The Heinkel He 111,
one of the technologically advanced aircraft that were designed and
produced illegally in the 1930s as part of the clandestine German
rearmament
German rearmament (Aufrüstung, German pronunciation:[ˈaʊ̯fˌʀʏstʊŋ]) was a policy and practice of rearmament carried out by Germany from 1918 to 1939, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles which required German disarmament
after WWI to prevent it starting another war. It began on a small,
secret, and informal basis shortly after the treaty was signed, but was
openly and massively expanded after the Nazi Partycame to power in 1933.
Despite its scale, German re-armament remained a largely covert operation, carried out using front organizations such as glider clubs for training pilots and sporting clubs, and Nazi SA militia groups for teaching infantry combat techniques. Front companies like MEFO were set up to finance the rearmament by placing massive orders with Krupp, Siemens, Gutehofnungshütte, and Rheinmetall for weapons forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles.
Despite warnings by Ossietzky, Winston Churchill and others,
successive governments across Europe failed to effectively recognize,
cooperate, and respond to the potential danger posed by Germany's
re-armament. Outside Germany, a global disarmament
movement was popular after World War I and Europe's democracies
continued to elect governments that supported disarmament even as
Germany pursued rearmament. By the late 1930s, the German military was
very capable of overwhelming its neighbors and the rapid German
conquests of Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium,
Luxembourg, and France proved how poorly prepared its neighbors were to
defend themselves.
History
Weimar era
Germany's post-1918 rearmament began at the time of the Weimar Republic, when the Chancellor of GermanyHermann Müller, who belonged to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), passed cabinet laws that allowed secret and illegal rearmament efforts.
During its early years (1918–1933), the rearmament was relatively
small, secret, and supported by a cross-section of Germans motivated by a
mixture of patriotism-based nationalism and economics-based
nationalism. The latter motive viewed the Treaty of Versailles, which was ostensibly about war reparations
and peace enforcement. France wanted to make sure Germany would never
again be a military threat. However, in the mid-1930s Britain and France
would decline to fight another war to enforce the Versailles Treaty,
thus bringing the treaty's effects to an end.
An example of the Weimar clandestine rearmament measures was the
training and equipping of police forces in a way that made them not just
paramilitary
in organizational culture (which most police forces are, to one degree
or another) but also well prepared to rapidly augment the military as military reserve forces, which the treaty did not allow. Another example was that the government tolerated that various Weimar paramilitary groups armed themselves to a dangerous degree. Their force grew enough to potentially threaten the state, but this was tolerated because the state hoped to use such militias as military reserve forces with which to rearm the Reichswehr in the future. Thus various Freikorps, Der Stahlhelm, the Reichsbanner, the Nazi SA, the Nazi SS, and the Ruhr Red Army grew from street gangs into private armies. For example, by 1931 Werner von Blomberg was using the SA in preparation for border defense in East Prussia.
Another aspect of Weimar era rearmament was massive investment in dual use technologies and fields of military technology which hadn't been mentioned in the Versailles treaty such as rocketry. Walter Dornberger was tasked with developing liquid fuel rockets for military purposes in 1930 and would become involved in the V2 rocket program later. The Deutsche Luft Hansa
was never anywhere near profitability and aviation played only a
minuscule role in the transportation of either passengers or cargo, but
the planes it employed were very similar to then current military models
and its existence allowed the growth of the domestic airplane building
industry and the training of pilots, both of which could be converted to
military use in circumvention of the prohibition of Germany maintaining
an Air Force as lined out in the Versailles treaty.
One of the reasons why this militarization
of society was difficult to prevent relates to the distinction between
the government executive and the legislature. The democratically
elected government, being composed of groups of people, inevitably
reflected the factional strife and cultural militarism among the populace. But the German Revolution of 1918–19
had not truly settled what the nature of the German state ought to be;
Weimar Germany after its revolution was not very far from civil war—the
different factions all hoped to transform the German state into the one
that they thought it should be (which would require violent suppression
of the other factions), and they expected their private armies to merge
into the state's army (the Reichswehr) if they could manage to come to
power.
During the Republic's era of democracy, they all participated in the
democratic definition of coming to power (winning votes), but many of
them, on all sides, planned to abolish or diminish democracy in the
future, if they could first get into position to do so.
During the Weimar era, there was extensive economic interaction
between Germany and the Soviet Union, and a component of German
re-armament was covertly holding military training exercises in the
Soviet Union to hide their extent from other countries. Germany–Soviet Union relations of the interwar period were complex, as bellicosity and cooperation coexisted in tortuous combinations.
Nazi government era: 1933-1945
After the Nazi takeover of power
in January 1933, the Nazis pursued a greatly enlarged and more
aggressive version of rearmament. During its struggle for power, the
'National Socialist party' (NSDAP)
promised to recover Germany's lost national pride. It proposed military
rearmament claiming that the Treaty of Versailles and the acquiescence
of the Weimar Republic were an embarrassment for all Germans.
The rearmament became the topmost priority of the German government.
Hitler would then spearhead one of the greatest expansions of industrial
production Germany had ever seen.
Third Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, one of the most influential Nazi figures of the time, and Hjalmar Schacht,
who (while never a member of the NSDAP) was an initially sympathetic
economist, introduced a wide variety of schemes in order to tackle the
effects that the Great Depression had on Germany, were the main key players of German rearmament policies (see Reichsbank § Nazi period).
Dummy companies like MEFO were set up to finance the rearmament; MEFO obtained the large amount of money needed for the effort through the Mefo bills, a certain series of Promissory notes issued by the Government of Nazi Germany.
Covert organizations like the Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule were established under a civilian guise in order to train pilots for the future Luftwaffe. Although available statistics do not include non-citizens or women, the massive Nazi re-armament policy almost led to full employment
during the 1930s. The re-armament began a sudden change in fortune for
many factories in Germany. Many industries were taken out of a deep
crisis that had been induced by the Great Depression.
