| Over the Fence |
| June 15, 2011 |
| A JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY |
| Dennis Pearson - Editor |
| “In Mid march 1942, some seventy-five percent to eighty percent of the victims of the Holocaust were still alive, while twenty to twenty-five percent had perished. A mere eleven months later, in mid February 1943, the percentages were exactly reversed.” ******( Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101, pxv ) Like the National Guard in the United States, battalions in Nazi Germany were organized regionally. Most of the soldiers in Battalion 101 came from working and lower-middle-class neighborhoods in Hamburg, Germany. They were older than the men who fought in the front lines. The average age was thirty-nine with over half between thirty-seven and forty-two. Most were not well-educated. The majority had left school by the age of fifteen. Very few were Nazis and none was openly antisemitic. Major Wilhelm Trapp, a 53-year-old career police officer who rose through the ranks, headed the battalion. Although he became a Nazi in 1932, he was not a member of the SS, although his two captains were. ***** (From "One Day in Jozefow: Initiation to Mass Murder" in The Path To Genocide:Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland,” by Christopher R. Browning is the shocking account of how a unit of average age Germans became the cold-blooded murders of tens of thousands of Jews. During sixteen months, Reserve Police Battalion 101, a unit of just over 450 men from Hamburg, was responsible in Poland for the shooting of 38,000 Jews and the deportation to Treblinka of 45,000 more. The horror began on July 13, 1942, when the unit's commander, Major Wilhelm Trapp, ordered his men to round up 1,800 Jews from the village of Jozefow, to select several hundred as “work Jews,” and to shoot the rest – men, women and children. For Reserve Police Battalion 101 the hellish road to genocide began with its rounding up Polish Soldiers and military equipment behind German lines and guarding a Prisoner of War Camp. It continued with its assignment to repatriate and resettle Ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union. Then continued with an interlude in Hamburg in which the unit involved itself with various tasks related to the deportation of Hamburg Jews “to the east.” Battalion 101 was comprised of men without any experience of German Occupation methods when the twisted road to genocide advanced with the unit's redeployment to another tour of duty in Poland. Police Battalion 101 despite their immersion in a variety of racist and anti-Semitic propaganda was less likely to be Nazis, and less steeped in violence. In Poland, the path to genocide ensued toward the destruction of Jewry in the General Government. The objective of the Nazi Chain of Command was to seek a method that was “more efficient, less public,” and less an emotional burden on the killer But delays in extermination camp deportations forced reversion to an alternative method widely used in Russia in 1941, the mass execution through firing squad, which Battalion 101 was given the roles of trapper, executor and transporterOrdinary Men takes as its basis the detailed records of one Battalion from the Nazis’ Order Police and explores in detail its composition, its actions, and the methods by which it was trained to perform acts of genocide on a massive scale. Brutalization, belligerency, violent performance, and chronic violent behavior are four stages people go through when they commit violent acts. How were these Order Police transformed from ordinary people into active participants in the most monstrous, notorious crime in human history? How did mass murder and routine become one? For Reserve Police Battalion 101 it started at Jozefow, continued at Lomazy, Serokomla. Konskowola and other places. In pursuing the liquidation of the Jewish ghettos the Battalion started at Miedzyrzec, continued at Lukow, Parczew and additional locations, deporting in the progress a large number of people to the gas chambers at Treblinka. In the end the Battalion still had the job to “track down and systematically eliminate all those who had escaped the previous roundups inorder to make Northern Lublin Judenfrei.” (Browning) Its last massacre was the infamous harvest festival (Erntefest) massacre in the Lublin district, the single largest German killing operation against the Jews in the war. With a victim total of 43,000 Jews, Erntefest surpassed even the notorious Babi Yar massacre of more than 33,000 Jews outside Kiev. Only the Romanian massacres of more than 50,000 Odessan Jews in October 1941 exceeded what occurred in the Lublin District. Does Browning present credible evidence concerning how hard it was for these Order Police to pair off with a victim face to face? Yes, even Heinrich Himmler became concerned that this type of killing was difficult for his men, so he sought to refine the killing to shield his warriors from their victims. Was it any easier if the personal tie between victim and killer was severed? Yes, ghetto clearing and deportation operations relieved the policemen of the “immediate horror” of the genocide process. What role did habituation play? Having killed once, did the men involved experience greater or lesser trauma or pleasure over killing the second or third or each successive time? Yes, once the killing began inhibitions were lifted, and the euphoria of the killing process could have made additional killing easier for