adamant about easing on censorship. He writes, “I knew that I needed a free press to help me open to way to basic reforms, political as well as economic.”24 There was also a shift to an emphasis on consumer goods in the economy and the possibility of a multi-party government. The program also called for the separation of Czechoslovakia into two separate nations; this is the only reform to survive the Prague Spring. “A significant step in that direction was the rerecognition [sic] of Bratislava as the capital of Slovakia by a decree of the National Assembly in March.”25 Dubček believed that economic recovery would be impossible without these reforms.26 In his autobiography Hope Dies Last, states that the Action Program was “one of the most important legacies of Prague Spring.”27
Dubček received a large amount of criticism for his new program. Communist leaders in the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Bloc were weary of the program since Dubček had first began promoting it in January. In a private meeting with Soviet Premier Brezhnev and other Warsaw Pact leaders, Dubček wrote that he “tried to reassure them, pointing out that nothing [his] supporters and [he] planned was in any way directed against the interests of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, or economic cooperation within the Soviet bloc.”28 Apparently, Dubček's call for understanding did not sit well with the other Warsaw Pact leaders. Over the next few months, Dubček continually met with Brezhnev and the other leaders in order to pacify them. This effort on Dubček's part payed off little. Brezhnev and the Warsaw Pact leaders called for a renunciation of the Action Program by Dubček, fearing that the program would weaken the Communist bloc during the pivotal time of the Cold War. However, dedicated to creating “socialism with a face,” Dubček continually refused to concede to their demands.
In March, Brezhnev called Dubček and informed him of a meeting in Dresden with all the Soviet bloc countries. Dubček agreed to the conference, being told that the discussions would revolve around “economic cooperation within the bloc.”29 However, once the meeting began, it became clear that the topic of the agenda was not economic cooperation, but the situation in Czechoslovakia. Most of their criticisms against Dubček dealt with the abolishment of censorship in his country. As Dubček writes in his autobiography, “With varying intensity, they [Brezhnev and the Warsaw Pact leaders] attacked us [Dubček and the Czechs] for 'losing control' over our situation and permitting a diversity of opinion that, in their view, bordered on 'counterrevolution.' Mixed in were the usual references to 'outside threats to the socialist camp.'”30 Dubček reiterated that because they had abolished censorship, the government was not able to control the content of the newspapers. Moreover, the abolishment of censorship was an internal affair and did not effect, Dubček believed, the whole of the Soviet bloc.31 Dubček continues, “The conference ended in a cool mood. There were no conclusions, no joint declaration, only a very formal final communiqué [sic]. We disagreed completely.”32 Once home, Dubček continued the reforms of the Action Program and the Warsaw Pact leaders continued to worry about the situation that was developing. Unfortunately for Dubček, the Dresden meeting was one of many to follow during the Prague Spring.
Over the next few months, relations between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union continued to break down. In May, Dubček went to Moscow for another meeting with the Warsaw Pact leaders. Again, Brezhnev restated “that the Czechoslovak Party was losing control over mass communications and that [the Czechoslovak] economic reform could lead to a restoration of capitalism.”33 Dubček, in his rebuttal, replied that the Party “was not losing its leading role but [they] were gaining more support than ever before—from all segments of society and all nationalities. ...Moreover, the press was, in the main, supportive of [their] policy...”34 It seemed as though no matter what each said, both parties refused to move from their side of the argument. This meeting in Moscow is yet another example from the many phone calls, letters, and meetings between Dubček and Brezhnev that continued to end in a stalemate.
In July, The Five, Brezhnev and his fellow Warsaw Pact leaders, met secretly to discuss the Czechoslovakian crisis. In the now famous Warsaw Letter, the leaders wrote Dubček saying that the Czechoslovak Party had “lost control of events in Czechoslovakia” and had retreated “under the pressure of anti-communist forces.”35 The letter urged the Czechoslovak Party to “move immediately to reimpose censorship, restore 'democratic centralism' within the party, dismiss reform-minded officials, and prohibit all non-communist political clubs and organizations.”36 In the end, the Warsaw Letter amounted to an ultimatum: The Five asserted both a right and a duty “for the Soviet Union and its allies to intervene in 'defense of socialist gains.'”37 In response to the Warsaw Letter, Dubček and his Presidium wrote back refuting all the charges made in the infamous letter. As editor Jaromír Navrátil writes, the response letter “invokes the Soviet Union's own rhetoric about the 'sacred' principles of relations among socialist countries, especially the principle of non-interference in internal affairs.”38 Dubček called for more bilateral meetings to help them conquer their serious disagreements. According to Navrátil, the Soviets interpreted Dubček's response letter as a sign that the Czechs “had no intention of complying with Moscow's demands.”39
Following the publishing of both the Warsaw Letter and Dubček's reply, Brezhnev and Dubček agreed to another meeting to discuss negotiations regarding the Action Program in Čierna nad Tisou, an area near the Slovak-Soviet border on July 29th. Here, Dubček once again defended his Action Program to Brezhnev. Dubček guaranteed his commitment to the Warsaw Pact. Dubček writes, “The two sides disagreed as completely before. Brezhnev and I simply restated our opinions.”40 In a meeting several days later on August 3rd in Bratislava, the Powers adopted a new document that did not include anything mentioned in the Warsaw Letter. In fact, one author writes, that the “ambiguous document...was a complete reversal of the Warsaw Letter.”41 The declaration that was signed by the six Warsaw Pact leaders stated that “'each fraternal party' must 'take account of specific national features and conditions' when 'deciding questions of socialist development.' It also obliged the signatories to respect one another's 'sovereignty, national independence, and territorial integrity.'”42 Once back in Prague, Dubček assured his people that they did not sign any secret agreements, and that the declaration “opened further necessary space for [the Prague Spring] reforms.”43 The declaration was signed by representatives from Czechoslovakia, along with other Warsaw Pact members including the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria. In the declaration, the Soviet Union again made clear its intentions of intervening in a Warsaw Pact country if a “bourgeois system” was ever established.44 Here, the communist forces were ensuring the use of the Brezhnev Doctrine. After the signing of the document, Soviet troops that had been in Czechoslovakia since June for a military exercise left the country but remained near its border and eventually invaded the reform-minded Czechoslovakia once again only a few weeks later.
The Bratislava Declaration marked the beginning of the end for Dubček. As Dubček writes, “The period between the Bratislava conference and the invasion brought no changes in our internal situation that could be construed as provocation for what happened. There was a general relaxation of tension, a feeling of hope that we had finally been left alone.”45 As time would tell, the Czechs and Slovaks were not to be left alone. Three short weeks after the Bratislava Declaration was signed, the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Pact leaders invaded Czechoslovakia to bring Prague Spring to an end.
“During the night of 20-1 August, under the code-name Operation Danube, an invasion coalition led by the Soviet Union moved 165,000 soldiers and 4,600 tanks into Czechoslovakia from Southern Poland, the GDR, and Northern Hungary. Within a week, after further contingents arrived, approximately half a million foreign solders and more than 6,000 tanks were roaming over Czechoslovak territory.”46 Although absolute reasons as to why the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia are debated by historians still today, it is evident that Brezhnev and the Warsaw Pact leaders did invoked the Brezhnev Doctrine as a reason to invade the country. In his autobiography, Dubček states that The Five had made their decision to invade on August 18th, after a three day conference. He contends that the Five used confusion over the Bratislava Declaration in order to invade. He writes,
“Brezhnev stated that in Cierna 'it had been agreed' that the Czechoslovak Communist Party would reinstitute [sic] censorship and outlaw KAN and K-231, the organization of former political prisoners. He further said that 'it had been agreed' that we would demote Presidium member[s]... Brezhnev added that this 'agreement' had been the basis of the Bratislava conference. All that, of course, was the most blatant of lies. The Soviets had presented these demands, but we had rejected them all decisively, and the only agreement we then reached was about going to Bratislava. Nothing else.”47

