good thesis statements about war

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War Thesis Statements Samples For Students

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Good Thesis Statement On War And Terrorism

Introduction.

Terrorism is defined as the use of illegal force against either a person or property for the purpose of intimidating them or a government, civilians or any division of a population for either political or social objectives. Terrorism usually incites war either within a nation or between nations. Nations have designated strategies to counter terrorist activities. There is a war on terrorism. (Cook, 2004)

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Good Thesis Statement About Three Major Aspects Of Industrialization Between 1865 And 1920 That Impacted The Communities, Economy, And Politics Of The United States.

Thesis and outline: industrialization after the civil war.

Thesis Statement An analysis of the period that followed the American Civil War reveals changes in the economic, political, and social spheres as the country shifted from an agrarian society to an industrial one.

Essay Outline

Expertly crafted thesis statement on three major aspects of industrialization between 1865 and 1920:, industrialization after the civil war: thesis and outline.

Part 1 Thesis Statement: Industrialization after the Civil War expanded the United States economy and helped transform American social values, but it also introduced more corruption into the American political sphere.

Free The Three Major Aspects Of Industrialization Between 1865 And 1920 Included: Thesis Statement Sample

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Introduction and thesis statement Industrialization in the United States society, politics, and the economy was influenced immensely after the Civil War. The way of living of the citizens of the United States changed to a more convenient place to live but during this time, the government dealings were very corrupt.

Free Thesis Statement On History:

The civil rights movement, free greek mythology thesis statement sample.

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World War II Research Essay Topics

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Writing Research Papers
Writing Essays
English Grammar
M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
B.A., History, Armstrong State University

Students are often required to write a paper on a topic as broad as World War II , but you should know that the instructor will expect you to narrow your focus to a specific thesis. This is especially true if you are in high school or college. Narrow your focus by making a list of words, much like the list of words and phrases that are presented in bold type below. Then begin to explore related questions and come up with your own cool WWII topics. The answer to questions like these can become a good starting point for a thesis statement .

Culture and People

When the U.S. entered into war, everyday life across the country changed drastically. From civil rights, racism, and resistance movements to basic human needs like food, clothing, and medicine, the aspects of how life was impacted are immense.

African-Americans and civil rights. What impact did the war years have on the rights of African-Americans? What were they allowed or not allowed to do?
Animals. How were horses, dogs, birds, or other animals used? Did they play a special role?
Art. What art movements were inspired by wartime events? Is there one specific work of art that tells a story about the war?
Clothing. How was fashion impacted? How did clothing save lives or hinder movement? What materials were used or not used?
Domestic violence. Was there an increase or decrease in cases?
Families. Did new family customs develop? What was the impact on children of soldiers?
Fashion. Did fashion change significantly for civilians? What changes had to be made during wartime?
Food preservation. What new preservation and packaging methods were used during and after the war? How were these helpful?
Food rationing. How did rationing impact families? Were rations the same for different groups of people? Were soldiers affected by rations?
Love letters. What do letters tell us about relationships, families, and friendships? What about gender roles?
New words. What new vocabulary words emerged during and after WWII?
Nutrition. Were there battles that were lost or won because of the foods available? How did nutrition change at home during the war because of the availability of certain products?
Penicillin and other medicine. How was penicillin used? What medical developments occurred during and after the war?
Resistance movements. How did families deal with living in an occupied territory?
Sacrifices. How did family life change for the worse?
Women's work at home. How did women's work change at home during the war? What about after the war ended?

Economy and Workforce

For a nation that was still recovering from the Great Depression, World War II had a major impact on the economy and workforce. When the war began, the fate of the workforce changed overnight, American factories were repurposed to produce goods to support the war effort and women took jobs that were traditionally held by men, who were now off to war.

Advertising. How did food packaging change during the war? How did advertisements change in general? What were advertisements for?
Occupations. What new jobs were created? Who filled these new roles? Who filled the roles that were previously held by many of the men who went off to war?
Propaganda. How did society respond to the war? Do you know why?
Toys. How did the war impact the toys that were manufactured?
New products. What products were invented and became a part of popular culture? Were these products present only during war times, or did they exist after?

Military, Government, and War

Americans were mostly against entering the war up until the bombing of Pearl Harbor, after which support for the war grew, as did armed forces. Before the war, the US didn't have the large military forces it soon became known for, with the war resulting in over 16 million Americans in service. The role the military played in the war, and the impacts of the war itself, were vast.

America's entry into the war. How is the timing significant? What factors are not so well known?
Churchill, Winston. What role did this leader play that interests you most? How did his background prepare him for his role?
Clandestine operations. Governments went to great lengths to hide the true date, time, and place of their actions.
Destruction. Many historic cities and sites were destroyed in the U.K.—Liverpool, Manchester, London, and Coventry—and in other nations.
Hawaii. How did events impact families or society in general?
The Holocaust. Do you have access to any personal stories?
Italy. What special circumstances were in effect?
" Kilroy was here ." Why was this phrase important to soldiers?
Nationalist Socialist movement in America. What impact has this movement had on society and the government since WWII?
Political impact. How was your local town impacted politically and socially?
POW camps after the war. Where were they and what happened to them after the war? Here's a starting point: Some were turned into race tracks after the war!
Prisoners of war. How many POWs were there? How many made it home safely? What were some long-lasting effects?
Spies. Who were the spies? Were they men or women? What side were they on? What happened to spies that were caught?
Submarines. Were there enemy submarines on a coast near you? What role did submarines play in the war?
Surviving an attack. How were military units attacked? How did it feel to jump from a plane that was disabled?
Troop logistics. How were troop movements kept secret? What were some challenges of troop logistics?
Views on freedom. How was freedom curtailed or expanded?
Views on government's role. Where was the government's role expanded? What about governments elsewhere?
War crime trials. How were trials conducted? What were the political challenges or consequences? Who was or wasn't tried?
Weather. Were there battles that were lost or won because of the weather conditions? Were there places where people suffered more because of the weather?
Women in warfare. What roles did women play during the war? What surprises you about women's work in World War II?

Technology and Transportation

With the war came advancements in technology and transportation, impacting communications capabilities, the spread of news, and even entertainment.

