Racism - A Short History - George M Fredrickson.pdf - WNLibrary

THREE Climax and Retreat
tural code” limiting the access of Jews to many realms of
German associational and professional life, even though
politicians were invoking it less often. 24 So long as Germany’s
ambition to be a dominant world power seemed on
the way to being fulfilled, there was no strong incentive
to make Jews scapegoats for national failure. But the basic
attitudes that would make Jews the most likely target of a
search for the inner sources of a German defeat and humiliation
were already in place.
World War I had a great impact on group relations in
all three of the countries that had developed or would develop
overtly racist regimes. A significant indirect result
was its bringing an end to the age of Western imperial
expansion that had provided a context for the legitimization
of racial Darwinism. W.E.B. Du Bois may have exaggerated
somewhat when he attributed the Great War primarily to
the rivalries created by the scramble for Africa. 25 But the
heavy cost of the conflict in life and treasure put a damper
on the pursuit of new possessions, at least until Italy invaded
Ethiopia in 1936. Germany’s African dependencies
were added to the colonial empires of England, France, and
the self-governing commonwealth of South Africa under
the League of Nations mandate system, which raised the
possibility of eventual self-government. Furthermore, the
Wilsonian slogan of “self-determination” helped to inspire
fledgling independence movements in many colonies. Actual
decolonization would not occur until after another
even more devastating world war, but by the 1920s Western
nations had already lost much of the will and capacity to
maintain extensive overseas empires.
114