Clearly, Brezhnev hoped to use these lies to give founding to the invasion. In the actual resolution to invade set forth by the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact leaders, the language is much different when compared to Dubček's account. The resolution made by the Five states that the final decision was made to adopt “active measures in support of socialism in the ČSSR” and to “provide help to the Communist Party and people of Czechoslovakia through military force.”48 Others write that the invasion “was intended to install a more reliable regime in Prague, intimidate the 'counter-revolutionary' forces into submission, and signal to the world that the Soviet Union would only enter détente from a position of strength, with its sphere of influence unassailable and united.”49 Whatever the reason, clearly the Soviet Union hoped to end to Prague Spring and bring Czechoslovakia back in line with the communist regime.
As the day of August 20th developed, Dubček started the day as normal, attending a Presidium meeting in the afternoon. The meetings continued throughout the evening. No one knew that the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact leaders were gaining ground and getting ready to invade the country. Dubček writes, “The atmosphere was electric with fresh rumors about Soviet military moves close to our borders, especially in East Germany.”50 Dubček said that he had not paid attention to the rumors though, thinking that they were just an intimidation tactic by the Warsaw Pact. He continues, “But shortly before midnight, Prime Minister Cernik was called to the telephone and told by Defense Minister General Dzur that the Soviets and four of their allies had invaded. ...Cernik's news was like a bombshell.”51
After the initial shock wore off, Dubček and other members of the Presidium sat down and wrote a public statement about the invasion. In the letter, the Presidium encouraged all citizens to stay calm and to not resist the military forces that had moved in. The letter made clear that the Czech army and militia had not been called on to defend the country.52 Meanwhile, the Soviets had taken over Ruzyne, the Prague airport, and were landing planes frequently, bringing in more tanks, armored vehicles, and troops.
Around 4:00 A.M., Red Army air infantry men (paratroopers) with automatic rifles in hand, had surrounded the Central Committee building, where Dubček and others were. Within a few hours time, Dubček and others in his office were contained by eight paratroopers and were told they were being protected by a high officer of the KGB. Dubček writes, “Indeed we were protected, sitting around that table—each of us had a tommy gun pointed at the back of his head.”53 Within the next few hours, Dubček was officially arrested and told that he would be brought before a “revolutionary tribunal.”54 Dubček was soon taken to the airport and transported to Legnica, Poland. He was then transferred to another airport in Uzhgorod, Ukraine, near the eastern border of Slovakia. From there, Dubček and Prime Minister Cernik, whom Dubček had been reunited with at the Ukraine airport, were taken to “a complex of mountain chalets.”55 There they were held kidnapped for several days.
On Friday, August 23, Dubček was taken to the office of the regional Soviet Party committee, where he was informed by Chairman of the Presidium of the Soviet Union that he would be taken to Moscow for negotiations. Dubček arrived at the Kremlin late Friday night. There, he was rushed into a meeting with Brezhnev and three members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee Politburo: Kosygin, Podgorny, and Voronov.56 As Navrátil writes, “The meeting...lasted over three hours during which they attempted to coerce Dubček to cooperate in publicly justifying the invasion, reversing Prague Spring, and 'normalizing' the situation.”57 Dubček refused to yield to their demands, and stated that he thought that “what happened—the use of troops—was the greatest political mistake and one that will [sic] have tragic consequences...”58
After the meeting ended, Dubček learned that the Soviets demanded that they sign documents “constituting an agreement of sorts on how to solve the impasse, and a list of obligations, presumed mutual.”59 Dubček refused to “take part in such a charade.” He and the other ministers of Czechoslovakia that were present, including President Svoboda, had no constitutional authority to agree to an accord with the Soviets without the approval of the government and parliament. Others, including Svoboda, disagreed, saying that an “extraordinary situation justified such extralegal steps.”60 Dubček refused to partake in any negotiations with the Soviets until his entire Party leadership be brought to Moscow so that they could “act in an official capacity.”61 Brezhnev agreed and soon the rest of the staff were flown in to Moscow. Dubček was finally updated on the status of events in Czechoslovakia, having not been told anything since his kidnapping. He learned that “practically all existing political and professional organizations” supported the reforms of Prague Spring, demanded a withdraw of troops, and supported the safe return of the Czechoslovak leadership.62 There was also international support from Western Communist parties and the United States who had brought before the Security Council of the United Nations the issue of Soviet aggression in Czechoslovakia. However, this amounted to little but vocal support for Czechoslovakia because the Western allies feared nuclear war with the Soviet Union if they were to intervene in any physical way.
Once up to date with matters on the home-front, Dubček's men (minus Dubček who still refused to participate directly in the negotiations) began talks with the Soviets. The Soviets first drafted a proposal which they presented to the Czechoslovak leadership. In their draft, the Soviets called for Czechoslovak Communist Party (CPCz) to “legitimize the aggression” by having them concede that the invasion was “necessary” and that there had been a “counterrevolution” in the country. The Soviets also had other demands: the CPCz had to “admit the validity of the admonitions in the Warsaw Letter and [their] error in refuting them;” to end the reforms that embodied the Action Program; to “declare void and invalid the Fourteenth Party Congress” (which had met secretly in Prague after the invasion); and finally, the Soviets “demanded that [the CPCz] ask the U.N. Security Council to withdraw from its agenda the question of Warsaw Pact aggression against Czechoslovakia.”63 The Czechs countered the Soviets with their own proposal. Dubček writes, “It repeated our refusal to recognize the existence of counterrevolution in Czechoslovakia, it firmly defended the Action Program, it characterized the invasion as a 'tragic misunderstanding'...and it demanded a Soviet commitment to withdraw their troops.”64 As to be expected, the Soviets answered with “arrogance and threats, flatly refusing practically all of [the] main points.”65 After several revisions, a heated debate between Brezhnev and Dubček, and concessions made on both sides, the Czech leadership was forced to sign the Moscow Protocol on August 26, after the Warsaw Five made it clear that they “would establish a full-fledged military dictatorship in Czechoslovakia” if they refused to sign.66
The Moscow Protocol effectively ended Prague Spring and ushered in a normalization period in Czechoslovakia. In the document, the Czechs gained some concessions that they had fought for during the negotiations. These included no longer coining the events leading up to the invasion as “counterrevolutionary,” bypassing any mention of the Warsaw Letter, and no call for a return to the status quo as it were before January, 1968. However, the Soviets made clear their demands in the Protocol: nullify the Fourteenth Congress, put an emphasis to central economic planning, ban political groups KAN and K-231, as well as the re-emergence of the Social Democratic Party, re-institute censorship, and dismiss reformist officials, among other things. Lastly, the document provided “no timetable for the withdrawal of Soviet and allied troops from Czechoslovakia; instead, it merely specified that withdrawals would 'occur in stages' once 'the threat to the gains of socialism in Czechoslovakia and the threat to the security of the countries of the socialist commonwealth have been eliminated.'”67
With the signing of the Moscow Protocol, Prague Spring came to an end. Much to the credit of Dubček and his fellow Presidium members urging the Czech people to resist nonviolently, the Soviet invasion had caused minimal casualties.“By 3 September the invading soldiers had killed 72 civilians, severely wounded 266, and lightly wounded 436.”68 Given the high amount of troops that participated in the invasion, the number of casualties is quite low. With the return of the Czech leadership to Prague on August 27th, a period of normalization in the country slowly began. In April, 1969, Dubček was forced to resign as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia after the mass Czechoslovak Hockey riots in March.69 Dubček was succeeded by Gustáv Husák. Husák ushered in the normalization period, undoing much of the work Dubček had fought so hard to achieve. Many of the reforms that the people had been granted through the Action Program were slowly overturned (including censorship being re-established) and Czechoslovakia began on its new course as a committed member of the Soviet bloc. Husák was eventually elected as President of Czechoslovakia in 1975.
During Prague Spring, the Czechoslovak people experienced a great period of liberalization in 1968. Prague Spring made Dubček the politician that he was. Or perhaps, Dubček made Prague Spring the great success that it became. Either way, Dubček was a reformer and a revolutionary. Unfortunately for him, his ideas were twenty years ahead of its time. In 1987, Soviet leader Gorbachev recognized that his policies of Glasnost and Perestroika owed a great deal to Dubček's Prague Spring reforms.70 With the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the communist government in Czechoslovakia finally came to an end. Prague Spring paved the way for the revolution to occur, and should be remembered in history for the important influence it had on the Communist regime during the Cold War.