Bridges and roads. What transportation-related developments came from wartime or postwar policies?
Communication. How did radio or other types of communication impact key events?
Motorcycles. What needs led to the development of folding motorcycles? Why was there widespread use of military motorcycles by the government?
Technology. What technology came from the war and how was it used after the war?
TV technology. When did televisions start to appear in homes and what is significant about the timing? What TV shows were inspired by the war and how realistic were they? How long did World War II affect TV programming?
Jet engine technology. What advances can be traced to WWII needs?
Radar. What role did radar play, if any?
Rockets. How important was rocket technology?
Shipbuilding achievements. The achievements were quite remarkable during the war. Why and how did they happen?

"America's Wars Fact Sheet." U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, May 2017.

'Unbroken' by Laura Hillenbrand Book Club Discussion Questions
Women and World War II
Understanding the Progressive Era
Women and World War II: Women at Work
Women and Work in World War I
Who Were the Viet Cong and How Did They Affect the War?
America and World War II
Women in World War I: Societal Impacts
Guns or Butter: The Nazi Economy
The US Economy in World War I
Mexican Involvement in World War II
Famous Americans Killed in World War II
History of Government Involvement in the American Economy
Canadian World War II Posters Gallery
Why Rosie the Riveter Is So Iconic
Rosie the Riveter and Her Sisters

How to Write War Essay: Russia Ukraine War

Understanding the Purpose and Scope of a War Essay

A condition of armed conflict between nations or between groups living in one nation is known as war. Sounds not like much fun, does it? Well, conflicts have been a part of human history for thousands of years, and as industry and technology have developed, they have grown more devastating. As awful as it might seem, a war typically occurs between a country or group of countries against a rival country to attain a goal through force. Civil and revolutionary wars are examples of internal conflicts that can occur inside a nation.

Your history class could ask you to write a war essay, or you might be personally interested in learning more about conflicts, in which case you might want to learn how to write an academic essay about war. In any scenario, we have gathered valuable guidance on how to organize war essays. Let's first examine the potential reasons for a conflict before moving on to the outline for a war essay.

Economic Gain - A country's desire to seize control of another country's resources frequently starts conflicts. Even when the proclaimed goal of a war is portrayed to the public as something more admirable, most wars have an economic motivation at their core, regardless of any other possible causes.
Territorial Gain - A nation may determine that it requires additional land for habitation, agriculture, or other uses. Additionally, the territory might serve as buffer zones between two violent foes.
Religion - Religious disputes can stem from extremely profound issues. They may go dormant for many years before suddenly resurfacing later.
Nationalism - In this sense, nationalism simply refers to the act of violently subjugating another country to demonstrate the country's superiority. This frequently manifests as an invasion.
Revenge - Warfare can frequently be motivated by the desire to punish, make up for, or simply exact revenge for perceived wrongdoing. Revenge has a connection to nationalism as well because when a nation has been wronged, its citizens are inspired by patriotism and zeal to take action.
Defensive War - In today's world, when military aggression is being questioned, governments will frequently claim that they are fighting in a solely protective manner against a rival or prospective aggressor and that their conflict is thus a 'just' conflict. These defensive conflicts may be especially contentious when conducted proactively, with the basic premise being that we are striking them before they strike us.

How to Write War Essay with a War Essay Outline

Just like in compare and contrast examples and any other forms of writing, an outline for a war essay assists you in organizing your research and creating a good flow. In general, you keep to the traditional three-part essay style, but you can adapt it as needed based on the length and criteria of your school. When planning your war paper, consider the following outline:

Introduction

Definition of war
Importance of studying wars
Thesis statement

Body Paragraphs

Causes of the War
Political reasons
Economic reasons
Social reasons
Historical reasons
Major Players in the War
Countries and their leaders
Military leaders
Allies and enemies
Strategies and Tactics
Military tactics and techniques
Strategic planning
Weapons and technology
Impact of the War
On the countries involved
On civilians and non-combatants
On the world as a whole
Summary of the main points
Final thoughts on the war
Suggestions for future research

If you found this outline template helpful, you can also use our physics help for further perfecting your academic assignments.

Begin With a Relevant Hook

A hook should be the focal point of the entire essay. A good hook for an essay on war can be an interesting statement, an emotional appeal, a thoughtful question, or a surprising fact or figure. It engages your audience and leaves them hungry for more information.

Follow Your Outline

An outline is the single most important organizational tool for essay writing. It allows the writer to visualize the overall structure of the essay and focus on the flow of information. The specifics of your outline depend on the type of essay you are writing. For example, some should focus on statistics and pure numbers, while others should dedicate more space to abstract arguments.

How to Discuss Tragedy, Loss, and Sentiment

War essays are particularly difficult to write because of the terrible nature of war. The life is destroyed, the loved ones lost, fighting, death, great many massacres and violence overwhelm, and hatred for the evil enemy, amongst other tragedies, make emotions run hot, which is why sensitivity is so important. Depending on the essay's purpose, there are different ways to deal with tragedy and sentiment.

The easiest one is to stick with objective data rather than deal with the personal experiences of those who may have been affected by these events. It can be hard to remain impartial, especially when writing about recent deaths and destruction. But it is your duty as a researcher to do so.

However, it’s not always possible to avoid these issues entirely. When you are forced to tackle them head-on, you should always be considerate and avoid passing swift and sweeping judgment.

Summing Up Your Writing

When you have finished presenting your case, you should finish it off with some sort of lesson it teaches us. Armed conflict is a major part of human nature yet. By analyzing the events that transpired, you should be able to make a compelling argument about the scale of the damage the war caused, as well as how to prevent it in the future.

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Russia Ukraine War

Russian President Vladimir Putin started the Russian invasion in the early hours of February 24 last year. According to him. the Ukrainian government had been committing genocide against Russian-speaking residents in the eastern Ukraine - Donbas region since 2014, calling the onslaught a 'special military operation.'

The Russian president further connected the assault to the NATO transatlantic military alliance commanded by the United States. He said the Russian military was determined to stop NATO from moving farther east and establishing a military presence in Ukraine, a part of the Soviet Union, until its fall in 1991.

All of Russia's justifications have been rejected by Ukraine and its ally Western Countries. Russia asserted its measures were defensive, while Ukraine declared an emergency and enacted martial law. According to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the administration's objective is not only to repel offensives but also to reclaim all Ukrainian land that the Russian Federation has taken, including Crimea.