The creation of Mefo bills was the first fiscal step that Germany
took on the road to rearmament. The Versailles Treaty prohibited the
German government from rearming. Therefore, to rearm to the capacity
that Hitler was trying to attain, the Reichsbank would have to extend
the German government an almost unlimited amount of credit towards the
rearmament program while hiding the accumulation of Government debt from
the international community. Contrary to this goal, the then Reichsbank President Hans Luther
would only extend credit of one-hundred million Reichsmarks to
rearmament, so to work around this, Hitler replaced Luther with Hjalmar
Schacht. Schacht turned Luther's "employment creation bills" program
into a system that would allow the German government to receive an
unlimited amount of credit to put towards their program. Schacht created the Metallurgische Forschungs-G.m.b.H, a shell company that would issue short-term treasury notes, which would "function as a concealed form of money".
The company would sell over 12 billion Reichsmarks worth of Mefo-bills
by 1938, money which would all go to fund rearmament. Since Schacht's
company did not function and instead just worked as a front for
government-issued debt, this allowed the Nazi Regime to conceal their rearmament funding from the international community.
Without the creation of the Mefo program, the international community
would have been immediately alarmed at the raising of funds by Nazi Germany, and the rearmament program would be threatened by external intervention.
In another instance of money market
fraud, one can examine Schacht's manipulation of the American
international exchange system, which provided Germany an arbitrage
opportunity allowing them to fund their rearmament program. After
attaining the position of Reichsbank President in 1933, Schacht told the
American Government that the German corporations, government, and
municipalities would be unable to pay their interest payments to
American bondholders on American denominated debt. The cancellation of
interest payments was due to the lack of foreign exchange that Germany
claimed they had in their treasury.
Although German exchange resources had been depleted during the great
depression, the German government was not short enough on foreign
exchange to completely stop paying bond coupon payments. Instead, the
German government wanted to use the foreign exchange to pay for
rearmament and fund its activities abroad, an example being the support
of Konrad Henlein and the Sudeten German Party
In doing this, Schacht realized an arbitrage opportunity. In defaulting
on their debt, the Germans would subsequently decrease the value of the
debt on the American markets, where they could then go and repurchase
the bonds with the "allegedly nonexistent foreign exchange at a fraction
of their face value".
The debt purchaser could then sell the bond back to the issuer and
exchange it for the American dollar-denominated debt for Reichsmarks.
The German government could then take the foreign exchange that they had
received and pay for their rearmament program, an example being
purchasing American plane parts with the US dollars they accumulated
from this program.
Schacht took the program even further; he would allow German exporters
to use a portion of their foreign exchange reserves to purchase the
debt. They would then turn around and sell the debt back to the debtors for Reichsmarks,
subsidizing exports at the expense of the bondholder while allowing
German debtors to repurchase their debt at a large discount. The
American bondholder would risk the value of the bond dropping
significantly, or they could resell to the German exporters. Schacht's plan allowed the Nazi Regime to make a foreign exchange that they could use for rearmament and support their propaganda efforts abroad.
By 1935, Hitler was open about rejecting the military
restrictions set forth by the Treaty of Versailles. Rearmament was
announced on 16 March, as was the reintroduction of conscription.
Some large industrial companies, which had until then specialized
in certain traditional products began to diversify and introduce
innovative ideas in their production pattern. Shipyards,
for example, created branches that began to design and build aircraft.
Thus, the German re-armament provided an opportunity for advanced, and
sometimes revolutionary, technological improvements, especially in the
field of aeronautics.
Work by labour historians has determined that many German workers
in the 1930s identified passionately with the weapons they were
building. While this was in part due to the high status of the skilled
work required in the armaments industries, it was also to do with the
weapons themselves – they were assertions of national strength, the
common property of the German nation. Adam Tooze noted in 2008 that an instruction manual given to tank crews during the war made clear this connection:
For every shell you fire, your father has paid 100
Reichsmarks in taxes, your mother has worked for a week in the factory
... The Tiger costs all told 800,000 Reichsmarks and 300,000 hours of
labour. Thirty thousand people had to give an entire week's wages, 6,000
people worked for a week so that you can have a Tiger. Men of the
Tiger, they all work for you. Think what you have in your hands!
The Spanish Civil War
(1936–1939) would provide an ideal testing ground for the proficiency
of the new weapons produced by the German factories during the
re-armament years. Many aeronautical bombing techniques (i.e. dive bombing) were tested by the Condor Legion German expeditionary forces against the Republican Government on Spanish soil with the permission of Generalísimo Francisco Franco. Hitler insisted, however, that his long-term designs were peaceful, a strategy labelled as Blumenkrieg ("Flower War").
Re-armament in the 1930s saw the development of different theories of
how to prepare the German economy for total war. The first amongst these
was 'defence in depth' which was put forward by Georg Thomas. He suggested that the German economy needed to achieve Autarky (or self-sufficiency) and one of the main proponents behind this was I.G. Farben.
Hitler never put his full support behind Autarky and aimed for the
development of 'defence in breadth' which espoused the development of
the armed forces in all areas and was not concerned with preparing the
German war economy.
The re-armament program quickly increased the size of the German
officer corps, and organizing the growing army would be their primary
task until the beginning of World War II on 1 September 1939. Count Johann von Kielmansegg (1906–2006) later said that the very involved process of outfitting 36 divisions kept him and his colleagues from reflecting on larger issues.
In any event, Hitler could boast on 26 September 1938 in the Berlin Sportpalast
that after giving orders to rearm the Wehrmacht he could "openly admit:
we rearmed to an extent the like of which the world has not yet seen".
Toleration shown by other states
Since World War II, both academics and laypeople have discussed the extent to which German re-armament was an open secret among national governments. The failure of Allied national governments to confront and intercede earlier in Germany is often discussed in the context of the appeasement
policies of the 1930s. A central question is whether the Allies should
have drawn "a line in the sand" earlier than September 1939, which might
have resulted in a less devastating war and perhaps a prevention of the Holocaust.