Italian versus German Fascism

Twentieth century Europe saw a rise in fascist regimes as the countries began to deal with the devastation caused by World War One. The two most influential fascist governments were the Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini and the German fascists (the Nazi party) led by Adolf Hitler. Both of these governments had many similarities and differences that made the two factions separate from one another. This paper will be comparing and contrasting Italian and German fascism in terms of party platforms, leadership styles, social programs related to women, youth, and ethnic/religious outsiders, and foreign policy.

Fascism is generally a single-party governmental system led by a dictator seeking unity. This unity could be brought about by forcing people to submit to the national interest of the state instead of the personal self interest. Both the Italian and German fascist regimes outlawed all other political parties early on in their creation; Mussolini in 1926, Hitler in 1933.¹ Both sects also functioned as dictatorships. Mussolini adhered to the “leadership principle” which was, according to Brose, “rule by one man through one party.”² Mussolini, also known as Il Duce, was the head of the party and the government, being made the Prime Minister after the March on Rome in 1922. His German counterpart, known as the Fuhrer, was the head of the Nazi party, and was soon made Chancellor and President. While the Italians and Germans agreed on the single-party system and a government led by one supreme leader, they disagreed with the unity that the people submitted to. On the one hand, Italian fascism made people subordinate to the unity of the state. However, Hitler saw unity in different terms. The German fascists made people subordinate to the unity of the pure German race. While Mussolini was concerned with unity of his people in order to suppress class conflict, Hitler was concerned with the racial unity of his people. This racial unity of the pure German race (the Aryan race) led to the genocide of Jews and many others in the brutal Holocaust.

The party platforms of the two fascist regimes are vastly different from each other. The party platform of the Italian fascists was first outlined in The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle. This early work advocated the womens vote, minimum wage, and the eight hour work day.³ This work was later amended and the Doctrine of Fascism was created. This piece of work gave support to national unity not based on class, became more pro-monarch, and in favor of private property. Conversely, the German fascist party platform was also concerned with national unity but in the form pan-Germanism. The German fascists were also totalitarian and anti-semitic. Both sects did however, suppress all class struggles and banned all trade and labor unions.⁴

The two fascist groups also had similarities in their social programs related to women. In both nations, men and women were forced into traditional gender roles. While men were expected to the breadwinners and soldiers, women were forced out of their jobs (if they had one) and back into the home to raise children. These gender roles were backed, in Italy, by both Mussolini and the Catholic Church, who both feared that “feminism” would equate women having freedom of choice and would result in a “loss in female decorum and dedication to procreation.”⁵ Therefore, women were expected to have as many children as possible. This ideal was only reinforced with governmental loans for marriages and births, as well as paid maternity leaves, and tax breaks for large families. With these incentives and the insistence of the Catholic Church, there was a ban on birth control and anti-abortion laws were created.⁶ However, women still opted to have abortions, even though it was seen as a sin and an illegal act, because they could not afford to have more children (either emotionally, physically, or economically). R.J.B. Bosworth, in his book Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, describes alternative methods women used to terminate pregnancies: “falling off a bicycle...imbibing large quantities of purgatives...knitting needles...taking hot baths...” and many more.⁷ Clearly some Italian women were willing to do almost anything not to bring more children into the fascist society, but this did not deter Il Duce himself from wanting a large Italian state full of devoted Italian fascists.

Hitler and the German fascists also had similar programs connected to women. According to author Robert Brady, German women had two functions that she was to perform for the nation. “She must generate and nourish the bodies of its children, and she must shape the infantile mind to accept Nazi ideas and attitudes in all things.”⁸ German women were encouraged to have as many children as possible, and were also enticed by family allowances and marriage loans. The Germans also banned abortion like their Italian counterparts.⁹ Hitler too, wanted a large German empire full of pure Germans. This is one of the reasons why marriage and sexual intercourse between Aryans and the “undesirables” (the Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, and others) was strictly forbidden. Hitler hoped to rid the world of the “undesirables;” by passing these laws along with the others mandated in the Nuremberg Laws, he was on his way to doing so.

Both the Italian fascists and the German fascists had organizations targeted specifically at the youth of the nations. Mussolini created several youth organizations, divided by age and gender. From their creation in 1926 until 1937, some 6.7 million youth were involved in these different youth groups.¹⁰ The youth groups generally went to camps where “sports and other leisure activities were meant always to have a militant, pugnacious and xenophobic purpose. There was quite a bit of marching, sounding of trumpets, roll-calls and other conduct mimicking that of real soldiers.”¹¹ This fascist training was also prevalent in Italian schools. There were fascist textbooks for students and teachers who were required to dress in military uniform in order to “train Italian children in a 'Fascist manner.'”¹² The youth groups and camps, along with the schools, were intended to indoctrinate the younger generation into the new fascist regime controlled by Mussolini.

Hitler also had his opportunity to brain-wash the youth of the Nazi state. The Germans, like the Italians, used both the schools and youth organizations to persuade young peoples minds. Schools soon became “Nazified”¹³ and youth groups began extensive recruiting. The most prominent groups were the Hitler Youth (HJ) for boys fourteen and older, and the League of German Girls (BDM) for girls fourteen and older. At first, these two youth groups (along with their younger counterparts) recruited on a volunteer basis. Soon, the Hitler Youth “became a department of state and was officially recognized as representing all youth groups.”¹⁴ The voluntary enrollment became mandatory by the Hitler Youth Law of March 1939. By this time, the number of members of the Hitler Youth totaled 7.5 million, and the League of German Girls totaled 2 million.¹⁵ While the boys in the Hitler Youth were having military training that included “shooting practice, field maneuvers, [and] courses for radio operators...”¹⁶ girls in the League of German Girls (and the Faith and Beauty organization for girls seventeen and older) were being taught “physical education, domestic science and preparation for marriage.”¹⁷ Through a vast magnitude of propaganda used on the young people in Nazi Germany, Hitler had the youth on his side.

It is certain that both of the fascist regimes did not treat ethnic or religious outsiders kindly. This is clearly seen in Hitler's annihilation of the Jews and other minorities including the handicapped, mentally ill, gypsies, religious dissenters such as Jehovah Witnesses, and homosexuals during the Holocaust. Hitler and the German fascists were trying to create an ethnically pure Aryan race, and therefore had to rid the world of the impure peoples. Hitler was also very much anti-clerical, both anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic, having sent many priests to the dreaded concentration camps.