a number of the men. In the end, Browning maintains that the Reserve Policeman faced choices, “and most of them committed terrible deeds.” Only a portion of the policemen who had taken part in the first massacre at Jozefow were still with the battalion in November 1943, when its participation in the Final Solution ended. Should those who killed be absolved by the notion that anyone in the same situation would have done the same? Browning says no, for even among them, some refused to kill and others stopped killing. To quote Browning: “Statistically eighty to ninety percent of the men proceeded to kill, though almost all of them – at least initially – were horrified and disgusted by what they were doing. “ Clearly, Browning lets no one off the moral hook nor fails to weigh any contributing factor: cowardice, ideological indoctrination, loyalty to the battalion and reluctance to force the others to bear more than their share of what each believed to be an agonizing unpleasant collective obligation. Why did people shoot? Was it peer pressure? Browning argues that to “break ranks and step out, to adopt overly nonconformist behavior, was simply beyond most men.” Nevertheless, Browning has detractors who claim that peer pressure was not one of the factors that drove Germans to engage in atrocities. (Richard Rhodes) Nevertheless, as Browning claims, human responsibility must ultimately be an individual matter.” Which is as it should be for individuals who engage in violence and brutality against others chose to do so and are therefore responsible for their actions. Why did the Holocaust occur? Brown speculates that the Holocaust took place “because at the basic level individual human beings killed other human beings in large numbers over an extended period of time.” Truly, the work of Browning makes an outstanding contribution to the understanding of the Holocaust – a conundrum which may never be understand fully unless one was there and lived out the experience of bucolic comfort |
| When Frederick Jackson Turner lived (1861-1932), American history had been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. However, as it occurred, a thesis offered by Turner that the “existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward” while going a long way to explain American development and culture, also led to an school of historians which explored the great frontier of global settlement opened to Europe by the Age of exploration. To quote Turner: “Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has been forced upon them. He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves.” (Turner 1994, p.5) As stated by Frederick Jackson Turner: ”…. American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character.” (Turner 1994, 32) In the words of this observer, the original European settlers failed to recreate or duplicate the culture of their European homelands on the Atlantic seaboard.; and what emerged from the ashes of society’s failure to transplant society intact as it was as they moved westward was a new creation, which evolved even further at each advancing frontier line. In comparison, while European society was much more stratified, it representing a feudalistic society that showed huge respect for the privileged classes; American society on the other hand became more democratic for its ideas were imprinted by the settlers who came here. For most of its history, the United States has prided itself that the borders between itself and its neighbors, unlike Europe, have not been a fortified boundary line running through dense populations. In the words of Turner: “The most significant thing about the American frontier is, that it lies at the hither edge of free land. In the census reports it is treated as the margin of that settlement which has a density of two or more to the square mile.” To Turner the term was an “elastic one” and in his discussions he considered the whole frontier belt, including the Indian Territory and the outer margin of the “settled area” of the census reports. (Turner 1994, 33 Those of us who watched America’s initial steps off the Earth have a mental picture of what Turner’s statement in regard to density means. In watching the first television transmissions of Man’s first visit to the Moon of Earth, we have the image of two astronauts romping freely in the austere and plant less lunar frontier of the Sea of Tranquility. The unfortunate third man in the trio that left Cape Kennedy was left alone to see the Moon of Earth from the heights of continuous orbit. At that point the Moon had a density of two to less to the square mile. Eventually, ten other astronauts would also put their footprints at additional sites on the Moon of Earth but never did this advance guard of civilization, the trail blazers, have more then two individuals on the lunar frontier at one time; and not since the early 1970’s has there been a manned landing on the Moon. Although one highly motivated individual has allegedly acquired land rights under the 1967 UN Treaty for the Uses of Space and has begun to sell the so-called free land of the Moon in acre lots for $29.95 an acre. Turner declared in his first published essay: “Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.” (Turner 1994, 4) Having an interest in promoting a space faring society, this respondent has heard Dr. Robert Zubrin speak at a number of International Space Development Conferences. In his book The Case for Mars he has spoken how Turner presented “ a brilliant insight into the basis of American Society and the American character; and ponders this question for our time: “Today, a century later, we face the question that Turner himself posed – what if the frontier is truly gone? What happens to America and all it stood for? Can a free, egalitarian, innovating society survive in the absence of room to grow?” (Zubrin 1997, 295-296) Indeed, Zubrin concerned himself whether Turner’s argument in regard to the apparent closing of the American Frontier in 1890 was perhaps premature for his time. This, of course, was also a concern of John Mack Faragher in his essay “ A Nation Thrown back Upon Itself” which explored Turner’s views concerning the American Frontier. Faragher suggests that Turner’s argument has not held up well. In fact, Faragher points to the fact that far more public land in “the Trans-Mississippi West” was taken up in the years after 1890 than in the years before; and also cites the fact that while Western settlements continued to expand decades after the 1890’s there is also a curious reappearance of “frontier lines” in the census maps of 1900 and 1910 However, in our time Zubrin is bit unsettled about the loss of vigor in our society represented by the increasing fixity of the power structure and bureaucratization of all levels of life in addition to many more issues he presents. Of course, his answer is to promote the idea that humanity’s new frontier can only be found on Mars; and, in conjunction with his creation the Mars Society has created outposts in the deserts of America and the artic environment of Canada to simulate conditions that humans might find on Mars when they begin exploration there. (Zubrin 1997, 295-296) Turner declares: “ To the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristic. That coarseness of strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; the practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance that comes from freedom --- these are the traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier.” (Turner 1994, 59) The Broadway play Fiddler on the Roof raised the question of the importance of tradition in a community. Turner in his presentation drove home the following: “For a moment at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. There is no tabula rasa ((note - a word meaning nostalgia)). The stubborn American environment is there with its imperious summons to accept its conditions; the inherited ways of doing things are also there; and yet in spite of the environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed furnish a new opportunity. Agate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its restraints and its ideas,, and indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the frontier. (Turner 1994, 59 In today’s society the term safety belt implies societal protection for retirement, unemployment, and health care; the before mentioned issues as political safety valves very much the subject of debate between the political parties of this settler nation. Frederick Jackson Turner when he spoke of the frontier as a safety valve, also meant, in part a political safety valve. That is, those people who were troublemakers, who wanted to change society, who were frustrated they had lost their jobs or gone bankrupt – In Turner’s time they had the option to move on to the new frontier line to start over instead of trying to change things at home, make a revolution. Something that was more difficult to do in other societies. So clearly, the frontier in America was a place that helped release the pressure. The significance is, had there been no pressure release value our history would be different. And of course, it is our history that differentiates our experience from the other settler societies like Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The frontier significant because people could go there to relieve the pressures that built up in society and make a new beginning. Bibliography: Turner, Fredrick Jackson; commentary by J.M. Faragher. 1994. Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Zubrin, Robert; with Richard Wagner; forward by A.C. Clarke. 1997. The Case for Mars. New York: Touchtone |
| A CONUNDRUM WHICH MAY NEVER BE FULLY UNDERSTOOD : Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning BY DENNIS L. PEARSON |
| According to Frederick Jackson Turner, what exactly is the significance of the frontier in American History? A response by Dennis L. Pearson |
| Luttwak describes a “Grand Strategy” for the Roman frontier defensive system. Issac doubts this existed. How do they make their cases? Whose argument do you find more convincing? Why? A Response by Dennis L. Pearson |
