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How to Make Wars Acceptable
Author(s) -
Moerk Ernest L.,
Pincus Faith
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
peace and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1468-0130
pISSN - 0149-0508
DOI - 10.1111/0149-0508.00139
Subject(s) - belligerent , enthusiasm , spanish civil war , law , state (computer science) , declaration , mythology , conformity , political science , certainty , sociology , history , psychology , epistemology , philosophy , social psychology , classics , algorithm , politics , computer science
Qualitative analyses are presented of war‐declaration speeches, announcing the out‐break of World War I and World War II, given by the leaders of the major belligerent powers. Because extended war preparations and the staging of casus belli as justifications for war had made war a certainty, the artfully crafted speeches did more than declare war. Both defenders and attackers projected guilt, emphasized unity, produced a state of helpless conformity in citizens, and veiled expected suffering through euphemisms, indicating a broadly established vocabulary of motives. These similarities are contrasted with idiosyncratic features, conditioned by history or dynamics within states. In contrast to the defenders, the two attackers, Hitler and Mussolini, resorted extensively to mythology and mythologized history to arouse enthusiasm and, by implication, to promise great rewards.