While Hitler led a fascist regime that was largely based on racism, Mussolini differed slightly. It is evident that Mussolini did encourage racist ideas about blacks, Arabs, and Slavs, and was clearly anti-Semitic however, the Italian regime never went to the extreme to spout that there was an ethnically pure race as Hitler and the German fascists believed. The Italian fascists, like the German fascists, participated in a form of ethnic cleansing in Trieste, a town annexed by Italy after the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after WWI. Trieste had a significant population of Slovenes that were persecuted by the Italian fascist regime. This culminated in 1920 of the burning of the Narodni Dom (“National House,”) the headquarters of the Trieste Slovenes.¹⁸ And while Mussolini was an atheist when he first began, he quickly advocated the Roman Catholic Church in order to gain political backing. Instead of persecuting the Church as Hitler did, Mussolini used the Church to his own benefit in order to promote his fascist regime.

Both the Italian and German fascists had an extensive foreign policy that consisted of aggressive nationalism coupled with imperialism. For the Italian fascists, this foreign policy took the form of invading and controlling certain areas near the Mediterranean Sea in order to create a larger Italian Kingdom. This is seen with Mussolini's invasion of the small Greek island of Corfu in 1923, the takeover of Albania in 1939, the conquest of Ethiopia from 1935-36, and the rule and genocide in the colony of Italian North Africa (modern-day Libya) in the 1930s.¹⁹ These immense territorial gains only helped Mussolini and the fascists consolidate power in order to become more authoritarian.

Likewise, Hitler was also very aggressive and imperialistic in his foreign policy. Based on the need for lebensraum or living space, the German fascists sought to take over most of Eastern Europe, at the expense of the Soviet Union. This was first seen with the occupation of Poland in 1939. Poland was invaded by Germany from the north, south, and west, while the Soviet Union (in accordance to the Nazi-Soviet Pact) attacked from the east. After Polish forces were compelled to withdraw, the Nazis and Soviets divided the land into individual spheres of influence. Eventually, Hitler needed more lebensraum for the German people, and with Operation Barbarossa in 1941 (and the breaking of the Nazi-Soviet Pact) decided to try and take the European areas of the Soviet Union. Although ultimately unsuccessful, Hitler and his forces took over the entirety of Poland, Ukraine, and major portions of the European bloc of the Soviet Union up to Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad. The Soviet Union conclusively pushed back and defeated Hitlers fascist regime, which led to the demise of the Nazis.

Italian and German fascism have many similarities in the way they operated. They had a similar foreign policy that consisted of aggressive nationalism and imperialism. They also treated outsiders similarly, both participating in different forms of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Both regimes also developed strong propagandist policies toward youth in order to indoctrinate them into the new fascist regime. Both the Italians and the Germans promoted traditional gender roles and attempted to create large fascist countries by having women have many children, outlawing forms of birth control and creating anti-abortion laws. Clearly, both Mussolini and Hitler took to heart the idea of a fascist regime being “rule by one man through one party.” While the German fascists created their regime by following the Italians example, Hitler and the Germans were much more radical in their implementation of certain policies, such as the creation of the Holocaust. However despite their minor differences, it is through comparing and contrasting the two regimes that one discovers how similar the two were to each other.

1Eric Dorn Brose, A History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 189.

2Ibid, 193.

3Fascist Manifesto (web page, 2008); available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manifesto_of_the_Fascist_Struggle

4Brose, 197 – 98.

5R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini's Italy: Life under the Dictatorship 1915 – 1945 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006), 267.

6Brose, 195.

7Bosworth, 266.

8Robert A. Brady, The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (London: Vicotr Gollancz Ltd., 1937), 186.

9Brose, 198.

10Bosworth, 289.

11Ibid, 291.

12Ibid, 294.

13Pierre Aycoberry, The Social History of the Third Reich: 1933 – 1945 (New York: The New Press, 1999), 176.

14David Welch, The Hitler Conspiracies: Secrets and Lies behind the Rise and Fall of the Nazi Party (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's Inc., 2001), 121.

15Ibid, 120 – 22.

16Aycoberry, 183.

17Welch, 122.

18Bosworth, 157.

19Ibid, 282; 388; 387; 381.

Nationalism and WWI

With the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Germany was declared guilty for causing the Great War. Ever since that time, historians have debated whether or not Germany's actions was the sole reason the war was started. Although Germany's actions did spark the war, each of the major powers were equally to blame for the onset of the First World War due to long-term causes. These causes, particularly competitive capitalism and nationalism, preempted the war. Even though all of these long-term causes are important, it is the cause of nationalism that was the most wide-spread cause of the war, affecting almost every country involved.

Nationalism was on the rise in the beginning of the twentieth century. Not only were the major powers nationalistic in their aims of domination over one another and intense rivalry (primarily the British, French, and German), but also subjugated peoples that encompassed vast multi-ethnic empires were nationalistic in their call for independence, as in the case of the Serbs and other ethnic people that comprised the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Both of these types of nationalism played a significant role in motivating the war.

For the major European powers, nationalism, or a sense of national identity, was created by various means. A large part of this was done through the use of education. As Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig point out in their book, The Origins of World War One, “Teachers and textbooks did probably help to create a national sense, imposing a common language (as opposed to local or regional dialects) and giving some sense of a larger shared heritage.” With this national identity formed by education, a manipulation of the peoples minds was able to take place. “...The expansion of education was a powerful tool in establishing national identities, with images of the Franco-Prussian War and the loss of the two provinces of Alsace and Lorraine being firmly planted in the minds of French schoolchildren, the Germans teaching of their traditional role as a bulwark against the Slavs, and so on.” By instilling this national identity into the hearts and minds of the masses, it is clear that nationalism (and patriotism) rose within the major powers.

Intense rivalries among the major powers also contributed to the rise of nationalism in the pre-war era. As nationalism began to gain ground, people across Europe “began increasingly to identify themselves as French, German, or Italian, whereas they might once have thought of themselves as Burgundians, Hanoverians or Tuscans...” according to author Gerald J. De Groot in his book, The First World War. This in turn, gave rise to the rivalry that dominated the major powers. This nationalism made the people of the nation share in its victories and defeats as a nation. After the Franco-Prussian War, the Germans felt a huge sense of pride at their accomplishments. Likewise, the French were humiliated in their defeat and sought revenge for the taking of Alsace and Lorraine. De Groot also points out that “Britons and Germans cheered from the sidelines as their respective countries raced to outdo each other in warship construction.” By identifying oneself with their respective country, the sense of a shared community and unity grew, leading to a sense of one's own nationalism. One's nationalism only became more prominent when compared to another country's nationalism. This contributed to the rivalry between the major powers and helped create tensions that eventually developed into the First World War.

Propaganda also played a large role in the rise of nationalism within the major powers in the pre-war era, as several historians have pointed out. The major powers realized that they could use nationalism to their advantage by creating a “citizen army” or mandatory military service. In order to gain support for the new military, the civilians would be controlled through the use of propaganda and information censorship. Through this use of propaganda, people of the different nations would feed, clothe, arm soldiers, and pay for the oncoming war through taxes. Nationalistic propaganda also helped keep the soldiers fighting once war had broken out by instilling a sense of bravery within the soldiers and dehumanizing their enemies. Throughout history, propaganda has been extremely influential in its control over peoples thoughts. By creating propaganda that supported the military and one's own country over another helped develop nationalism even further. By dehumanizing the enemy through propaganda also helped create a deeper sense of nationalism because the people were made to believe that they were more superior in all aspects than their counterparts (clearly, this is related to Social Darwinism).

