“The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars, 1290 – 1329”, by René Weis

464 pages, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN-13: 978-0375404900

Be forewarned: The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars, 1290 – 1329 by René Weis is not a book for people who know nothing of the Middle Ages, the Inquisition, the Cathars or the small Languedocien village of Montaillou in which so much of this tragic tales takes place. Having issued those disclaimers, any person looking for a portrait of medieval existence will be richly rewarded with the massive amount of detail regarding individual lives during this time.

Drawing extensively on Inquisition documents (in their original Latin, no less) as well as his own research, Weis offers an astounding plunge into the everyday lives of people like you and I in the 12^th and 13^th Centuries (ironically, it is the Inquisition’s own detailed records from 1290-1329 that enabled Weis to recreate many of the activities in the village of Montaillou, France). This is a good thing, for while I have read a reasonable amount about the Middle Ages, this book presents a more complete picture of ordinary life during this misunderstood period than I have seen, such as the descriptions of villages and the organization of the domiciles in those villages, how people interacted with each other (both sexually and domestically), how people maintained death-defying activities as heretics, as well as many others throughout this dense book.

Catharism is not the focus of this history, but elements of Cathar thought and practices are unavoidably present. The pluses and minuses of being a Cathar are presented, at least for the residents of Montaillou, and despite the asceticism of Cathar spiritual leaders, the sexual promiscuity of some Cathars is not glossed over. Interestingly, the reason for the Inquisition’s interest in Montaillou seems to have been, not primarily their religious differences, but the reluctance of people in that area to pay the Church’s taxes (so much for rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s). The amount of detail Weis was able to assemble is staggering, but to his credit he keeps the story flowing. I’ve never read history with a granularity this fine.

“Hitler’s Vienna: a Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man”, by Brigitte Hamann, translated by Thomas Thornton

496 pages, Tauris Parke Paperbacks, ISBN-13: 978-1848852778

Hitler’s Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man by Brigitte Hamann (the late German-Austrian historian who authored a number of works in her life) and translated by Thomas Thornton, is more than just about Vienna of Hitler’s youth; it is a well-researched, fact-filled work that lays to rest many of the theories about Hitler’s psychology and motivations. The author does not appear to have any thesis or hypothesis to explain the phenomenon of Hitler’s rise to power, a refreshing change from the many “explanations” of his ascendancy put forth over the decades. Many of the details of Hitler’s early life are familiar to even passing acquaintances: he was born in Linz Austria to a minor governmental official and his third wife, Klara, was lazy and spoiled rotten by his mother (who died in 1907, probably of breast cancer), and was abused by his father before he and his friend, August Kubizek, a budding musician, decided to try their fortune in Vienna, where he just barely survived by painting postcards, living in a men’s hostel for three years and absorbing the extremist pamphlets and books produced there until the advent of the First World War, which perversely gave meaning to his life, a meaning that was subsequently shattered by the German defeat.

During his miserable few years in Vienna, Hitler became a student of Pan-Germanic beliefs and amongst his political idols was Karl Lueger, the Austrian politician, mayor of Vienna and founder of the Christlichsoziale Partei (Christian Social Party) who is credited with the transformation of the city of Vienna into a modern city, yet whose populist and anti-Semitic politics are sometimes viewed as a model for Hitler’s later Nazism. Much of Hamann’s book is a study of Vienna, as during the Hitler’s early years in the city the place was politically chaotic as rival nationalities – such as the Czechs, Hungarians and, of course, Germans – battled one another on a variety of topics in the Reichsrat, or Imperial Council. The city was overcrowded with the poor from Eastern Europe and the Austrian-Hungarian provinces – along with  Jews, Czechs and Italians who were routinely discriminated against – was criminally lacking in proper housing and sanitation facilities, while any sort of public welfare was nonexistent. Vienna was not a happy or congenial place in these pre-World War I years.

In reading this book, I became aware that the phenomenon of Hitler was not so much the product of the man as it was of the times. He was not an extraordinary man, nor was he the epitome of evil personified; he was the right person at the right time (or rather, the wrong person at the wrong time) to be the focus of German pride, spirit and colossal resentment. He was not even a good leader: he was able to rouse his followers by his speeches and personal mystique, but he came to believe that his talents were greater than they were, especially in terms of military strategy. Perhaps we are fortunate that he was an egotistical demagogue; his inability to correctly assess his own capability was his downfall and the downfall of the Third Reich. Under more capable leadership, Germany would have been much harder to defeat. If you, like Tolstoy, ponder the question as to whether history is made by great persons or by inexorable historical forces, you may find in this book support for the idea that the times make the man, not the man makes the times.

“Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919”, by Ann Hagedorn

560 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-0743243711

Ann Hagedorn’s Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 is a modern liberal’s look back at a difficult year in American history. While the subtitle of this volume promises hope as well as fear, it is the fear that is delivered. The year 1919 was fascinating and the book does a wonderful job of describing how dramatic this era truly was, though it is strongest in reminding all of the inhuman nature of lynching and the inexcusable race relations of the time; the juxtaposition of returning black veterans lynched in their uniforms and the brutality of lynching as a whole is heartbreaking, and the many murders committed as described by Hagedorn are monstrous. There are heroes of the First Amendment, like the attorney Harry Weinberger defending the free speech rights Anarchists and Communists, or the unflappable Mollie Steimer speaking truth to power (as she imagined it, at any rate), while there is also their implacable foe, a young J Edgar Hoover and his developing an index system to track these and other radicals; there is the almost unheard of story of the American troops fighting the Reds in Siberia (I certainly never read about that in school); or Carl Sandburg, the socialist journalist (which puts his bio of Lincoln in a whole new light). It is less convincing in painting President Wilson as a hero when he was actively unhelpful in easing America’s many and deep racial wrongs; furthermore, his peace plan was a failure due to his own political missteps in selling the idea and the more basic fact that many nations – especially the United States – were not really ready for an effective and armed collective security mechanism for the entire world.

Hagedorn’s history of 1919 is exhaustive and not without virtues, and the overall idea is a good one: contrary to popular belief the year after the end of World War I was not anticlimactic and was, in fact, was a vital year in American history. The adoption of the constitutional amendments giving women the vote and establishing Prohibition marked the high-water mark of the moral impulses of the Progressive era, while the racial unrest of that year marked a turning point in the history of U.S. race relations, especially Woodrow Wilson’s double standard of how minorities should be treated abroad versus how they should be treated in the States (and I thought the 60’s were rough). The stormy negotiations in Paris over what became the Treaty of Versailles, the influenza pandemic, the struggles over the Allied intervention in Russia, and the grotesque excesses of the internal security apparatus the Wilson administration had established during the war were all fateful events. At her best, Hagedorn writes lively and dramatic accounts of such milestones; unfortunately, her narrative is often too trite and tendentious to do justice to her subject, with the world divided into stock “progressive” heroes and “reactionary” villains. From her point of view, for example, the Allied intervention against the Bolsheviks was an evil plot to suppress freedom, supported by bankers and other war-mongering, red-baiting, worker-crushing members of the bourgeoisie. Allied intervention in Russia may have been ill judged and futile, but there were many reasons why decent, honest friends of Russia – and of humanity in general – would have wanted to nip the horrors of Bolshevism and the Russian Civil War in the bud. Hagedorn also discounts the real threat of the followers of Lenin: 1919 saw a number of longstanding world empires crumble with the end of the Great War and the Reds had prevailed in Russia; given the tens of millions who later died in the USSR, I do not think it totally stupid for U.S. authorities to pay some attention to this domestic situation.