However, it is also possible that anything that caused Hitler not to
overreach as soon and as far as he did would only have condemned Europe
to a more slowly growing Nazi empire, leaving plenty of time for a
Holocaust later, and a successful German nuclear weapons program, safely behind a Nazi version of an iron curtain. George F. Kennan
stated: "Unquestionably, such a policy might have enforced a greater
circumspection on the Nazi regime and caused it to proceed more slowly
with the actualization of its timetable. From this standpoint, firmness
at the time of the reoccupation of the Rhineland (7 March 1936) would probably have yielded even better results than firmness at the time of Munich".
American corporate involvement
Some 150 American corporations took part in German re-armament, supplying German companies with everything from raw materials to technology and patent knowledge.
This took place through a complex network of business interests, joint
ventures, cooperation agreements, and cross-ownership between American
and German corporations and their subsidiaries.
Resources supplied to German companies (some of which were MEFO front
companies established by the German state) by American corporations
included: synthetic rubber production technology (DuPont and Standard Oil of New Jersey), communication equipment (ITT), computing and tabulation machines (IBM), aviation technology (which was used to develop the Junkers Ju 87 bomber), fuel (Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of California), military vehicles (Ford and General Motors), funding (through investment, brokering services, and loans by banks like the Union Banking Corporation), collaboration agreements, production facilities and raw materials. DuPont owned stocks in IG Farben and Degussa AG, who controlled Degesch, the producer of Zyklon B.
This involvement was motivated not only by financial gain, but in some cases by ideology as well. Irénée du Pont, director and former president of DuPont, was a supporter of Nazi racial theory and a proponent of eugenics.
Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another.The transmission is through speech or song and may include folktales, ballads, chants, prose or poetry. In this way, it is possible for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other knowledge across generations without a writing system, or in parallel to a writing system. Religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, and Jainism, for example, have used an oral tradition, in parallel to a writing system, to transmit their canonical scriptures, rituals, hymns and mythologies from one generation to the next.
Oral tradition is information, memories, and knowledge held in
common by a group of people, over many generations; it is not the same
as testimony or oral history.
In a general sense, "oral tradition" refers to the recall and
transmission of a specific, preserved textual and cultural knowledge
through vocal utterance. As an academic discipline, it refers both to a set of objects of study and the method by which they are studied.
The study of oral tradition is distinct from the academic discipline of oral history, which is the recording of personal memories and histories of those who experienced historical eras or events. Oral tradition is also distinct from the study of orality, defined as thought and its verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy (especially writing and print) are unfamiliar to most of the population. A folklore is a type of oral tradition, but knowledge other than folklore has been orally transmitted and thus preserved in human history.
History
According to John Foley, oral tradition has been an ancient human tradition found in "all corners of the world".
Modern archaeology has been unveiling evidence of the human efforts to
preserve and transmit arts and knowledge that depended completely or
partially on an oral tradition, across various cultures:
The Judeo-Christian Bible reveals its oral traditional roots;
medieval European manuscripts are penned by performing scribes;
geometric vases from archaic Greece mirror Homer's oral style. (...)
Indeed, if these final decades of the millennium have taught us
anything, it must be that oral tradition never was the other we accused
it of being; it never was the primitive, preliminary technology of
communication we thought it to be. Rather, if the whole truth is told,
oral tradition stands out as the single most dominant communicative
technology of our species as both a historical fact and, in many areas
still, a contemporary reality.
— John Foley, Signs of Orality
Africa
All
Indigenous African societies use oral tradition to learn their origin
and history, civic and religious duties, crafts and skills, as well as
traditional myths and legends.
It is also a key socio-cultural component in the practice of their
traditional spiritualities, as well as mainstream Abrahamic religions.
These African ethnic group also utilize oral tradition to develop and
train the human intellect, and memory to retain information and sharpen
imagination.
Ancient Greece and Middle East
"All
ancient Greek literature", states Steve Reece, "was to some degree oral
in nature, and the earliest literature was completely so". Homer's epic poetry, states Michael Gagarin, "was largely composed, performed and transmitted orally".
As folklores and legends were performed in front of distant audiences,
the singers would substitute the names in the stories with local
characters or rulers to give the stories a local flavor and thus connect
with the audience, but making the historicity embedded in the oral
tradition unreliable.
The lack of surviving texts about the Greek and Roman religious
traditions have led scholars to presume that these were ritualistic and
transmitted as oral traditions, but some scholars disagree that the
complex rituals in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations were an
exclusive product of an oral tradition.
The Torah and other ancient Jewish literature, the Judeo-Christian
Bible and texts of early centuries of Christianity are rooted in an oral
tradition, and the term "People of the Book" is a medieval construct.
This is evidenced, for example, by the multiple scriptural statements
by Paul admitting "previously remembered tradition which he received"
orally.
Asia
In Asia, the
transmission of folklore, mythologies as well as scriptures in ancient
India, in different Indian religions, was by oral tradition, preserved
with precision with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques:
According to Goody, the Vedic texts likely involved both a
written and oral tradition, calling it a "parallel products of a
literate society". Mostly recently, research shows that oral performance of (written) texts could be a philosophical activity in early China.
It is a common knowledge in India that the primary Hindu books
called Vedas are great example of Oral tradition. Pundits who memorized
three Vedas were called Trivedis. Pundits who memorized four vedas were
called Chaturvedis. By transferring knowledge from generation to
generation Hindus protected their ancient Mantras in Vedas, which are
basically Prose.
The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of
oral tradition, with the first by comparing inconsistencies in the
transmitted versions of literature from various oral societies such as
the Greek, Serbia and other cultures, then noting that the Vedic
literature is too consistent and vast to have been composed and
transmitted orally across generations, without being written down.
Australia
Australian Aboriginal culture has thrived on oral traditions and oral histories passed down through thousands of years.
In a study published in February 2020, new evidence showed that both Budj Bim and Tower Hill volcanoes erupted between 34,000 and 40,000 years ago. Significantly, this is a "minimum age constraint for human presence in Victoria", and also could be interpreted as evidence for the oral histories of the Gunditjmara people, an Aboriginal Australian people of south-western Victoria, which tell of volcanic eruptions being some of the oldest oral traditions in existence. A basalt stone axe found underneath volcanic ash in 1947 had already proven that humans inhabited the region before the eruption of Tower Hill.
