Title: The Culture of Defeat
First published: 2003
Description: "History may be written by the victors, Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues in his new book, but the losers often have the final word. Focusing on three seminal cases of defeat - the South after the Civil War, France in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany following World War I - Schivelbusch reveals the complex psychological and cultural responses of vanquished nations to the experience of military defeat.".

"Drawing on reaction from every level of society, Schivelbusch investigates the sixty-year period in which the world moved from regional to global conflagration, and from gentlemanly conduct of war to total mutual destruction. He shows how conquered societies question the foundations of their identities and strive to emulate the victors: the South to become a "better North," the French to militarize their schools on the Prussian model, the Germans to adopt all things American.

He charts the losers' paradoxical equation of military failure with cultural superiority as they generate myths to glorify their pasts and explain their losses: the nostalgic "plantation legend" after the collapse of the Confederacy, the new cult of Joan of Arc in vanquished France, the fiction of the stab in the back by "foreign" elements in postwar Germany.

From cathartic epidemics of "dance-madness" to the revolutions that so often follow battlefield humiliation, Schivelbusch finds remarkable similarities across cultures."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: Modern Military history, World War, 1914-1918, Military history, Modern, Psychological aspects of Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871, Case studies, Defeat (Psychology), United States Civil War, 1861-1865, Psychological aspects, Social conditions, Psychological aspects of World War, 1914-1918, National characteristics, History, Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871, World war, 1914-1918, germany, War, psychological aspects, Military history, United states, history, civil war, 1861-1865, France, social conditions, Germany, social conditions, Southern states, social conditions, War
Places: 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War, France, Germany, Southern States, United States
Time periods: 1865-1945, 1918-1933, 19th century, Civil War, 1861-1865
LC classification: E468.9 .S3513 2003