Johnny Gisagara
Prof. Renaud
HIST 1050
December 13, 2014 PARTING WITH PACIFISM The article “Parting with Pacifism” written by Professor of History at the University of Exeter Richard Overy. The article talks about how in the mid-1930’s, most British who were pacifists and were against to war against fascism suddenly had a change of mind after events in Spain that took place during the Spanish war that led to the majority to switch to thinking the only they could stop fascism is through military action. “There was so much popular resistance to the idea of war in the mid-1930s. It is necessary to explain why public opinion swung crowd to wide support for confronting Hitler.” Germany was a big house then and was spreading the fascism mentality in major countries “The obvious explanation lies in the perceived threat of German expansion and no doubt this did convince an unquantifiable number of anti-war supporters to reverse their commitment once it was clear that negotiation or appeasement had failed following the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939”
In the winter of 1934-35 the League of Nations Union, and with the support of 34 further organizations, conducted a “Peace Ballot” that was organized like a general election, by population, and 500,000 people volunteered and went from door to door asking households to answer a number of questions. On July 1935, the result was 96% of 11.6 million votes in favor of continued League membership, which meant they supported the idea military action was no the best way to go about handling disputes and 6.8 million said 'yes' in answer to the question of whether in a last resort the League should use collective force. The pacifism idea was that any violence, including war, is unjustifiable under any circumstances, and that all disputes should be settled by peaceful means. Nevertheless they realized they wasn’t getting anywhere trying to negotiate with Hitler but realized force was the only way to deal with Hitler. The argument that absolute pacifism is inconsistent can be restructured based not on individual rights or rules about the use of force but on the inherent value of human beings. Kelley states that there are cases when the use of force “may be more in