Both sides of the conflict accuse the other of deploying indiscriminate force, which has resulted in many civilian deaths and displacements. According to current Ukraine news, due to the difficulty of counting the deceased due to ongoing combat, the death toll is likely far higher. In addition, countless Ukrainian refugees were compelled to leave their homeland in search of safety and stability abroad.

Diplomatic talks have been employed to try to end the Ukraine-Russia war. Several rounds of conversations have taken place in various places. However, the conflict is still raging as of April 2023, and there is no sign of a truce.

World War II

World War II raged from 1939 until 1945. Most of the world's superpowers took part in the conflict, fought between two military alliances headed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, and the Axis Powers, led by Germany, Italy, and Japan.

If you'd like to explore it more in-depth, consider using our history essay service for a World War 2 essay pdf sample!

After World War II, a persistent political conflict between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their allies became known as the Cold War. It's hard to say who was to blame for the cold war essay. American citizens have long harbored concerns about Soviet communism and expressed alarm over Joseph Stalin's brutal control of his own nation. On their side, the Soviets were angry at the Americans for delaying their participation in World War II, which led to the deaths of tens of millions of Russians, and for America's long-standing unwillingness to recognize the USSR as a genuine member of the world community.

Vietnam War

If you're thinking about writing the Vietnam War essay, you should know that it was a protracted military battle that lasted in Vietnam from 1955 to 1975. The North Vietnamese communist government fought South Vietnam and its main ally, the United States, in the lengthy, expensive, and contentious Vietnam War. The ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union exacerbated the issue. The Vietnam War claimed the lives of more than 3 million individuals, more than half of whom were Vietnamese civilians.

American Civil War

Consider writing an American Civil War essay where the Confederate States of America, a grouping of eleven southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860 and 1861, and the United States of America battled each other. If you're wondering what caused the civil war, you should know that the long-standing dispute about the legitimacy of slavery is largely responsible for how the war started.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

After over a century, the Israel-Palestine conflict has evolved into one of the most significant and current problems in the Middle East. A war that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people destroyed their homes and gave rise to terrorist organizations that still hold the region hostage. Simply described, it is a conflict between two groups of people for ownership of the same piece of land. One already resided there, while the other was compelled to immigrate to this country owing to rising antisemitism and later settled there. For Israelis and Palestinians alike, as well as for the larger area, the war continues to have substantial political, social, and economic repercussions.

The Syrian Civil War

Pro-democracy protests broke out in southern Deraa in March 2011 due to upheavals against oppressive leaders in neighboring nations. When the Syrian government employed lethal force to quell the unrest, widespread protests calling for the president's resignation broke out.

The country entered a civil war as the violence quickly increased. After hundreds of rebel organizations emerged, the fight quickly expanded beyond a confrontation between Syrians supporting or opposing Mr. Assad. Everyone believes a political solution is necessary, even though it doesn't seem like it will soon.

Russia-Ukraine War Essay Sample

With the Russian-Ukrainian war essay sample provided below from our paper writing experts, you can gain more insight into structuring a flawless paper.

Why is there a war between Russia and Ukraine?

Final Words

To understand our past and the present, we must study conflicts since they are a product of human nature and civilization. Our graduate essay writing service can produce any kind of essay you want, whether it is about World War II, the Cold War, or another conflict. Send us your specifications with your ' write my essay ' request, and let our skilled writers help you wow your professor!

Having Hard Time Writing on Wars?

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The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Thesis Statements

What this handout is about.

This handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can craft or refine one for your draft.

Introduction

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement:

tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
makes a claim that others might dispute.
is usually a single sentence near the beginning of your paper (most often, at the end of the first paragraph) that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.)

How do I create a thesis?

A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis” that presents a basic or main idea and an argument that you think you can support with evidence. Both the argument and your thesis are likely to need adjustment along the way.

Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started, see our handout on brainstorming .

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following :

Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. If the prompt isn’t phrased as a question, try to rephrase it. For example, “Discuss the effect of X on Y” can be rephrased as “What is the effect of X on Y?”
Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is likely to be “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

Suppose you are taking a course on contemporary communication, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: “Discuss the impact of social media on public awareness.” Looking back at your notes, you might start with this working thesis:

Social media impacts public awareness in both positive and negative ways.

You can use the questions above to help you revise this general statement into a stronger thesis.

Do I answer the question? You can analyze this if you rephrase “discuss the impact” as “what is the impact?” This way, you can see that you’ve answered the question only very generally with the vague “positive and negative ways.”
Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not likely. Only people who maintain that social media has a solely positive or solely negative impact could disagree.
Is my thesis statement specific enough? No. What are the positive effects? What are the negative effects?
Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? No. Why are they positive? How are they positive? What are their causes? Why are they negative? How are they negative? What are their causes?
Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? No. Why should anyone care about the positive and/or negative impact of social media?

After thinking about your answers to these questions, you decide to focus on the one impact you feel strongly about and have strong evidence for:

Because not every voice on social media is reliable, people have become much more critical consumers of information, and thus, more informed voters.

This version is a much stronger thesis! It answers the question, takes a specific position that others can challenge, and it gives a sense of why it matters.

Let’s try another. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn!” You grab a pad of paper and write:

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.

You begin to analyze your thesis:

Do I answer the question? No. The prompt asks you to analyze some aspect of the novel. Your working thesis is a statement of general appreciation for the entire novel.

Think about aspects of the novel that are important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.

Do I answer the question? Yes!
Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not really. This contrast is well-known and accepted.
Is my thesis statement specific enough? It’s getting there–you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation. However, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal.
Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? Not yet. Compare scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions and anything else that seems interesting.
Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?”

After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 2018. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing , 8th ed. New York: Pearson.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Knowledge Base
How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on January 11, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on August 15, 2023 by Eoghan Ryan.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . It usually comes near the end of your introduction .

Your thesis will look a bit different depending on the type of essay you’re writing. But the thesis statement should always clearly state the main idea you want to get across. Everything else in your essay should relate back to this idea.

You can write your thesis statement by following four simple steps:

Start with a question
Write your initial answer
Develop your answer
Refine your thesis statement

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What is a thesis statement, placement of the thesis statement, step 1: start with a question, step 2: write your initial answer, step 3: develop your answer, step 4: refine your thesis statement, types of thesis statements, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis statements.