The imperialistic aims of the major European powers also contributed to the rise of nationalism. Although competitive capitalism is also a contributor to imperialism, and thus a cause to the war, a more significant factor of imperialism was nationalism. All of the major powers in Europe sought to expand their empire and influence, around the globe. On the eve of the First World War, Great Britain had secured a large empire encompassing parts of Africa and Asia, as had the French. The Russians and the Austro-Hungarians had both secured large continental empires within Europe itself. As Beckett writes, “European nationalism as a whole was also intimately connect with imperial expansion in the last two decades of the nineteenth century as the powers rushed to partition Africa and to divide the decaying Manchu Empire in China into exclusive spheres of influence.” without this sense of nationalism, many of the great powers would not have rushed to expand their empire. The quest for expansion of empires abroad led to disagreements between the powers, as is the case in the first and second Moroccan Crises. These disagreements led to deep rifts between the major powers and set the stage for more dramatic disputes with the onset of the Great War. Perhaps without this deep sense of nationalism and pride, the expansion of imperialism might not have occurred.

Nationalism also came in the form of independence movements within the vast multi-ethnic empires that made up parts of Eastern Europe. One can clearly see the cause of Serbian nationalism playing a direct role in the commencement of the First World War. Although it was a Serbian nationalist, Princep, acting on behalf of the Serbian nationalist group The Black Hands that assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the assassination is not fully understood without first taking into consideration the role of nationalism, especially within the Balkans.

Nationalism played a large role in the Balkans, and in particular in Serbia, before the war. Serbia was an independent nation after its complete separation from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. That same year, through the Congress of Berlin, Austria-Hungary was allowed to occupy Bosnia-Herzegovina which comprised a large Serb majority. This occupation upset the independent Serbs because the area was legally still part of the Ottoman Empire and contained a large ethnic Serb population. Serbia sought to bring together the ethnic Serbs in other areas in order to create a larger unified Serbia. Later in 1908, outraged by Austria-Hungary annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia began to increase its efforts to create a larger Serbia and created several nationalistic societies, The Black Hands among them.

Other nations within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the declining Ottoman Empire sought independence and a land of their own as well. As De Groot points out, “Nationalism was strongest where the nation was least well-established. Thus, it was most keenly felt in those regions where groups of people found themselves within a state that did not reflect their ethnic identities. They did not have the benefit of a bona fide nation to express their nationalism.” Subjugated people were most likely the most nationalistic in all of Europe. This is perhaps why there were increasing amounts of nationalistic groups that sprang into action, like those similar to The Black Hands, that began to fight for independence. These nationalistic fights of small ethnic groups within major European empires was a direct cause of the First World War.

Nationalism played a direct role in almost all the countries of Europe leading up to the First World War. This is why nationalism is so important in understanding the outbreak of the war. While competitive capitalism was also a cause for the war, it was not as wide-spread across the continent of Europe, and therefore only a minor cause of the war. The cause of competitive capitalism involved some of the major powers, such as Germany, Great Britain, and France, but does not include many of the minor powers. It is true that Germany had been economic rivals with Great Britain and France. Shortly before the start of the war, Germany had industrialized quickly and became a rival to Great Britain, both economically and industrially. This quickly led to an arms race between the two nations and competition around the globe for trade posts. Germany was also economically competitive with France before the war. With the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, France lost her coal producing areas, and had to begin to import coal from other regions. Morocco, which the French held claim on, was rich in the mineral resources that France needed. Tensions only increased more between the two countries when Germany tried to take over the Moroccan area from France. Both of these examples point out that there were economic tensions between the major powers in Europe. These tensions did contribute to the beginning of the war, however, because these conflicts did not involve the majority of the countries in Europe, competitive capitalism is a minor cause of the war.

Nationalism on the other hand involved the majority of the countries within the European continent. Through the use of education, rivalries, propaganda, imperialism, and moves for independence, countries within Europe developed extreme nationalism for their respective ares of residence. This intense sense of pride and patriotism for one's own country led to the rise of nationalism and played a direct part in the cause of the First World War. Without nationalism, the war might not have been so deeply divided and intense through its duration.

The Real Life of Helen Keller

Most children are taught in elementary school about the “wonder-child” that was Helen Keller. Students can dictate facts about Helen Keller overcoming her disabilities of being blind and deaf with the help of her teacher Anne Sullivan. But what became of Helen Keller’s life after this event? What most people do not know is that Helen Keller graduated college, became a human rights activist, and fought for most of her life to be heard, although she has been “made mute by history.”¹ In her adult life she strove to make social changes, and yet has been immortalized only as the deaf-blind child who overcame her disabilities. This paper will look into Helen Keller’s adult life that has been much ignored and overlooked by society, and why exactly that is.

Let us first begin with some background history of Helen Keller. Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in rural Tuscumbia, Alabama. Helen was born a normal, healthy baby girl with no disabilities. It was not until the age of eighteen months that Helen developed her disabilities. As seems to be the case, Helen became stricken with a severe, mysterious illness (perhaps Scarlet Fever) that eventually left her deaf and blind. The illness was over just as soon as it had come, forever changing young Helen’s life. Born into a bright, colorful world of wonder Helen was left alone in the dark silence that was now her life.

Helen began to act out as she grew older. She was deemed uncontrollable by her parents who were considering taking her to a mental institution because they did not know how to handle such a child. It was not until Helen’s mother remembered reading a piece by Charles Dickens about his meeting with a deaf-blind girl named Laura Bridgman, that things began to change. It was from this article that the Kellers learned about the manual alphabet, and began to implore the help of doctors. The searching led the family to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. Bell was a teacher for the deaf, and had invented the telephone with hopes that it might serve as a hearing aid to his students.² Bell led the Keller family to Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind in Boston.³ Perkins Institution was where Laura Bridgman, under the help of a Dr. Howe, learned to communicate with the outside world.

It is through the communication with Michael Anagnos that Helen Keller’s life was transformed. Through Anagnos, a twenty five year old half-blind teacher named Anne Sullivan came to befriend young Helen. Through violent tantrums, Anne persevered through the darkness to reach Helen.

The scene at the water pump is deemed the “miracle” in young Helen’s life. Although “miracle” may not be the appropriate word here, “breakthrough” is. It is at this water pump that Anne Sullivan is first able to communicate with young Helen through the use of the manual alphabet.

From that point on, Helen’s life was dramatically changed forever. Helen was now well-behaved. She obeyed her teacher, and was ready to learn. And learn she did. It is said that Helen learned language and communication in as little as six weeks. The amount of information that she learned in six weeks had taken Laura Bridgman three years to conquer.⁴ Helen was only seven years old.

Media soon picked up on the “miracle-child” Helen Keller. A few years later at the age of twelve, Helen wrote an article for the magazine Youth’s Companion entitled “My Life.”⁵ Ten years later, in 1902, “My Life” was revised and expanded into “The Story of My Life,” which appeared in six consecutive issues of Ladies’ Home Journal. Eventually “The Story of My Life” was made into a book, published in 1903, while Helen was attending Radcliffe College. Keller dreamed of one day writing about social injustices and her political views. By writing for Ladies’ Home Journal, she hoped to accomplish this. However, from editors and readers alike, Helen soon learned that no one was interested in hearing about her thoughts on political issues. The public merely wanted to know about her education, and how she overcame her disabilities. And so to “pay the bills,” Helen, along with the help of her teacher and constant companion Anne Sullivan, obliged the public for the time being.