| Was there a joined "grand strategy" for the defense of the Roman Empire, a strategy dictated from Rome? Did this strategy aim at defending and improving the security of the empire, and did it evolve through a series of consistent responses by emperors who took thoughtful account of the wide range of internal and external pressures upon their military establishment in the centuries between Augustus and Constantine? Edward Luttwak answered these questions affirmatively in his book, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century A.D. to the Third. Ben Isaac answered these questions negatively in his book ' The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East and thereby offering a formidable challenge to Luttwak. Luttwak argues: · That the Romans designed and built large and complex security systems that “successfully integrated troop deployments, fixed defenses, road networks, and signaling links” in a coherent whole;” · That the Romans understood all the “subtleties of deterrence, and also its limitations;” · And most important of all, the Romans clearly “realized the dominant dimension of power was not physical but psychological – the product of others’ perception of Roman Strength rather than the use of strength. 1) As used by Luttwak the term system integrates diplomacy, military forces, road networks and fortifications to serve a single set of objectives and additionally satisfy a distinct set of priorities, which also was reflective of the changing needs of the Empire. Luttwak divides these changing needs into three distinct chronological systems of imperial security starting at the First Century A.D. and continuing to the Third Century A.D. In Part one of his book Luttwak discusses the system under the early empire (or principate) from Augustus to Nero. Around its core areas the Empire was hegemonic in nature, with client states automatically responsible for implementing Roman “desiderata” by utilizing their own resources against the enemies of Rome, and through their obedience, for the territorial security of the core areas. Luttwak clearly praises this system for getting the most security at the lowest cost and resulting in the greatest psychological perception of Roman strength. No Roman troops were ordinarily deployed in the client states but the stability of the system required a constant diplomatic effort to ensure that everyone is continually aware of the totality of Roman power. Part Two deals with the system from Vespasian to Marcus Aurelius. Luttwak describes the system in this period as being fundamentally different from that of the first. This system reflects the changed nature of the Empire from a hegemonic power to a state power. The chief object was no longer to defend Rome and Italy, but to provide complete security for every province of the Empire. Client states remain, but they are must less useful as the task of maintaining territorial security is shifted from the relatively weak client states to the widely distributed frontier forces. Part Three is focused on the military (and general) crisis of the third century. In this section Luttwak looks at the cost of maintaining a defensive system in relation to the benefits of doing so. Ultimately, he argues, the Roman Empire had to collapse because the benefits the provinces associated with being a member of a larger state were not worth the cost. Roman diplomacy could no longer impede their enemies from finding common ground to fight together and the system of perimeter defense, keyed to low-intensity threats was ineffective to meet the new challenges. 2) Isaac bases his case upon the evidence from the Roman army's activities in Palestine, and he moves on from this material to generalize about the activity on the eastern frontier, and, thus, by implication, the empire as a whole. This argument is that there was no "grand strategy" of empire. Questions of war and peace were decided by the emperor, most often to heighten his own glory and to satisfy his soldiers, who would profit from foreign adventures. Consequently, preserving the peace and prosperity of the periphery contributed relatively little to either of these interests, in contrast to an even mildly successful war of expansion. This was the most important factor because, in Isaac's view, "there was no powerful officer class in Rome, no central army command." 3) Furthermore, he maintains that, "it is unlikely that most Roman frontier lines were determined by choice and by a conscious decision to halt indefinitely all further advance." 4) In his view, the Roman limes were not thought of as lines to cut off movements by outsiders, but rather to facilitate communication among Roman forces. When the Romans thought about expansion, they did not do so with the intention to acquire territory, but rather to control peoples, and they really knew very little about lands beyond their borders. 5) The grand strategy of the Roman army, insofar as it existed at all, was simply to control internal disorder and to be ready to conquer other peoples . Isaac's propositions are thought provoking, and I think that there is much merit to what he says. But I do not think that the evidence supports him at every point. Obviously, there was a good deal more central direction to Roman policy than Isaac cares to admit, and that there were some major changes of direction in Roman frontier policy that were thought out in a coherent way at Rome. When Tacitus noted that Augustus had written in his will that the empire should be contained within fixed boundaries he was noting an important change of policy that if carried out to the dotted T and I would have been very significant. Roman frontier policy plainly differed from place to place as the Romans responded to local conditions, but this does not mean that they had no coherent idea about what they were doing. The story of the birth of Jesus in the Gospels implies a well-established tax system in the Empire that indicates that emperors recognized the need for a coherent tax policy tied to expenditures. That the system did not always work out either through political pressures or imperial insanity does not mean there was a lack of a plan. It is fair to say that, despite its ultimate failure in the third century, the Roman system served the empire