A thesis statement summarizes the central points of your essay. It is a signpost telling the reader what the essay will argue and why.

The best thesis statements are:

Concise: A good thesis statement is short and sweet—don’t use more words than necessary. State your point clearly and directly in one or two sentences.
Contentious: Your thesis shouldn’t be a simple statement of fact that everyone already knows. A good thesis statement is a claim that requires further evidence or analysis to back it up.
Coherent: Everything mentioned in your thesis statement must be supported and explained in the rest of your paper.

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The thesis statement generally appears at the end of your essay introduction or research paper introduction .

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts and among young people more generally is hotly debated. For many who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education: the internet facilitates easier access to information, exposure to different perspectives, and a flexible learning environment for both students and teachers.

You should come up with an initial thesis, sometimes called a working thesis , early in the writing process . As soon as you’ve decided on your essay topic , you need to work out what you want to say about it—a clear thesis will give your essay direction and structure.

You might already have a question in your assignment, but if not, try to come up with your own. What would you like to find out or decide about your topic?

For example, you might ask:

After some initial research, you can formulate a tentative answer to this question. At this stage it can be simple, and it should guide the research process and writing process .

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Now you need to consider why this is your answer and how you will convince your reader to agree with you. As you read more about your topic and begin writing, your answer should get more detailed.

In your essay about the internet and education, the thesis states your position and sketches out the key arguments you’ll use to support it.

The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education because it facilitates easier access to information.

In your essay about braille, the thesis statement summarizes the key historical development that you’ll explain.

The invention of braille in the 19th century transformed the lives of blind people, allowing them to participate more actively in public life.

A strong thesis statement should tell the reader:

Why you hold this position
What they’ll learn from your essay
The key points of your argument or narrative

The final thesis statement doesn’t just state your position, but summarizes your overall argument or the entire topic you’re going to explain. To strengthen a weak thesis statement, it can help to consider the broader context of your topic.

These examples are more specific and show that you’ll explore your topic in depth.

Your thesis statement should match the goals of your essay, which vary depending on the type of essay you’re writing:

In an argumentative essay , your thesis statement should take a strong position. Your aim in the essay is to convince your reader of this thesis based on evidence and logical reasoning.
In an expository essay , you’ll aim to explain the facts of a topic or process. Your thesis statement doesn’t have to include a strong opinion in this case, but it should clearly state the central point you want to make, and mention the key elements you’ll explain.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

It gives your writing direction and focus.
It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

Follow these four steps to come up with a thesis statement :

Ask a question about your topic .
Write your initial answer.
Develop your answer by including reasons.
Refine your answer, adding more detail and nuance.

The thesis statement should be placed at the end of your essay introduction .

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Developing a Thesis Statement

Many papers you write require developing a thesis statement. In this section you’ll learn what a thesis statement is and how to write one.

Keep in mind that not all papers require thesis statements . If in doubt, please consult your instructor for assistance.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement . . .

Makes an argumentative assertion about a topic; it states the conclusions that you have reached about your topic.
Makes a promise to the reader about the scope, purpose, and direction of your paper.
Is focused and specific enough to be “proven” within the boundaries of your paper.
Is generally located near the end of the introduction ; sometimes, in a long paper, the thesis will be expressed in several sentences or in an entire paragraph.
Identifies the relationships between the pieces of evidence that you are using to support your argument.

Not all papers require thesis statements! Ask your instructor if you’re in doubt whether you need one.

Identify a topic

Your topic is the subject about which you will write. Your assignment may suggest several ways of looking at a topic; or it may name a fairly general concept that you will explore or analyze in your paper.

Consider what your assignment asks you to do

Inform yourself about your topic, focus on one aspect of your topic, ask yourself whether your topic is worthy of your efforts, generate a topic from an assignment.

Below are some possible topics based on sample assignments.

Sample assignment 1

Analyze Spain’s neutrality in World War II.

Identified topic

Franco’s role in the diplomatic relationships between the Allies and the Axis

This topic avoids generalities such as “Spain” and “World War II,” addressing instead on Franco’s role (a specific aspect of “Spain”) and the diplomatic relations between the Allies and Axis (a specific aspect of World War II).

Sample assignment 2

Analyze one of Homer’s epic similes in the Iliad.

The relationship between the portrayal of warfare and the epic simile about Simoisius at 4.547-64.

This topic focuses on a single simile and relates it to a single aspect of the Iliad ( warfare being a major theme in that work).

Developing a Thesis Statement–Additional information

Your assignment may suggest several ways of looking at a topic, or it may name a fairly general concept that you will explore or analyze in your paper. You’ll want to read your assignment carefully, looking for key terms that you can use to focus your topic.

Sample assignment: Analyze Spain’s neutrality in World War II Key terms: analyze, Spain’s neutrality, World War II

After you’ve identified the key words in your topic, the next step is to read about them in several sources, or generate as much information as possible through an analysis of your topic. Obviously, the more material or knowledge you have, the more possibilities will be available for a strong argument. For the sample assignment above, you’ll want to look at books and articles on World War II in general, and Spain’s neutrality in particular.

As you consider your options, you must decide to focus on one aspect of your topic. This means that you cannot include everything you’ve learned about your topic, nor should you go off in several directions. If you end up covering too many different aspects of a topic, your paper will sprawl and be unconvincing in its argument, and it most likely will not fulfull the assignment requirements.

For the sample assignment above, both Spain’s neutrality and World War II are topics far too broad to explore in a paper. You may instead decide to focus on Franco’s role in the diplomatic relationships between the Allies and the Axis , which narrows down what aspects of Spain’s neutrality and World War II you want to discuss, as well as establishes a specific link between those two aspects.

Before you go too far, however, ask yourself whether your topic is worthy of your efforts. Try to avoid topics that already have too much written about them (i.e., “eating disorders and body image among adolescent women”) or that simply are not important (i.e. “why I like ice cream”). These topics may lead to a thesis that is either dry fact or a weird claim that cannot be supported. A good thesis falls somewhere between the two extremes. To arrive at this point, ask yourself what is new, interesting, contestable, or controversial about your topic.

As you work on your thesis, remember to keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times . Sometimes your thesis needs to evolve as you develop new insights, find new evidence, or take a different approach to your topic.