Ireland
An Irish seanchaí (plural: seanchaithe), meaning bearer of "old lore", was a traditional Irish language storyteller (the Scottish Gaelic equivalent being the seanchaidh,anglicised as shanachie). The job of a seanchaí was to serve the head of a lineage by passing information orally from one generation to the next about Irish folklore and history, particularly in medieval times. Seán Ó hEinirí of Cill Ghallagáin, County Mayo was thought to be the last seanachaí and the last monolingual speaker of the Irish language.
Native American
Writing
systems are not known to exist among Native North Americans before
contact with Europeans except among some Mesoamerican cultures, and
possibly the South American quipu and North American wampum,
although those two are debatable. Oral storytelling traditions
flourished in a context without the use of writing to record and
preserve history, scientific knowledge, and social practices.
While some stories were told for amusement and leisure, most functioned
as practical lessons from tribal experience applied to immediate moral,
social, psychological, and environmental issues.
Stories fuse fictional, supernatural, or otherwise exaggerated
characters and circumstances with real emotions and morals as a means of
teaching. Plots often reflect real life situations and may be aimed at
particular people known by the story's audience. In this way, social
pressure could be exerted without directly causing embarrassment or
social exclusion. For example, rather than yelling, Inuit
parents might deter their children from wandering too close to the
water's edge by telling a story about a sea monster with a pouch for
children within its reach. One single story could provide dozens of lessons.
Stories were also used as a means to assess whether traditional
cultural ideas and practices are effective in tackling contemporary
circumstances or if they should be revised.
Native American storytelling is a collaborative experience
between storyteller and listeners. Native American tribes generally have
not had professional tribal storytellers marked by social status.
Stories could and can be told by anyone, with each storyteller using
their own vocal inflections, word choice, content, or form.
Storytellers not only draw upon their own memories, but also upon a
collective or tribal memory extending beyond personal experience but
nevertheless representing a shared reality.
Native languages have in some cases up to twenty words to describe
physical features like rain or snow and can describe the spectra of
human emotion in very precise ways, allowing storytellers to offer their
own personalized take on a story based on their own lived experiences.Fluidity in story deliverance allowed stories to be applied to
different social circumstances according to the storyteller's objective
at the time.
One's rendition of a story was often considered a response to another's
rendition, with plot alterations suggesting alternative ways of
applying traditional ideas to present conditions. Listeners might have heard the story told many times, or even may have told the same story themselves.
This does not take away from a story's meaning, as curiosity about what
happens next was less of a priority than hearing fresh perspectives on
well-known themes and plots.
Elder storytellers generally were not concerned with discrepancies
between their version of historical events and neighboring tribes'
version of similar events, such as in origin stories. Tribal stories are considered valid within the tribe's own frame of reference and tribal experience. The 19th century Oglala Lakota tribal member Four Guns was known for his justification of the oral tradition and criticism of the written word.
Stories are used to preserve and transmit both tribal history and environmental history, which are often closely linked.
Native oral traditions in the Pacific Northwest, for example, describe
natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis. Various cultures from
Vancouver Island and Washington have stories describing a physical
struggle between a Thunderbird and a Whale.
One such story tells of the Thunderbird, which can create thunder by
moving just a feather, piercing the Whale's flesh with its talons,
causing the Whale to dive to the bottom of the ocean, bringing the
Thunderbird with it. Another depicts the Thunderbird lifting the Whale
from the Earth then dropping it back down. Regional similarities in
themes and characters suggests that these stories mutually describe the
lived experience of earthquakes and floods within tribal memory. According to one story from the Suquamish Tribe, Agate Pass
was created when an earthquake expanded the channel as a result of an
underwater battle between a serpent and bird. Other stories in the
region depict the formation of glacial valleys and moraines and the
occurrence of landslides, with stories being used in at least one case
to identify and date earthquakes that occurred in CE 900 and 1700. Further examples include Arikara
origin stories of emergence from an "underworld" of persistent
darkness, which may represent the remembrance of life in the Arctic
Circle during the last ice age, and stories involving a "deep crevice",
which may refer to the Grand Canyon.
Despite such examples of agreement between geological and archeological
records on one hand and Native oral records on the other, some scholars
have cautioned against the historical validity of oral traditions
because of their susceptibility to detail alteration over time and lack
of precise dates. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
considers oral traditions as a viable source of evidence for
establishing the affiliation between cultural objects and Native
Nations.
Oral traditions face the challenge of accurate transmission and
verifiability of the accurate version, particularly when the culture
lacks written language or has limited access to writing tools. Oral
cultures have employed various strategies that achieve this without
writing. For example, a heavily rhythmic speech filled with mnemonic devices enhances memory and recall. A few useful mnemonic devices include alliteration, repetition, assonance, and proverbial sayings. In addition, the verse is often metrically composed with an exact number of syllables or morae – such as with Greek and Latin prosody and in Chandas found in Hindu and Buddhist texts.The verses of the epic or text are typically designed wherein the long
and short syllables are repeated by certain rules, so that if an error
or inadvertent change is made, an internal examination of the verse
reveals the problem. Oral traditions can be passed on through plays and acting, as shown in modern-day Cameroon by the Graffis or Grasslanders who perform and deliver speeches to teach their history through oral tradition.
Such strategies facilitate transmission of information without a
written intermediate, and they can also be applied to oral governance.
The law itself in oral cultures is enshrined in formulaic sayings,
proverbs, which are not mere jurisprudential decorations, but themselves
constitute the law. A judge in an oral culture is often called on to
articulate sets of relevant proverbs out of which he can make equitable
decisions in the cases under formal litigation before him.
Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book provides an excellent demonstration of oral governance in the Law of the Jungle.
Not only does grounding rules in oral proverbs allow for simple
transmission and understanding, but it also legitimizes new rulings by
allowing extrapolation. These stories, traditions, and proverbs are not
static, but are often altered upon each transmission, barring any change
to the overall meaning. In this way, the rules that govern the people are modified by the whole and not authored by a single entity.