In 1900, Helen was admitted into Radcliffe College. The people at Radcliffe were hesitant to admit Helen at first because she was the first deaf-blind person to be admitted into college. The administrators asked Helen to focus for a year on writing and speech before entering Radcliffe. Adamant about attending this school, Helen obliged. Helen had also been accepted into Cornell University and the University of Chicago. She insisted, however, in attending Radcliffe partly because, she later wrote, that “they didn’t want me.”⁶ While at college, Helen and Anne worked together and studied hard. Helen continued to write and work on stories about her life and education. In 1904, she graduated from Radcliffe with honors. Upon graduation, author Leslie Garrett writes, “She was now the most well-educated deaf-blind person in the world.”⁷

Most books written about Helen Keller state that after obtaining her college degree of Bachelor of Arts from Radcliffe College, Helen went on to give lectures around the country, worked hard as an advocate for the blind, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Johnson shortly before her death. While all of this is true, it transforms Helen Keller into something that she was not: passive. In her book Midstream: My Later Life, Helen Keller wrote, “I resolved that whatever role I did play in life it would not be a passive one.”⁸ Helen Keller’s life was anything but passive. Children’s books such as Helen Keller and A Picture Book of Helen Keller, both by David A. Adler, confine Helen to a wonder-child who never grew up. The problem with this, besides that it is an inaccurate view of Keller’s life, is that it restricts Helen to only being a young girl who overcame her disabilities. While we learn an important lesson of overcoming adversity presented to us, such as that of young Helen, we do not learn anything else about her life. There is so much to learn from the adult Helen, the person that fought for women’s rights and against social injustice to make the United States a better place for people of all ways of life to live in.

After college, Helen began what her life work was to become: striving for social changes to help the blind. She quickly learned that most blindness was caused by poverty; poor living conditions, lack of nutrition, and no access to medical care all contributed to people becoming blind.⁹ In 1907 Helen wrote a groundbreaking article for Ladies’ Home Journal “that talked about ophthalmia neonatorum, an infection that mothers with syphilis…passed to their infants, causing blindness.”¹⁰ Infected women were likely to pass the bacteria to the infants during childbirth. The bacteria would most likely spread to the eyes of the infants infected and cause blindness. Helen began to rally forces to convince the medical establishment to treat children’s eyes at birth with a cleansing solution of silver nitrate as a regular procedure.¹¹ Preventing the infection was simple and cheap, yet it was not required by the law to do so, so it was not commonly offered. This angered Helen very much. “She felt that mothers needed to demand this treatment for their babies. Blindness caused by this lack of treatment could be – and should be – wiped out.”¹² This article for the Ladies’ Home Journal indicated a beginning of the controversial woman that Helen Keller became in the early twentieth century.

The next year, Helen wrote another book entitled The World I Live In. This book was a collection of essays that described how Helen used her keen sense of smell and touch through vibrations to balance the loss of her sight and hearing. It was greatly praised by reviewers and the public. Once again, Helen had obliged to write about what the masses wanted to know: herself. She later wrote, “I found myself utterly confined to one subject—myself, and it was not long before I exhausted it.”¹³ It was not long until Helen started to write about things that she truly cared about.

In 1909, Helen made news again: she became a member of the Socialist Party. John Macy, her editor and future husband of Anne Sullivan, was a socialist as well, and had a great influence on Helen and her political views. Helen would love to sit and listen to him relate his ideals to her, many of which mirrored that of her own. “To Helen, socialism was about equality, peace, and education for all. … [Her politics] pointed to her instinctive urge to champion the cause of anyone in need of help: the poor, the oppressed, the uneducated.”¹⁴ In an interview written by Barbara Bindley for the New York Tribune in 1916, Helen explained her reason for becoming a socialist by stating,

It is my nature to fight as soon as I see wrongs to be made right. So after I read Wells and Marx and learned what I did, I joined a Socialist branch. I made up my mind to do something. And the best thing seemed to join a fighting party and help their propaganda.¹⁵

Understanding that Helen Keller was a socialist is the first step in understanding why she is such a divisive character in history. Her political views were the very essence of what molded her into who she was as an adult. In an article for the New York Call, she once wrote, “…I love the red flag and what it symbolizes to me and other Socialists.”¹⁶ By examining the time period in which she lived in, one can clearly see that being a socialist in the pre-World War One era was in itself controversial. Although socialism was gaining ground in the first two decades of the twentieth century, upon the United Stated entering the First World War, socialism and all activities of the like were condemned. As Fred Pelka, author of “Helen Keller & the FBI” writes,

…She came of age in an America where racial segregation was law, unions were violently suppressed, birth control was illegal and the idea of women as voters (let alone politicians) was dismissed as laughably absurd. Keller publicly took a position on all these issues, and was vehemently criticized for doing so.¹⁷

As we will see later, Helen spoke out against many different social injustices during her dynamic life. Knowing that Helen Keller was a socialist is the beginning of understanding who she was and why she is and should be an important figure in history.

Helen was very strong in her political beliefs throughout her entire life. She never backed down when presented with a challenge or criticized publicly for her ideas. She stood up for what she believed in no matter the cost. She demonstrated this strength in convictions “when multimillionaire Andrew Carnegie offered Helen five thousand dollars a year through a plan that supported outstanding Americans, she declined.”¹⁸ Money was scarce from not being able to work, and not having many opportunities to publish her writings. However, despite the tight finances, Helen could not take money from a famous Capitalist who made his fortune from producing steel and profiting off the labor of his workers. It was everything that Helen was against. She and Anne knew that there were other ways to earn money, and they would find out just exactly what that was. (Unfortunately, due to a financial crisis of her own, in 1914 Helen was forced to accept Mr. Carnegie’s offer and he became a benefactor for Helen for the rest of her life. She needed the financial assistance and was not too proud to admit that fact and ask for help.)

When Helen became a socialist in 1909, she became a “national voice for socialism and working class solidarity.”¹⁹ Being a Socialist, Helen was a staunch rival of capitalism, as demonstrated by not accepting Andrew Carnegie’s offer of financial help. She is credited to have written, “I am the determined foe of the capitalist system, which denies the workers the rights of human beings. I consider it fundamentally wrong, radically unjust and cruel.”²⁰ She worked hard against President Wilson’s hypocritical war machine and gave full support to different worker unions. “She supported radical unions like the Industrial Workers of the World, becoming a Wobbly herself.”²¹ Her support of workers unions was a great passion for Helen, as she felt connected with the worker on “how the country’s least powerful people were being treated.”²²

Helen Keller also worked hard for Women’s rights and became a suffragist. In 1912, Helen became one of the first people to speak out in favor of birth control and the work of Margaret Sanger.²³ In an article entitled “Why Men Need Women Suffrage” published in the New York Call in May 1913, Keller wrote,

Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim to them. Men spent hundreds of years and did much hard fighting to get the rights they now call divine, immutable and inalienable. Today women are demanding rights that tomorrow nobody will be foolhardy enough to question.²⁴

As one can see, Helen Keller was ahead of her time. She knew that women would gain the right to vote. She had no doubt in her mind. She knew that later on in her life she would eventually see women gain the right to vote, and she was correct. With the addition of the Nineteenth Amendment into the United States Constitution, women gained the right to vote.

Reiterating her point in the same article, Keller wrote,

When women vote men will no longer be compelled to guess at their desires--and guess wrong. Women will be able to protect themselves from man-made laws that are antagonistic to their interests. Some persons like to imagine that man's chivalrous nature will constrain him to act humanely toward woman and protect her rights. Some men do protect some women. We demand that all women have the right to protect themselves and relieve man of this feudal responsibility.²⁵

One can clearly see through this quote from Helen Keller that she was a dynamic woman who stood up for what she believed in, whether it was a popular belief or not.

Helen’s next book, Out of the Dark, was published in 1913. Helen believed at the time that she could no longer obliged the public by simply writing stories about her life and education as she had done in previous years. Out of the Dark was a collection of essays in which Helen examined and explained her socialist political views to the reader. As one might expect, although certainly not Helen or Anne, the book was a failure. Once again, Helen was reminded that the public did not want to read about her political views. “Most [people] wanted her to be…the saintlike handicapped woman who accepted her fate with a gentle smile on her face.”²⁶ Perhaps because Helen had portrayed that image for so much of her life, the public just could not accept the fact that she was not that person any longer. As she continued to “fight openly for her causes, she suffered criticism and even disdain. She couldn’t possibly know politics, some newspapers claimed, because of her handicaps.”²⁷ Despite all the setbacks and condemnation of her, Helen continued to fight for the causes that she believed in, including the suffragist movement, and worker unions.