Derive a main point from topic

Once you have a topic, you will have to decide what the main point of your paper will be. This point, the “controlling idea,” becomes the core of your argument (thesis statement) and it is the unifying idea to which you will relate all your sub-theses. You can then turn this “controlling idea” into a purpose statement about what you intend to do in your paper.

Look for patterns in your evidence

Compose a purpose statement.

Consult the examples below for suggestions on how to look for patterns in your evidence and construct a purpose statement.

Franco first tried to negotiate with the Axis
Franco turned to the Allies when he couldn’t get some concessions that he wanted from the Axis

Possible conclusion:

Spain’s neutrality in WWII occurred for an entirely personal reason: Franco’s desire to preserve his own (and Spain’s) power.

Purpose statement

This paper will analyze Franco’s diplomacy during World War II to see how it contributed to Spain’s neutrality.

The simile compares Simoisius to a tree, which is a peaceful, natural image.
The tree in the simile is chopped down to make wheels for a chariot, which is an object used in warfare.

At first, the simile seems to take the reader away from the world of warfare, but we end up back in that world by the end.

This paper will analyze the way the simile about Simoisius at 4.547-64 moves in and out of the world of warfare.

Derive purpose statement from topic

To find out what your “controlling idea” is, you have to examine and evaluate your evidence . As you consider your evidence, you may notice patterns emerging, data repeated in more than one source, or facts that favor one view more than another. These patterns or data may then lead you to some conclusions about your topic and suggest that you can successfully argue for one idea better than another.

For instance, you might find out that Franco first tried to negotiate with the Axis, but when he couldn’t get some concessions that he wanted from them, he turned to the Allies. As you read more about Franco’s decisions, you may conclude that Spain’s neutrality in WWII occurred for an entirely personal reason: his desire to preserve his own (and Spain’s) power. Based on this conclusion, you can then write a trial thesis statement to help you decide what material belongs in your paper.

Sometimes you won’t be able to find a focus or identify your “spin” or specific argument immediately. Like some writers, you might begin with a purpose statement just to get yourself going. A purpose statement is one or more sentences that announce your topic and indicate the structure of the paper but do not state the conclusions you have drawn . Thus, you might begin with something like this:

This paper will look at modern language to see if it reflects male dominance or female oppression.
I plan to analyze anger and derision in offensive language to see if they represent a challenge of society’s authority.

At some point, you can turn a purpose statement into a thesis statement. As you think and write about your topic, you can restrict, clarify, and refine your argument, crafting your thesis statement to reflect your thinking.

As you work on your thesis, remember to keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times. Sometimes your thesis needs to evolve as you develop new insights, find new evidence, or take a different approach to your topic.

Compose a draft thesis statement

If you are writing a paper that will have an argumentative thesis and are having trouble getting started, the techniques in the table below may help you develop a temporary or “working” thesis statement.

Begin with a purpose statement that you will later turn into a thesis statement.

Assignment: Discuss the history of the Reform Party and explain its influence on the 1990 presidential and Congressional election.

Purpose Statement: This paper briefly sketches the history of the grassroots, conservative, Perot-led Reform Party and analyzes how it influenced the economic and social ideologies of the two mainstream parties.

Question-to-Assertion

If your assignment asks a specific question(s), turn the question(s) into an assertion and give reasons why it is true or reasons for your opinion.

Assignment : What do Aylmer and Rappaccini have to be proud of? Why aren’t they satisfied with these things? How does pride, as demonstrated in “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” lead to unexpected problems?

Beginning thesis statement: Alymer and Rappaccinni are proud of their great knowledge; however, they are also very greedy and are driven to use their knowledge to alter some aspect of nature as a test of their ability. Evil results when they try to “play God.”

Write a sentence that summarizes the main idea of the essay you plan to write.

Main idea: The reason some toys succeed in the market is that they appeal to the consumers’ sense of the ridiculous and their basic desire to laugh at themselves.

Make a list of the ideas that you want to include; consider the ideas and try to group them.

nature = peaceful
war matériel = violent (competes with 1?)
need for time and space to mourn the dead
war is inescapable (competes with 3?)

Use a formula to arrive at a working thesis statement (you will revise this later).

although most readers of _______ have argued that _______, closer examination shows that _______.
_______ uses _______ and _____ to prove that ________.
phenomenon x is a result of the combination of __________, __________, and _________.

What to keep in mind as you draft an initial thesis statement

Beginning statements obtained through the methods illustrated above can serve as a framework for planning or drafting your paper, but remember they’re not yet the specific, argumentative thesis you want for the final version of your paper. In fact, in its first stages, a thesis statement usually is ill-formed or rough and serves only as a planning tool.

As you write, you may discover evidence that does not fit your temporary or “working” thesis. Or you may reach deeper insights about your topic as you do more research, and you will find that your thesis statement has to be more complicated to match the evidence that you want to use.

You must be willing to reject or omit some evidence in order to keep your paper cohesive and your reader focused. Or you may have to revise your thesis to match the evidence and insights that you want to discuss. Read your draft carefully, noting the conclusions you have drawn and the major ideas which support or prove those conclusions. These will be the elements of your final thesis statement.

Sometimes you will not be able to identify these elements in your early drafts, but as you consider how your argument is developing and how your evidence supports your main idea, ask yourself, “ What is the main point that I want to prove/discuss? ” and “ How will I convince the reader that this is true? ” When you can answer these questions, then you can begin to refine the thesis statement.

Refine and polish the thesis statement

To get to your final thesis, you’ll need to refine your draft thesis so that it’s specific and arguable.

Ask if your draft thesis addresses the assignment
Question each part of your draft thesis
Clarify vague phrases and assertions
Investigate alternatives to your draft thesis

Consult the example below for suggestions on how to refine your draft thesis statement.

Sample Assignment

Choose an activity and define it as a symbol of American culture. Your essay should cause the reader to think critically about the society which produces and enjoys that activity.

Ask The phenomenon of drive-in facilities is an interesting symbol of american culture, and these facilities demonstrate significant characteristics of our society.This statement does not fulfill the assignment because it does not require the reader to think critically about society.

Drive-ins are an interesting symbol of American culture because they represent Americans’ significant creativity and business ingenuity.