Indian religions
Ancient texts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism were preserved and transmitted by an oral tradition.[50][51] For example, the śrutis of Hinduism called the Vedas, the oldest of which trace back to the second millennium BCE. Michael Witzel explains this oral tradition as follows:
The Vedic texts were orally
composed and transmitted, without the use of script, in an unbroken line
of transmission from teacher to student that was formalized early on.
This ensured an impeccable textual transmission superior to the
classical texts of other cultures; it is, in fact, something like a tape-recording...
Not just the actual words, but even the long-lost musical (tonal)
accent (as in old Greek or in Japanese) has been preserved up to the
present.
— Michael Witzel
Ancient Indians developed techniques for listening, memorization and recitation of their knowledge, in schools called Gurukul, while maintaining exceptional accuracy of their knowledge across the generations. Many forms of recitation or paths were designed to aid accuracy in recitation and the transmission of the Vedas
and other knowledge texts from one generation to the next. All hymns in
each Veda were recited in this way; for example, all 1,028 hymns with
10,600 verses of the Rigveda was preserved in this way; as were all other Vedas including the Principal Upanishads,
as well as the Vedangas. Each text was recited in a number of ways, to
ensure that the different methods of recitation acted as a cross check
on the other. Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat summarizes this as:
Samhita-patha: continuous recitation of Sanskrit words bound by the phonetic rules of euphonic combination;
Pada-patha: a recitation marked by a conscious pause after
every word, and after any special grammatical codes embedded inside the
text; this method suppresses euphonic combination and restores each word
in its original intended form;
Krama-patha: a step-by-step recitation where euphonically
combined words are paired successively and sequentially and then
recited; for example, a hymn "word1 word2 word3 word4...", would be
recited as "word1word2 word2word3 word3word4 ...."; this method to
verify accuracy is credited to Vedic sages Gargya and Sakarya in the
Hindu tradition and mentioned by the ancient Sanskrit grammarian Panini
(dated to pre-Buddhism period);
Krama-patha modified: the same step-by-step recitation as
above, but without euphonic-combinations (or free form of each word);
this method to verify accuracy is credited to Vedic sages Babhravya and
Galava in the Hindu tradition, and is also mentioned by the ancient
Sanskrit grammarian Panini;
Jata-pāṭha, dhvaja-pāṭha and ghana-pāṭha
are methods of recitation of a text and its oral transmission that
developed after 5th century BCE, that is after the start of Buddhism and
Jainism; these methods use more complicated rules of combination and
were less used.
These extraordinary retention techniques guaranteed an accurate
Śruti, fixed across the generations, not just in terms of unaltered word
order but also in terms of sound.That these methods have been effective, is testified to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the Ṛgveda (c. 1500 BCE).
Research by Milman Parry and Albert Lord indicates that the verse of the Greek poet Homer has been passed down not by rote memorization but by "oral-formulaic composition".
In this process, extempore composition is aided by use of stock phrases
or "formulas" (expressions that are used regularly "under the same
metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea"). In the case of the work of Homer, formulas included eos rhododaktylos ("rosy fingered dawn") and oinops pontos
("winedark sea") which fit in a modular fashion into the poetic form
(in this case six-colon Greek hexameter). Since the development of this
theory, of oral-formulaic composition has been "found in many different
time periods and many different cultures", and according to another source (John Miles Foley) "touch[ed] on" over 100 "ancient, medieval and modern traditions."
Islam
The most recent of the world's great religions, Islam claims two major sources of divine revelation—the Quran and hadith—compiled in written form relatively shortly after being revealed:
The Quran—meaning "recitation" in Arabic—is believed by Muslims to be God's revelation to the Islamic prophet Muhammad,
delivered to him from 610 CE until his death in 632 CE. It is said to
have been carefully compiled and edited into a standardized written form
(known as the mushaf) about two decades after the last verse was revealed.
Hadith—meaning
"narrative" or "report" in Arabic—is the record of the words, actions,
and the silent approval, of Muhammad, and was transmitted by "oral
preachers and storytellers" for around 150–250 years. Each hadith
includes the isnad
(chain of human transmitters who passed down the tradition before it
was sorted according to accuracy, compiled, and committed to written
form by a reputable scholar.
The oral milieu in which the sources were revealed, and their oral form in general are important. The Arab poetry that preceded the Quran and the hadith were orally transmitted. Few Arabs were literate at the time and paper was not available in the Middle East.
The written Quran is said to have been created in part through memorization by Muhammad's companions, and the decision to create a standard written work is said to have come after the death in battle (Yamama) of a large number of Muslims who had memorized the work.
For centuries, copies of the Qurans were transcribed by hand, not
printed, and their scarcity and expense made reciting the Quran from
memory, not reading, the predominant mode of teaching it to others.
To this day the Quran is memorized by millions and its recitation can
be heard throughout the Muslim world from recordings and mosque
loudspeakers (during Ramadan).
Muslims state that some who teach memorization/recitation of the Quran
constitute the end of an "un-broken chain" whose original teacher was
Muhammad himself.
It has been argued that "the Qur'an's rhythmic style and eloquent
expression make it easy to memorize," and was made so to facilitate the
"preservation and remembrance" of the work.
Islamic doctrine holds that from the time it was revealed to the present day, the Quran has not been altered,
its continuity from divine revelation to its current written form
insured by the large numbers of Muhammad's supporters who had reverently
memorized the work, a careful compiling process and divine
intervention.
(Muslim scholars agree that although scholars have worked hard to
separate the corrupt and uncorrupted hadith, this other source of
revelation is not nearly so free of corruption because of the hadith's
great political and theological influence.)
At least two non-Muslim scholars (Alan Dundes
and Andrew G. Bannister) have examined the possibility that the Quran
was not just "recited orally, but actually composed orally". Bannister postulates that some parts of the Quran—such as the seven re-tellings of the story of the Iblis and Adam,
and the repeated phrases "which of the favours of your Lord will you
deny?" in sura 55—make more sense addressed to listeners than readers.