better than did the systems of taxation in many early modern European states. The same can be said for the emperors' handling of their foreign affairs. A veneer of inconsistency does not mean that the emperors (or most of them) did not deploy the army in terms of some more coherent policies than Isaac suggests. Indeed, the elusive goal of strategic statecraft is to provide security for any society or civilization without prejudicing the vitality of the economic base and without compromising the stability of an evolving political order.6) But the question here is whether in Roman society this was achieved by an ad hoc basis (Issac) or a planned basis (Luttwak). Nevertheless, considering the weight of the evidence given, I find Isaac’s arguments more convincing. The assumption being made that any important evidence contained in the total volume of the readings assigned were not deliberately edited by lack of inclusion in the portions of those readings assigned; that Isaac’s assumptions derived mostly from one rebellious province of the Empire were not seriously flawed. Isaac’s arguments a recognition that Roman Emperors and Roman Generals often reacted to events then occurring for personal gain rather then staying the course. This is not to say that in Rome’ s bureaucratic society, that political precedent was not important. 1) Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century A.D. to the Third (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1976) 3. 2) Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century A.D. to the Third (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1976) 4 – 5. 3) Benjamin Issac, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army to the East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 383. 4) Benjamin Issac, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army to the East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 387-388. 5) Benjamin Issac, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army to the East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 394-395. 6) Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman First Century A. D. to the Third (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1976) 1. O |
| Ivo Andric’s novel The Bridge on the Drina is a “frontier” novel? A Response by Dennis L. Pearson |
| According to Leonard Thompson and Howard Lamar a frontier should not be deemed solely as a boundary or line, but as a territory or zone of interpenetration between two previous distinct societies. One of these societies is usually indigenous to the region or at least has occupied the region for generations and the other is intrusive. The frontier opens in a given zone when the first representatives of the intrusive society arrive and closes when a single political authority has established hegemony over the zone. The possible scenarios in the high drama may be the following: 1) The intruders exterminate the indigenous population; 2) The intruders expel the indigenous population; 3) The intruders subject the indigenous population and incorporate them in their own political and economic system; 4) The intruders may themselves be incorporated by the indigenous people; Or 5) both societies become stalemated. The Bridge on the Drina is a story by Ivo Andric of the famous Ottoman Drina river bridge, built by the Turks in the second half of the sixteenth century by a Turkish Grand Vizier at Visegrad in what is now eastern Bosnia; in 1914, during the First World War, it was destroyed by the retreating Austrians. The story begins with the efforts to build at Visegrad, a bridge commissioned by Mehmed Pasha Sokolovic, the Bosnian native son who went on to become a minister to the Ottoman sultan. As indicated in the introduction by William H. McNeil, as long as Turkish power remained secure, local Moslem dominance was assured. However, as Ottoman power diminished, and the might of adjacent Christian empires proportionally increased, religious divisions in the Bosnian Society made things less stable. Rebellion by the oppressed Christians populace won sympathy from abroad from Orthodox Russia and Roman Catholic Austria. At the same time rising population strains made it harder for the people to maintain their normal standard of living. Thus it occurred in the early nineteenth century, a handful of intellectuals educated in Germany accepted new ideas “that nationhood and language belonged together and could only attain full perfection within the borders of a sovereign, independent states. Unfortunately, this idea of linguistic national served only to cause more confusion in the old religiously structured and divided society by offering individuals “alternate loyalties and principals of public identity.” Thompson and Lamar maintain that the frontier process has a beginning and potentially an end. In the opening phase, the intruders are generally not perceived to be a threat to the indigenous culture as their numbers are too few. Yet in the second phase the indigenous society wakes up to the fact that the intrusion presents a clear and present danger to their autonomy and identity. The battle in many cases an open conflict for the use of the natural resources of the region - land and water resources- and eventually for physical control over the entire territory and its inhabitants. According to Thompson and Lamar the frontier ceases to exist when one group establishes political control over the other. Nevertheless, Thomas and Lamar argue