Among the types of drive-in facilities familiar during the twentieth century, drive-in movie theaters best represent American creativity, not merely because they were the forerunner of later drive-ins and drive-throughs, but because of their impact on our culture: they changed our relationship to the automobile, changed the way people experienced movies, and changed movie-going into a family activity.

While drive-in facilities such as those at fast-food establishments, banks, pharmacies, and dry cleaners symbolize America’s economic ingenuity, they also have affected our personal standards.

While drive-in facilities such as those at fast- food restaurants, banks, pharmacies, and dry cleaners symbolize (1) Americans’ business ingenuity, they also have contributed (2) to an increasing homogenization of our culture, (3) a willingness to depersonalize relationships with others, and (4) a tendency to sacrifice quality for convenience.

This statement is now specific and fulfills all parts of the assignment. This version, like any good thesis, is not self-evident; its points, 1-4, will have to be proven with evidence in the body of the paper. The numbers in this statement indicate the order in which the points will be presented. Depending on the length of the paper, there could be one paragraph for each numbered item or there could be blocks of paragraph for even pages for each one.

Complete the final thesis statement

The bottom line.

As you move through the process of crafting a thesis, you’ll need to remember four things:

Context matters! Think about your course materials and lectures. Try to relate your thesis to the ideas your instructor is discussing.
As you go through the process described in this section, always keep your assignment in mind . You will be more successful when your thesis (and paper) responds to the assignment than if it argues a semi-related idea.
Your thesis statement should be precise, focused, and contestable ; it should predict the sub-theses or blocks of information that you will use to prove your argument.
Make sure that you keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times. Change your thesis as your paper evolves, because you do not want your thesis to promise more than your paper actually delivers.

In the beginning, the thesis statement was a tool to help you sharpen your focus, limit material and establish the paper’s purpose. When your paper is finished, however, the thesis statement becomes a tool for your reader. It tells the reader what you have learned about your topic and what evidence led you to your conclusion. It keeps the reader on track–well able to understand and appreciate your argument.

Writing Process and Structure

This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.

Getting Started with Your Paper

Interpreting Writing Assignments from Your Courses

Generating Ideas for

Creating an Argument

Thesis vs. Purpose Statements

Architecture of Arguments

Working with Sources

Quoting and Paraphrasing Sources

Using Literary Quotations

Citing Sources in Your Paper

Drafting Your Paper

Generating Ideas for Your Paper

Introductions

Paragraphing

Developing Strategic Transitions

Conclusions

Revising Your Paper

Peer Reviews

Reverse Outlines

Revising an Argumentative Paper

Revision Strategies for Longer Projects

Finishing Your Paper

Twelve Common Errors: An Editing Checklist

How to Proofread your Paper

Writing Collaboratively

Collaborative and Group Writing

World War 2 Essay: Outline + 100 WW2 Research Topics

This time you have to write a World War II essay, paper, or thesis. It means that you have a perfect chance to refresh those memories about the war that some of us might forget.

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

So many words can be said about the war in that it seems you will simply get lost in a variety of WW2 research topics and questions.

Still, you do not know what to write about in your World War 2 essay for middle school. Of course, you may look through several free essays in search of ideas. However, you may find our suggestions interesting or get instant writing help right here.

🔝 Top 10 Topics
🎓 Essay Topics for Student
🎖️ WW2 Argumentative Essay Topics
💡 More Topic Examples
📑 Outline Examples
💁 General Info

🔗 References

🔝 top 10 ww2 essay topics.

Was the battle of Dunkirk a failure?
WWII technologies that changed our lives
The outcome of the Nuremberg trials
Medical experiments during the Holocaust
Battle of Midway as a turning point in WWII
Why is penicillin a wonder of World War 2?
Why is the Bataan Death March a war crime?
The impact of propaganda during WWII
Racial segregation in the armed forces during WWII
What makes the Battle of Stalingrad the deadliest in WWII?

🎓 WW2 Essay Topics for Student

Contributions of women pilots in World War II
“Gesture Life” and “Maus”: post-World War II injuries
The federal government’s actions during World War II
Rebuilding Europe after World War II
World War II in Europe: development and costs
World War II: maskirovka military deception and denials operations
World War II in the Pacific region
The second World War’s historical aspects
The rise and fall of communism after World War II
South Africa in World War II
Battle of the Midway during World War II
World War II: the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
What effect did the World War II wartime experience have on African Americans?
The battle of Britain during World War II
World War II was a continuation of World War I
Communism in Europe and America after World War II
Camps for displaced persons after the end of World War II
Nazis prosecution for the World War II crimes
World War II was avoidable
Nazi Germany’s resources and demise in World War II
The United States and East Asia since World War II
Japan after World War II: main events and modifications
Atomic bomb technology and World War II outcomes
Pacific theater of World War II
Impact of World War II on Balkan nationalism, states and societies
World War II: internment of the Japanese Americans
World War II in “The Rape of Europa” documentary
The characteristics of successful warfare after the second World War
Great Depression and World War II impact on the United States economy
Battle of the Bulge during World War II
Escape from Sobibor: World War 2 holocaust
World War II: why Germans lost and allies won
World War II impact on racial issues in the United States
Women’s representations before and after World War II
United States-Japan relations during World War II
Second World War: cause and technology
American foreign policy since World War II
World War II, the Cold War and New Europe
The Crete battle of World War II
Home front of the United States during the second World War

🎖️ WW2: Argumentative Essay Topics

As it happens quite often, teachers like to ask students to write an essay on World War II. However, don’t expect it to be easy. It should be something more narrow than the essay about the causes of World War II.

You can use some practical techniques to come up with a suitable topic. For instance, some of the most popular ones are mind mapping and brainstorming. Don’t forget to use questions to create a perfect thesis statement.

But we have made your life so much easier and prepared this comprehensive list of WWII argumentative essay topics. There are also short hints to help you start with your paper.