Banister, Dundes and other scholars (Shabbir Akhtar, Angelika Neuwirth, Islam Dayeh) have also noted the large amount of "formulaic" phraseology in the Quran consistent with "oral-formulaic composition" mentioned above. The most common formulas are the attributes of Allah—all-mighty,
all-wise, all-knowing, all-high, etc.—often found as doublets at the
end of a verse. Among the other repeated phrases are "Allah created the heavens and the earth" (found 19 times in the Quran).
As much as one third of the Quran is made up of "oral formulas", according to Dundes' estimates.
Bannister, using a computer database of (the original Arabic) words of
the Quran and of their "grammatical role, root, number, person, gender
and so forth", estimates that depending on the length of the phrase
searched, somewhere between 52% (three word phrases) and 23% (five word
phrases) are oral formulas.
Dundes reckons his estimates confirm "that the Quran was orally
transmitted from its very beginnings". Bannister believes his estimates
"provide strong corroborative evidence that oral composition should be
seriously considered as we reflect upon how the Qur'anic text was
generated."
Dundes argues oral-formulaic composition is consistent with "the
cultural context of Arabic oral tradition", quoting researchers who have
found poetry reciters in the Najd
(the region next to where the Quran was revealed) using "a common store
of themes, motives, stock images, phraseology and prosodical options",
and "a discursive and loosely structured" style "with no fixed
beginning or end" and "no established sequence in which the episodes
must follow".{{ref|group=Note|Scholar Saad Sowayan referring to the
genre of "Saudi Arabian historical oral narrative genre called suwalif"
Catholicism
The Catholic Church upholds that its teaching contained in its deposit of faith is transmitted not only through scripture, but as well as through sacred tradition. The Second Vatican Council affirmed in Dei verbum that the teachings of Jesus Christ were initially passed on to early Christians by "the Apostles
who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by observance handed on
what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with Him,
and from what He did". The Catholic Church asserts that this mode of transmission of the faith persists through current-day bishops, who by right of apostolic succession, have continued the oral passing of what had been revealed through Christ through their preaching as teachers.
The following overview draws upon Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography,
(NY: Garland Publishing, 1985, 1986, 1989); additional material is
summarized from the overlapping prefaces to the following volumes: The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology, (Indiana University Press, 1988, 1992); Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); The Singer of Tales in Performance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995) and Comparative Research on Oral Traditions: A Memorial for Milman Parry (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1987). in the work of the Serb scholar Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864), a contemporary and friend of the Brothers Grimm. Vuk pursued similar projects of "salvage folklore" (similar to rescue archaeology) in the cognate traditions of the South Slavic regions which would later be gathered into Yugoslavia, and with the same admixture of romantic and nationalistic interests (he considered all those speaking the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect as Serbs). Somewhat later, but as part of the same scholarly enterprise of nationalist studies in folklore, the turcologistVasily Radlov (1837–1918) would study the songs of the Kara-Kirghiz in what would later become the Soviet Union; Karadzic and Radloff would provide models for the work of Parry.
Walter Ong
In a separate development, the media theoristMarshall McLuhan (1911–1980) would begin to focus attention on the ways that communicativemedia shape the nature of the content conveyed. He would serve as mentor to the JesuitWalter Ong (1912–2003), whose interests in cultural history, psychology and rhetoric would result in Orality and Literacy (Methuen, 1980) and the important but less-known Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality and Consciousness (Cornell, 1981)[86] These two works articulated the contrasts between cultures defined by primary orality, writing, print, and the secondary orality of the electronic age.
I style the morality of a culture totally untouched by any knowledge
of writing or print, 'primary orality'. It is 'primary' by contrast
with the 'secondary orality' of present-day high technology culture, in
which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television and
other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning
on writing and print. Today primary culture in the strict sense hardly
exists, since every culture knows of writing and has some experience of
its effects. Still, to varying degrees many cultures and sub-cultures,
even in a high-technology ambiance, preserve much of the mind-set of
primary orality.
Ong's works also made possible an integrated theory of oral tradition
which accounted for both production of content (the chief concern of
Parry-Lord theory) and its reception.
This approach, like McLuhan's, kept the field open not just to the
study of aesthetic culture but to the way physical and behavioral
artifacts of oral societies are used to store, manage and transmit
knowledge, so that oral tradition provides methods for investigation of
cultural differences, other than the purely verbal, between oral and
literate societies.
The most-often studied section of Orality and Literacy concerns the "psychodynamics
of orality" This chapter seeks to define the fundamental
characteristics of 'primary' orality and summarizes a series of
descriptors (including but not limited to verbal aspects of culture)
which might be used to index the relative orality or literacy of a given
text or society.
John Miles Foley
In advance of Ong's synthesis, John Miles Foley
began a series of papers based on his own fieldwork on South Slavic
oral genres, emphasizing the dynamics of performers and audiences. Foley effectively consolidated oral tradition as an academic field when he compiled Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research
in 1985. The bibliography gives a summary of the progress scholars made
in evaluating the oral tradition up to that point, and includes a list
of all relevant scholarly articles relating to the theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition. He also both established both the journal Oral Tradition and founded the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition (1986) at the University of Missouri.
Foley developed Oral Theory beyond the somewhat mechanistic notions
presented in earlier versions of Oral-Formulaic Theory, by extending
Ong's interest in cultural features of oral societies beyond the verbal,
by drawing attention to the agency of the bard and by describing how oral traditions bear meaning.
The bibliography would establish a clear underlying methodology
which accounted for the findings of scholars working in the separate Linguistics fields (primarily Ancient Greek,
Anglo-Saxon and Serbo-Croatian). Perhaps more importantly, it would
stimulate conversation among these specialties, so that a network of
independent but allied investigations and investigators could be
established.