In an effort to earn an income and help John and Anne (Sullivan) Macy, whom Helen permanently lived with and were her constant companions, Helen and Anne embarked on a lecture tour around the continental United States. In order to help with the lecture, Helen began perfecting her speech. Interestingly, “Helen Keller never learned the sign language of the North American Deaf Community.”²⁸ Instead of learning the language of the Deaf, Helen had sentences “manually spelled into her hand and then vocalized her responses.”²⁹ The lecture tour demonstrated this, along with other aspects of Helen’s education including lip-reading. Helen had almost perfected this trait by reading lips through the vibration the voice produced. “By placing the middle finger on the speaker’s nose, her forefinger on the lips, and her thumb on the larynx, she could “hear” what people were saying.”³⁰

The lecture tour was a great success. Thousands of people came out to hear Helen speak and learn about the “miracle” that was Helen Keller. After the first lecture, Helen had broken down in tears of humiliation only to realize that the vibrations that she felt on the floor were not people leaving but was the thunderous applause from the audience.³¹ Long time friend Alexander Graham Bell had been there to introduce Helen to the stage before the lecture. Congratulating her afterward he said, “You have learned to speak, and I believe you are meant to break down the barriers which separate the deaf from mankind.”³² Helen, Anne, and later Polly Thompson, then secretary and later Helen’s companion after Anne’s death, traveled the country on the lecture tour for nearly two years.

Despite being extremely busy traveling the country giving lecture after lecture to full houses, Helen still found time to support organizations that she cared deeply about. In 1918, Helen helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. This union was set up to help fight for the freedom of speech. Helen was also a large supporter for civil rights organizations such as the NAACP. “W.E.B. DuBois printed news of her financial donations and the text of her letter of support in the organization’s publication.”³³ In her letter of support for the NAACP, Keller wrote,

Ashamed in my very soul, I behold in my beloved south-land the tears of those oppressed, those who must bring up their sons and daughters in bondage to be servants, because others have their fields and vineyards, and on the side of the oppressor is power.³⁴

It can be said that Helen Keller was probably one of the most devoted people of her time. She cared deeply about her fellow people living in despair, and tried her hardest to make an effort to help invoke change for them. This can be clearly seen through her support of these different organizations.

With the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, the United States entered World War One in 1917. Helen was enraged that the country was going to war. She wished for the neutrality that the country had promised earlier. Upon the United States entering the war, suddenly socialism was now looked on in a different light. “Helen’s socialist views were not only daring, they were considered dangerous. The government clamped down on anyone and anything that didn’t agree with its own pro-war stand.”³⁵ With the war effort on full bloom, the cost of living soon began to rise in effect. Now that their lecture tour was over, largely due in part to the failing health of Anne Sullivan-Macy, Helen had to now come up with another source of income.

It was then, in 1918, that Hollywood came knocking on Helen’s door. Films were gaining ground during this time, and Helen could not decline the promise of a large paycheck (Helen had been told that she might earn a salary between $50,000 and $100,000 if she agreed to make the film³⁶) and the chance to tell her story in a new light: on screen. Helen was excited about the release, despite the conflicts that had arisen on-set about the accuracy of the film. The film, entitled Deliverance, was a silent film that featured Helen, her mother Kate and younger brother Phillips, and even an appearance by the famous actor Charlie Chaplin. However, at the premier of the film Helen was torn between standing up for what she believed in, and giving support to the industry that had helped her get on-screen. Being the radical person that she was, “Helen supported the Actors Equity Union’s strike by refusing to cross the picket line to attend the opening – and joining a protest march with the striking actors.”³⁷ Helen so deeply cared about her fellow workers that she refused to attend the premier of her own movie just to show her support. That is true devotion and dedication to a cause! The film, launched with a huge publicity campaign, did horribly in the box office and turned out to be a financial disaster. Helen and Anne received little from their hard work during the filming, and once again were on the prowl, hunting for jobs.

With their finances close to ruins, despite the financial help of Andrew Carnegie, (apparently, Helen and Anne loved to splurge. States author Leslie Garrett: “When they had money, they spent it.”³⁸) Helen decided to create a vaudeville act in 1920 in order to have an income and be able to financially take care of Anne whose health and marriage were slowly deteriorating. “Vaudeville was America’s first form of mass entertainment, featuring live stage shows by a variety of performers.”³⁹ The performers included acrobats, dancers, singers, and comedians. Although Anne was completely against this idea, believing that vaudeville was, as commonly thought, vulgar. Realizing that they needed the money, Anne agreed and she and Helen worked on a twenty-minute act pared-down from their lecture performance. They spoke on how Anne came to know Helen, and how Helen came to learn that everything had a name (the “Miracle at the water pump” discussed earlier).⁴⁰ The twenty minute act, performed twice daily, earned them two thousand dollars a week. The pair continued to travel on the vaudeville circuit for two years until it became apparent that they had completely exhausted their telling story to the point where everyone knew their story, and no longer came to the show.

In 1923, Helen began the work that would become her main focus for the rest of her life: campaigning for the American Foundation for the Blind. Garrett writes,

The AFB worked to help other agencies that worked for the blind. It undertook national and international projects such as developing a single Braille code to be used nationwide, increasing the number of books available in Braille, and finding jobs for the blind.⁴¹

With the promise of a monthly salary of two thousand dollars, Helen, Anne, and Polly began another national tour to raise a goal of two million dollars for the foundation.⁴² The foundation soon realized that Helen Keller’s name had power. She soon began addressing politicians and lawmakers to assist the AFB. The women were to keep an arduous traveling schedule. “From 1924 until 1927, Helen traveled coast to coast and addressed 250,000 people at 249 meetings in 123 cities.”⁴³

With the American Foundation for the Blind employing Helen to fundraise, she had to agree to not indulge her radical political ideas into her fundraising talks. In a private letter to Robert La Follette, a third party candidate running for presidency in 1924, Helen wrote,

So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me ‘archpriestess of the sightless,’ ‘wonder woman,’ and ‘a modern miracle,’ but when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics—that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world—that is a different matter!⁴⁴

Clearly, her strong political views are something that stayed with Helen for all of her life. In spite of her frustration with not being able to speak out in favor of her political ideas, Helen kept her promise to the AFB and did not speak of her political beliefs for the next twenty years until 1944 when she gave support of a fourth term for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Even if the Foundation’s concerns about Helen’s political views deterring people from making donations was valid, was it correct of the AFB in putting restrictions on Helen? As Nielsen points out, “Her detractors and political opponents succeeded in doing what her blindness and deafness had not. They robbed her of her political voice, denying her the full expression of citizenship.”⁴⁵ Regardless of the restrictions placed upon her, Helen did more to raise public understanding and awareness about the blind than anyone had previously done.

In the years following her fundraising campaign, Helen took off a few years to concentrate on her writing once again. In 1927 she published My Religion, which detailed her religious beliefs, and later in 1929, the second installment of her autobiography, Midstream: My Later Life was published.