Just in 1 hour! We will write you a plagiarism-free paper in hardly more than 1 hour

🔫 World War 2 Essay Topics: Military

Exploring the effects of WWII on life in Hawaii. Research the impact of those events on the social life of families living there.
Family memories of the Holocaust . Dig deep and see if you have any (distant) relatives who were the witnesses.
Something unique about Italy in WWII. Look into some exceptional circumstances that occurred there at the time of the war.
The origins of the phrase “Kilroy was here.” It is quite a controversial topic, so you might want to study all the sources you can find.
Nationalist Socialists: examine the importance of the movement in the US. What was its social impact since the war? Describe this in your WW2 essay.
Write about your town/city. Conduct research to find out about the political changes in your hometown related to war.
The transformation of the prisoner-of-war camps . Write about what happened to the POW camps after the end of the war.
The fate of the prisoners of war. Study the documents to get to know what happened to them and whether they continued their healthy lives.
Describe the spies that participated in WWII . Who were they? What usually happened to those who were caught by different sides?
The role of women . Discover the contribution of the weaker sex in warfare and write about the most surprising facts.
How important were the weather conditions for the outcomes of WWII ? Find out which battles were lost or won due to the weather.
War crimes: consequences. Conduct research to answer the questions about the war crime trials, their outcomes, and the most notorious cases.
Research the role of the US government in WWII . Compare it to the other governments and analyze the strategies they were using.
The sense of freedom during the war. For this WW2 essay topic, you would need to look critically at how freedom was suppressed or expanded.
What was so special about the movements of the troop? Here, you would be expected to provide the answers concerning the secrecy and challenges.
The experiences of the attack survivors. Find out what was happening during the attack on the military units and the planes.

🤖 World War 2 Essay Topics: Technology

The role of the submarines in the war. This World War II research topic is all about the importance of the submarines.
Estimate the destruction in the UK. Find out how many historical places were wiped out as a result of the war.
Was Winston Churchill prepared for it? Write about the background of that influential leader and how it helped him at the wartime.
Write about the time the US entered the war . Are there any facts that we still don’t know well enough? What about the timing?
The miracle of the radar. This WW2 essay topic would be interesting for those who are fascinated by technology. What was the role of that device in WWII?
Rocket technology and the war. Write about the importance of the rockets and what the moment when they changed the course of the war.
Building the ultimate warship. What was the driving force of the developments in the field of shipbuilding during WWII?
Describe the main means of communication during the war. Don’t forget to mention the radio and its impact on the major events in your World War 2 essay.
The development of bridges and roads. What were the main technological achievements in this field that still impact our everyday life?
Explain the rise of the popularity of motorcycles during the war. Feel free to mention the folding bikes and their invention.
The technology we have thanks to the war. Dedicate your WW2 essay to the inventions we can’t live without nowadays that were created during the war.
What about TVs? You can narrow down this World War II essay question as you wish. For example, write about the shows dedicated to the war.
The jet engines developed by the needs of war. Look into the reasons why those engines were created during WWII .

💰 WW2 Research Topics: Economy

What about propaganda ? This WWII essay should describe how people in the US were reacting to the war and why.
The product of war: pop culture elements. Think about products that became popular and maybe even stayed a part of culture after the war ended.
Toy story: WWII edition. Find out how the war influenced the toy production and whether it was a part of propaganda.
The major changes in the job market sponsored by WWII. What new roles suddenly appeared on the job market, thanks to the war?
The power of advertising . To narrow it down, you can even mention how the food packaging was adjusted and why.

🎨 WW2 Research Topics: Culture

Discover the world of fashion during the wartime . It is one of the cool WWII essay topics. It should be about the new trends for civilians at the time.
The analysis of artworks created during WWII . Choose a piece of art inspired by war and analyze it. What is its story?
New times require new family traditions. How were the customs inside the families changed by the war? What about raising children? Highlight these issues in your World War 2 essay.
The secrets of the love letters during the war. This short essay would require you to dig into the archives and find out what the letters could tell us about the relationships back then.
What was the unique role of animals in WWII? Dedicate your writing to some type of animal and discuss how they were used.
The rights of African-Americans during the time of war . Write about how their civil rights were changed and try to find the root causes.
Food preservation methods: another revolution. This example is all about food and how it was packed and preserved during the war.
The cases of domestic violence during the cold war. Were the rates higher at the time? Did political tension cause it? This is also a great World War 2 essay topic.
Expanding the vocabulary. Just like any other part of life, the language also went through some changes. What were the new words that emerged?
The troubled life of housewife during WWII . Describe the work women used to do at the wartime and how it was changed.
Still resisting: the movements created by families. Here, you should concentrate on the experience of the families that live in the occupied territories.
Lifesaving food: the role of nutrition in WWII. Try to research and find the battles that were lost or won due to the availability of food.
The impact of food rationing on soldiers and families. Write your WW2 essay about the struggles of families and different groups of people.
What were the common sacrifices of families during the war ? In this essay, you would need to look into the negative changes in families’ lifestyles.
The miracle of penicillin : WWII. This research aims to uncover the importance of penicillin or any other medicine of your choice.
The clothes that saved lives. Write about different types of clothing and materials that were used to help the soldiers on the battlefield.

💡 World War 2 Essay: More Topic Examples

Below, other suggestions on what you might write about in essays on World War II are presented:

Present in Your World War 2 Essay Alternative Decisions That Could Have Changed the Course of the War Dramatically

Such World War 2 essay will aim to explore some of the greatest decision making mistakes of the world leaders. We do not mean that you should discuss some miraculous history events like “what if Hitler had a heart attack.” In the World War 2 essay devoted to this problem, give realistic alternative decisions that were considered but not realized. Analyze those alternatives that could have changed the end of the war.

“In Your World War Ii Essay, Try to Answer the Question “When Did Hitler Lose the War?”

When did Adolf Hitler lose his chance to win World War II ? What was it? These are the World War 2 essay questions you have to answer. Analyze different viewpoints of historians and present your opinion in the essay on World War 2.

Cover the Themes of Atrocity and War-Crimes in the World War 2 Essay

Acts of genocides and atrocity against civil population occurred in such countries as Japan, the Soviet Union , and Germany. Some of them were so horrific and immense that they changed the psyche of many people and different nations. When disclosing this theme in the Second World War essay, tell about Nazi concentration camps, “Death-camps,” the Holocaust , etc.

If you are interested in other  history essay  topics, read our hints for writing terrorism essays . And don’t forget to tell us in comments below your opinion about the World War 2.

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📑 World War 2 Essay: Outline Examples

The next is creating a neat outline, which would become a massive help for you during the process of writing. Find examples of World War II essay outlines below!