Foley's key works include The Theory of Oral Composition (1988); Immanent Art (1991); Traditional Oral Epic: The Odyssey, Beowulf and the Serbo-Croatian Return-Song (1993); The Singer of Tales in Performance (1995); Teaching Oral Traditions (1998); How to Read an Oral Poem (2002). His Pathways Project (2005–2012) draws parallels between the media dynamics of oral traditions and the Internet.
Acceptance and further elaboration
The theory of oral tradition would undergo elaboration and development as it grew in acceptance. While the number of formulas documented for various traditions proliferated, the concept of the formula remained lexically bound. However, numerous innovations appeared, such as the "formulaic system" with structural "substitution slots" for syntactic, morphological and narrative necessity (as well as for artistic invention). Sophisticated models such as Foley's "word-type placement rules" followed. Higher levels of formulaic composition were defined over the years, such as "ring composition", "responsion" and the "type-scene" (also called a "theme" or "typical scene"). Examples include the "Beasts of Battle" and the "Cliffs of Death". Some of these characteristic patterns of narrative details, (like "the arming sequence;" "the hero on the beach"; "the traveler recognizes his goal") would show evidence of global distribution.
At the same time, the fairly rigid division between oral and
literate was replaced by recognition of transitional and
compartmentalized texts and societies, including models of diglossia (Brian StockFranz Bäuml, and Eric Havelock). Perhaps most importantly, the terms and concepts of "orality" and "literacy" came to be replaced with the more useful and apt "traditionality" and "textuality". Very large units would be defined (The Indo-European Return Song) and areas outside of military epic would come under investigation: women's song, riddles and other genres.
The methodology of oral tradition now conditions a large variety of studies, not only in folklore, literature and literacy, but in philosophy, communication theory, Semiotics, and including a very broad and continually expanding variety of languages and ethnic groups, and perhaps most conspicuously in biblical studies, in which Werner Kelber has been especially prominent. The annual bibliography is indexed by 100 areas, most of which are ethnolinguistic divisions.
The
theory of oral tradition encountered early resistance from scholars who
perceived it as potentially supporting either one side or another in
the controversy between what were known as "unitarians" and "analysts" – that is, scholars who believed Homer
to have been a single, historical figure, and those who saw him as a
conceptual "author function," a convenient name to assign to what was
essentially a repertoire of traditional narrative. A much more general dismissal of the theory and its implications simply described it as "unprovable" Some scholars, mainly outside the field of oral tradition, represent (either dismissively or with approval) this body of theoretical work as reducing the great epics to children's party games like "telephone" or "Chinese whispers".
While games provide amusement by showing how messages distort content
via uncontextualized transmission, Parry's supporters argue that the
theory of oral tradition reveals how oral methods optimized the signal-to-noise ratio and thus improved the quality, stability and integrity of content transmission.
There were disputes concerning particular findings of the theory.
For example, those trying to support or refute Crowne's hypothesis
found the "Hero on the Beach" formula in numerous Old English poems.
Similarly, it was also discovered in other works of Germanic origin, Middle English poetry, and even an Icelandic prose saga. J.A. Dane, in an article characterized as "polemics without rigor" claimed that the appearance of the theme in Ancient Greek
poetry, a tradition without known connection to the Germanic,
invalidated the notion of "an autonomous theme in the baggage of an oral
poet."
Within Homeric studies specifically, Lord's The Singer of Tales,
which focused on problems and questions that arise in conjunction with
applying oral-formulaic theory to problematic texts such as the Iliad, Odyssey, and even Beowulf, influenced nearly all of the articles written on Homer and oral-formulaic composition thereafter. However, in response to Lord, Geoffrey Kirk published The Songs of Homer,
questioning Lord's extension of the oral-formulaic nature of Serbian
and Croatian literature (the area from which the theory was first
developed) to Homeric epic. Kirk argues that Homeric poems differ from
those traditions in their "metrical strictness", "formular system[s]",
and creativity. In other words, Kirk argued that Homeric poems were
recited under a system that gave the reciter much more freedom to choose
words and passages to get to the same end than the Serbo-Croatian poet,
who was merely "reproductive". Shortly thereafter, Eric Havelock's Preface to Plato
revolutionized how scholars looked at Homeric epic by arguing not only
that it was the product of an oral tradition, but also that the
oral-formulas contained therein served as a way for ancient Greeks to
preserve cultural knowledge across many different generations. Adam Parry, in his 1966 work "Have we Homer's Iliad?",
theorized the existence of the most fully developed oral poet to his
time, a person who could (at his discretion) creatively and
intellectually create nuanced characters in the context of the accepted,
traditional story. In fact, he discounted the Serbo-Croatian tradition
to an "unfortunate" extent, choosing to elevate the Greek model of
oral-tradition above all others.
Lord reacted to Kirk's and Parry's essays with "Homer as Oral Poet",
published in 1968, which reaffirmed Lord's belief in the relevance of
Yugoslav poetry and its similarities to Homer and downplayed the
intellectual and literary role of the reciters of Homeric epic.
Many of the criticisms of the theory have been absorbed into the
evolving field as useful refinements and modifications. For example, in
what Foley called a "pivotal" contribution, Larry Benson
introduced the concept of "written-formulaic" to describe the status of
some Anglo-Saxon poetry which, while demonstrably written, contains
evidence of oral influences, including heavy reliance on formulas and
themes
A number of individual scholars in many areas continue to have
misgivings about the applicability of the theory or the aptness of the
South Slavic comparison,
and particularly what they regard as its implications for the
creativity which may legitimately be attributed to the individual
artist.
However, at present, there seems to be little systematic or
theoretically coordinated challenge to the fundamental tenets of the
theory; as Foley put it, ""there have been numerous suggestions for
revisions or modifications of the theory, but the majority of
controversies have generated further understanding.
Decommunization in former communist states is the process of purging former communist high officials and eliminating communist symbols.
It is sometimes referred to as political cleansing. Although the term has been occasionally used during the Cold War, it is most commonly applied to the former countries of the Eastern Bloc, those countries that were considered being close to the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union to describe a number of legal and social changes during their periods of postcommunism during the post–Cold War era.