Helen and Polly then began touring not only the country, but the world, to continue to raise awareness and donations for the AFB. (Anne was too ill-stricken to make the difficult journeys.) In 1929, Helen was able to lobby for the Congress to designate $75,000 to help support the blind. “This was the first time that the United States government had ever funded programs for the blind.”⁴⁶ Helen became an international spokesperson for AFB, traveling to different countries such as the former Yugoslavia and Japan. A huge success for Helen came in 1935 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into action the Social Security Act which “offered unemployment insurance, retirement funds, and assistance for children and the disabled. …The blind were included in the category of ‘disabled,’ which meant they could apply for financial help.”⁴⁷

With the death of long time companion and friend, Anne Sullivan in 1936, Helen and Polly devoted all of their attention on fundraising. They spent a great deal of time overseas campaigning and vacationing while dealing with the loss of their dear friend.

The United States entering the Second World War brought Helen into a new stage in her life. The war had created a plethora of wounded soldiers who, Helen believed, needed her help in overcoming their newly created disabilities. She and the AFB began organizing visits to the wounded soldiers. Helen later wrote that her visits were “the crowning experience of my life.”⁴⁸

For the rest of Helen Keller’s life, she toured the world campaigning for the American Foundation for the Blind. A documentary film about Helen’s life was released in 1954 entitled Helen Keller in Her Story. The film received an Academy Award in 1955 for best feature-length documentary film. In 1959 The Miracle Worker opened on Broadway to great reviews. The play “tells the story of young Helen when Annie Sullivan first arrived.”⁴⁹ The play went on to become a film, and earned Academy Awards for both the actors who played Helen and Anne.

In 1961, after suffering from minor strokes and developing diabetes, Helen retired from her work with AFB. In 1964, President Johnson awarded Helen with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the nation’s highest civilian honor, for all of her hard work throughout her entire life. Four years later, after suffering a severe heart attack, Helen died peacefully in her sleep on June 1, 1968.

Helen Keller was a truly one-of-a-kind person. Not only did her disabilities set her apart from her peers, but her spirit and devotion did as well. She had a true desire to help people and bring about a social change. This can be seen many times over in her lifetime. “She believed that she was able to overcome many of the difficulties in her life because of her class privilege – a privilege not shared by most of her blind or deaf contemporaries.”⁵⁰ She knew that she was a famous icon within American society and used it to her advantage to help promote justice.

This was evident in her adult life, as well as in her childhood. When Helen was around the age of ten, she learned of a boy, Tommy Stringer, who was stricken with the same, yet worse conditions as herself. Tommy, who came from a poor family in Pittsburgh, was unable to receive much help with his disabilities because of his family’s poor social and economic status. Upon learning about his situation, Helen began to raise money so that Tommy could attend the Perkins Institution in Boston and begin receiving help. The money raised equaled around two thousand dollars and paid for two years’ full tuition for Tommy Stringer to attend Perkins Institution.⁵¹ Helen’s devotion began early in life, and stayed with her until the very end.

I believe that Helen’s downfall and the reason that perhaps she has been overlooked by contemporaries is because of her socialist ties. I suppose that is one reason why her legacy has, in recent decades since her death, been swept under the rug and ignored by history. However, Helen Keller is not one to be overlooked. She led a dynamic life that she believed was far more important than her interesting beginning. She was not the immortal, wonder-child that people made her out to be. She was a controversial figure of her time. Even though she was a socialist and spoke out against the “American Way” in order to help the down-trodden, this is not a reason to overlook all the important accomplishments that she made throughout her life.

Helen demonstrated this devotion to help the under-privileged throughout her entire life, in every aspect of it. She is the embodiment of what everyone wants, or should want, to be: a person striving for a more just world. I believe that she is unique in the fact that she allowed her beliefs to become who she was. All too often people today will believe and fight for one cause and when their goal is either attained or abandoned, they go back to their regular lives. Not Helen Keller. These issues, these causes that she fought so hard for, were her life. They were everything she was about; without them Helen Keller would not have been the important figure that she is. When one goal in the fight against injustice was achieved, she would move onto another cause, focusing all of her attention on that one issue. She never gave up throughout her entire life. She continued to support unions, women’s and civil rights throughout her entire life all the while working hard for the AFB. She did not give up even when she was going against the grain, when she was shunned by the public for her views, and when she began to lose her publishing rights because she was so radical. She believed that in order to make change, one must first think. “People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions; and conclusions are not always pleasant. They are a thorn in the spirit. But I consider it a priceless gift and a deep responsibility to think.”⁵² Without thinking, nothing in life will ever change. Helen was willing to think and reach conclusions that were not agreeable in order to invoke a change in the world that she lived in, in order to help everyone. Loewen writes, “Keller…never wavered in her belief that our society needed radical change.”⁵³ Helen Keller displayed this throughout her entire life. This is the real reason why Keller should be remembered in history. Not because she “overcame” her disabilities, but because she strove for a better, more just society, in which everyone could be free.

1 James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 20.

2 Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, with a foreword by Roger Shattuck with Dorothy Herrmann (New York: Doubleday, 1903; reprint, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003), x, (page citation is to the reprint edition).

3 Ibid., x.

4 Ibid., xiv.

5 Ibid., xv.

6 Leslie Garrett, Helen Keller (London: DK Publishing, Inc., 2004), 85.

7 Garrett, 90.

8 Helen Keller, Midstream: My Later Life (New York: Crowell Publishing Company, 1929; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1968).

9 Garrett, 94.

10 Garrett, 95.

11 Lois P. Nicholson, Helen Keller: Humanitarian, (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1996), 71.

12 Garrett, 95.

13 Nicholson, 70.

14 Garrett, 94.

15 New York Tribune (New York), 16 January 1916.

16 New York Call (New York), 3 November 1912.

17 Fred Pelka, “Helen Keller & the FBI,” Ragged Edge 5 (Sept 2001): 1.

18 Garrett, 95.

19“The Socialist Legacy of Helen Keller: An Introduction to the Writings of Helen Keller,” Helen Keller Reference Archive, (2000) 1.

20 Outlook, 27 September 1913, vol. 105. Available at Kim E. Nielson, ed., Helen Keller: Selected Writings (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 55.

21 Ruth Hubbard, “The Truth About Helen Keller: Children’s Book About Helen Keller Distort Her Life,” Rethinking Schools Online (Fall 2002): 4.

22 Garrett, 97.

23 Hubbard, 4.

24 New York Call (New York), 17 October 1913. Available at <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/13_10_17.htm>.

25 New York Call (New York), 17 October 1913. Available at <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/13_10_17.htm>.

26 Garrett, 97.

27 Garrett, 97-98.

28 The Socialist Legacy of Helen Keller: An Introduction to the Writings of Helen Keller,” Helen Keller Reference Archive, (2000) 2.

29 The Socialist Legacy of Helen Keller: An Introduction to the Writings of Helen Keller,” Helen Keller Reference Archive, (2000) 2.

30 Nicholson, 72.

31 Nicholson, 74.

32 Nicholson, 74.

33 Hubbard, 4.

34 Hubbard, 4.

35 Garrett, 103.

36 Nicholson, 84.

37 Hubbard, 4.

38 Garrett, 107.

39 Garrett, 105.

40 Joan Dash, The World At Her Fingertips: The Story of Helen Keller, (New York: Scholastic, 2001), 168-175.

41 Garrett, 108.

42 Laurie Lawlor, Helen Keller: Rebellious Spirit, (New York: Holiday House, 2001), 140.

43 Lawlor, 140.

44 Helen Keller, to Robert La Follette, 27 July 1924, Kim Nielsen, ed., Helen Keller: Selected Writings (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 70.

45 Nielsen, 70.

46 Garrett, 110.

47 Garrett, 114.

48 Dorothy Herrmann, Helen Keller: A Life, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999), 289.

49 Garrett, 120.

50 Hubbard, 1.

51 Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, xiii-xiv.

52 Justice (Pittsburgh, PA), 25 October 1913. Available at <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/13_10_25.htm>.

53 Loewen, 22.