that as the result of this happening it does not mean that relations between the two societies become static. Instead, a new structural situation is created, but the ongoing historical process is no longer a frontier process. Henceforth, relationships are dealings of ethnicity and class within a single society, not frontier relationships between different societies. Woven around the unifying subject of the famous Ottoman Drina river bridge, The Bridge on the Drina is a story about the contrast between the enduring stone of the bridge and the transitory lives of the people who lived by it, the continuities and the changes in human culture over a span of centuries. It’s a story about a specific way of life. A way of life which does not hurry anywhere, in which "parties" are held all day long, in which one walks over the bridge for hours, casually glancing at the water beneath, exchanging few words, and gossip with people who do the same. It’s a life of ordinary people in a "barren wasteland" of a borderland, a frontier, which was never independent, but always under some other rule, whether it is the Ottoman Turks, or the Habsburg Austrians, which impacted on its society, and changed its ways of life from its roots. Using the bridge as an eyewitness to 500 years of history, we see the rise and fall of empires as a community of Catholics, Moslems, Jews, and Orthodox Christians with deep seated loyalties to their respective faiths, somehow manage to live, love and work side by side. Indeed the famous Ottoman Drina river bridge, built by the Turks in the second half of the sixteenth century by a Turkish Grand Vizier at Visegrad was meant to link the two parts of the Ottoman Empire and make travel from West to East and East to West much easier. Before the stone bridge was built, travelers had to depend on a ferry to cross the Drina that did not always run on a regular schedule. Just the same many townspeople felt that a great and incomprehensible disaster had fallen upon the town and the whole district that could not be foreseen as construction activities for the bridge began. With Habsburg occupation, the railroad connection to Sarajevo reduced the Bridge’s connection to the West. But its connection with the East that built it remained intact until that fateful day when the Turkish frontier moved back 600 miles with the collapse of the triangle between Austria, Turkey and Serbia. Andric in his narrative said for three whole centuries the bridge had experienced everything and truly served it purpose, but human needs had altered and world conditions changed; but unfortunately its tasks betrayed it. By its size, its solidity and its beauty, armies might pass across it and caravans follow one another for centuries to come. Yet vizier’s bequest suddenly found itself abandoned outside the main stream of life. The bridge no longer linked anything save the two parts of the town and those dozens or so villages one or the other side of the Drina. But this link also ended when the Austrians left a calling card when they abandoned town in the midst of battle and blew out the seventh pier of the bridge. As stated by David Chappell, ethnocentric world views may regard frontiers as advances into a blank wilderness; any frontier is really dual; that of the intruders and that of indigenous peoples. The following narratives demonstrate this duality between intruded upon and the intruders fascinate me. In the first narrative, the builders are unsuccessful in many attempts to construct the bridge; after much tragedy, they are told that they need to wall up two Christian babies in masonry of the bridge in order to appease the fairies. The story is later said by the narrator to be merely a legend, yet as a symbol it contains the embodiment of Andric's views of race and religion: the essence of the Slavic race is walled up within the fixtures of an alien civilization. This theme of the Christian essence of the Slavic race being imprisoned within Islam is further dramatized by the main character in the historical novel, Mehmed Pasha Sokolovic, who was brought to Istanbul as part of a conscription system, wherebyOttomans would select young Christian boys from around the empire, take them to Istanbul, train them, and put them in key political, military, and administrative positions. Though rising to the heights of power and influence, to the point that he could even establish a relative of his as Patriarch of the Serb Church, Sokolovic is viewed by Andric's narrator as hopeless and doomed within the alien religious world of Islam he must inhabit. In the second narrative, a Serb worker who tries to sabotage the bridge is punished with impalement. The description of the impaling is a graphic, passion story, modeled after depictions of the crucificixion of Jesus. For religious nationalists, this crucifixion is not the impalement of a single Serb revolutionary at the orders of a single, particular, cruel Ottoman administrator. It is the eternal, always occurring impalement of the Serb nation by the Turks and by those Slavs who, by converting to Islam, become "Turk." To conclude, Serbia persuaded the Croats, Slovenes, Bosnian Muslims, and other Yugo Slavs to unite to form Yugoslavia in 1917. This “synthetic” Yugoslavia identity was a response to past domination by neighboring Austria and Turkey. But after World II and Tito, Serbian nationalism alienated constituent members of its state who were more divided by religion and historical experience than by language. |