In some states, decommunization includes bans on communist symbols. While sharing common traits, the processes of decommunization have run differently in different states.
Purging and prosecution of former communist officials
Decommunization
came to refer to government policies of limiting the participation of
former communist officials in politics. This should not be confused with
lustration
which is the procedure of scrutinizing holders or candidates for public
offices in terms being former informants of the communist secret police.
According to a 1992 constitutional amendment in the Czech
Republic, a person who publicly denies, puts in doubt, approves, or
tries to justify Nazi or Communist genocide or other crimes of Nazis or
Communists will be punished with a prison term of six months to three
years. In 1992, Barbara Harff wrote that no Communist country or governing body had been convicted of genocide. In his 1999 foreword to The Black Book of Communism, Martin Malia
wrote: "Throughout the former Communist world, moreover, virtually none
of its responsible officials has been put on trial or punished. Indeed,
everywhere Communist parties, though usually under new names, compete
in politics."
In August 2007, Arnold Meri, an Estonian Red Army veteran and cousin of former Estonian president Lennart Meri, faced charges of genocide by Estonian authorities for participating in the deportations of Estonians in Hiiumaa during 1949.
Meri denied the accusation, characterizing them as politically
motivated defamation, stating: "I do not consider myself guilty of
genocide." The trial was halted when Meri died on 27 March 2009 at the
age of 89.
State leaders
Bulgaria – Todor Zhivkov was initially sentenced to seven years in prison, but transferred to house arrest due to health reasons. He was later declared innocent by the Supreme Court of Bulgaria in 1996 and was released from house arrest shortly thereafter. He died as a free man one year later.
East Germany – Erich Honecker
was arrested, but soon released and the proceedings against him were
abandoned due to his ill health. He died in 1994. Several other members
of the former East German government, such as Egon Krenz, were nonetheless convicted.
Poland – Wojciech Jaruzelski
avoided most court appearances, citing poor health, and was never
convicted. He died as a free man in 2014 and was buried with full
military honors at the Powązki Military Cemetery, attended by the incumbent president of Poland, as well as two former presidents.
The process of decommunization and de-sovietization in Ukraine started soon after dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, led by President Leonid Kravchuk, a former high-ranking party official. In April 2015, a formal decommunization process started in Ukraine after laws were approved which outlawed communist symbols, among other things. On 15 May 2015, President Petro Poroshenko signed a set of laws that started a six-month period for the removal of communist monuments (excluding World War II monuments) and renaming of public places named after communist-related themes. At the time, this meant that 22 cities and 44 villages would need to be renamed. In 2016, 51,493 streets and 987 cities and villages were renamed, and 1,320 Lenin monuments and 1,069 monuments to other communist figures were removed.
Poland
Since 1989, Poland has taken down hundreds of Soviet monuments due to the negative reputation the Soviet Union has in Poland.
Although some Poles see the memorials as justified in honouring those
who died fighting against Nazi Germany, others seek the removal of
Soviet memorials because of the decades of totalitarianism that resulted
from Soviet occupation, and also because of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact and the Katyn massacre. Historian Lukasz Kaminski of the Institute of National Remembrance
said, "Memorials in city centers and villages can send the wrong
historical signal... What do you think we got, when the Soviets
liberated Poland from Hitler, if not a new yoke?"
In the 2010s, Poland continued to demolish remaining Soviet monuments, some of which have been relocated to museums. The removals have attracted criticism from Russian Foreign MinisterSergey Lavrov, who has lashed out at Warsaw officials for opposing the monuments, as has Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry.
Finland
Since
the collapse of the USSR there was active debate regarding the fate of
the Soviet symbols that were received as gifts. Particularly World peace sculpture
that has been vandalized during its existence. Since Russia attacked
Ukraine in 2022 the discussion of removing these symbols started to
heat. Statues of Lenin were removed from Turku and Kotka supposedly as "a gesture of solidarity" for Ukraine. The World Peace sculpture was also removed from Helsinki (the official reason was that it needed to be relocated due to roadworks). The name of Lenin Park
will be changed to in the future. The critics have considered the
latest moves as harmful since by these actions history will be erased.
It can also be asked if the erasure can be logically argued as Lenin and Putin
represent different ideologies. There has been some criticism (from the
political right-wing) regarding the history of the elderly Social
Democrats who some accuse of spying for Stasi. The so-called Tiitinen list has been discussed and the right-wing has demanded it to be declassified.
Czech Republic
In April 2020, a statue of Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev was removed from Prague, which prompted criminal investigation by Russian authorities who considered it an insult. The Mayor of Prague's sixth municipal district, Ondřej Kolář, announced on Prima televize that he would be under police protection after a Russian man made attempts on his life. Prime Minister Andrej Babiš condemned that as foreign interference, while Kremlin Press SecretaryDmitry Peskov dismissed allegations of Russian involvement as "another hoax".
Results
Communist
parties outside of Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states were not
outlawed and their members were not prosecuted. Just a few places
attempted to exclude even members of communist secret services from
decision-making. In a number of countries, the communist party simply
changed its name and continued to function.
Stephen Holmes of the University of Chicago
argued in 1996 that after a period of active decommunization, it was
met with a near-universal failure. After the introduction of lustration,
demand for scapegoats has become relatively low, and former communists
have been elected for high governmental and other administrative
positions. Holmes notes that the only real exception was former East Germany, where thousands of former Stasi informers have been fired from public positions.
Holmes suggests the following reasons for the turnoff of decommunization:
After 45–70 years of Communist state
rule, nearly every family has members associated with the state. After
the initial desire "to root out the reds" came a realization that
massive punishment is wrong and finding only some guilty is hardly
justice.
The urgency of the current economic problems of postcommunism makes
the crimes of the communist past "old news" for many citizens.
Decommunization is believed to be a power game of elites.
The difficulty of dislodging the social elite makes it require a totalitarian state to disenfranchise the "enemies of the people" quickly and efficiently and a desire for normalcy overcomes the desire for punitive justice.
Very few people have a perfectly clean slate and so are available to fill the positions that require significant expertise.