Example 1. Analyze how some alternative decisions could have changed the course of World War II

Try to pick something realistic. Merely writing that if Hitler suddenly died and the war had never happened is just dull. Get creative and maybe take as a basis some real facts that were considered but never came into life.

In your World War II essay introduction , present the chosen decision. Include your thesis statement in this part as well. It should be your hypothesis concerning the topic.
In the main body , give at least three arguments why and how that decision would have changed things. Here, you prove your hypothesis to be right. You may add one counter-argument if you wish. For instance, include the opinion of a historian saying that it wouldn’t change anything.
In conclusion , state your opinion once again, which is now supported by arguments.

Example 2. When did it happen that Germany lost the war?

Think about when Adolf Hitler might have missed his chance to win World War II. What was it? Include some details. Once again, do your research and consider the opinions of different historians.

In the introduction to this World War 2 essay , present your point of view. In the thesis statement, write the answer to World War II essay questions clearly and coherently.
The main body here is for you to include three to five pieces of evidence that may prove you right. If you decide to write an argumentative essay, you might add some contradicting facts, too.
In the last part of your writing, focus on paraphrasing your thesis statement.

Example 3. World War II: discuss war crimes and atrocity

This essay title is related to all acts of cruelty against the civil population, including genocides. You may want to narrow it down according to your preferences. For instance, you can talk about how concentration camps created by Nazis have changed the people’s psyche.

Introduce this WW2 essay topic by stating how people have changed after surviving the Death Camps. It might be a good idea to include a sentence at the beginning that may serve as a hook to make your readers interested.
In the body , present not less than three examples of what you think might be relevant. Those should be proven historical facts if you want your essay to be persuasive.
Conclude by providing a summary of the facts presented in the main body. Add the paraphrased thesis statement.

💁 World War 2: General Information

World war ii: timeline.

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. And on September 3, 1939, France and Britain, fulfilling their obligations to Poland, declared war on Germany and World War II began.

However, the beginning of World War II was preceded by some events, inextricably related:

September 18, 1931. Japan attacked Manchuria
October 2, 1935 – May 1936. Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia, conquered and annexed it
October 25 – November 1, 1936. On October 25, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy concluded a cooperation agreement. November 1 announced the creation of the “ Rome-Berlin Axis “
November 25, 1936. Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact, directed against the USSR and the international communist movement
July 7, 1937. Japan invaded China. The World War II began in the Pacific
11-13 March 1938. Germany joins Austria (the so-called Anschluss)
September 29, 1938. Germany, Italy, Great Britain and France signed the Munich agreement obliging the Czechoslovak Republic to cede Nazi Germany to the Sudetenland (where the critical Czechoslovak fortifications were located)
14-15 March 1939. Under pressure from Germany, the Slovaks declared their independence and created the Slovak Republic. The Germans broke the Munich agreement , occupied the Czech lands, and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

March 31, 1939. France and the United Kingdom provided guarantees of the inviolability of the borders of Poland
7-15 April 1939. Fascist Italy attacked Albania and annexed it
August 23, 1939. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact and a secret annex to it, according to which Europe was divided into spheres of influence

Some scientists think that the World War II was a continuation of the World War I ended in 1918.

September 2, 1945, is the date when the World War II ended. Japan, agreed to unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945, officially capitulates, thereby putting an end to World War II.

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World War II: Key Facts

Perhaps, the World War II was one the most destructive wars in modern history. About 27,000 people were killed each day from September 1, 1939, to September 2, 1945.
The primary opponents were Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Imperial Japan on the one hand, and the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France the United States , and China on the other.
Germany capitulated on May 7, 1945 . At the same time, Japan continued to fight for another four months before their capitulation on September 2. Atomic bombs, dropped by American troops on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were first used against Japan.
The end of the war was marked by Britain losing most of its empire . At the same time, World War II accelerated the revival of the US and Soviet economies as global superpowers.
After the end of the World War II, the “Cold War” between the US and the USSR started.

World War 2: Casualties

The exact World War II casualties remain unknown. However, historians name that the total number of victims was over 60 million people including military and civilians killed. Below you’ll find the list of states suffered the highest losses:

42,000,000 people–USSR
9,000,000 people–Germany
4,000,000 people–China
3,000,000 people–Japan

World War II: Causes

Perhaps, there were many prerequisites for World War II:

Japan’s victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) opened the door for Japanese expansion in the Asia-Pacific region
The US Navy first developed plans to prepare for a naval war with Japan in 1890
The Great Depression, and the global recession that followed
The coming to power of Hitler and his statement about the injustice of the Versailles Treaty, signed in 1918
The creation in 1935 of the Luftwaffe, as a direct violation of the 1919 treaty
Remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936
Anschluss of Austria and the annexation of part of Czechoslovakia
Italy’s desire to create a Third Rome and Japan’s goal to create an independent state with the Pan-Asian sphere of influence

World War II: Results

The results of World War II are not limited to losses and destruction. As a result of the war, the face of the world changed: new borders and new states appeared, new tendencies of social development emerged, and significant inventions were made.

The war gave a strong impetus to the development of science and technology. Radar, jet aircraft, ballistic missiles, antibiotics, electronic computers and many other discoveries were made or entered into widespread use during the war. The foundations of the scientific and technological revolution were laid, which transformed and continued to change the postwar world.

The ideology of fascism, Nazism, racism, colonialism thoroughly discredited itself; on the contrary, the ideas of anti-fascism, anti-colonialism, democracy, and socialism gained wide popularity.

The human rights recorded in the UN Charter are internationally recognized. The influence of parties and groups that fought for democracy and social transformations–communists, socialists, social democrats, Christian democrats and other democratic forces, has sharply increased.

In many countries, significant reforms carried out: partial nationalization of industry and banks, the creation of a state system of social insurance, the expansion of workers’ rights. In some countries, including France, Italy, Germany, Japan, have adopted new, democratic constitutions. There was a profound renewal of the society, democratization of state and public institutions.

The colonial system disintegration was another significant result and consequence of the Second World War. Before the war, the vast majority of the world’s population lived in colonies, the area, and population of which many times exceeded the metropolitan countries: Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, and Japan.

During the World War 2 and after its end, part of the dependent and colonial countries (Syria, Lebanon, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Burma, Philippines, and Korea) declared itself independent. In 1947, India became independent, divided into two dominions: India and Pakistan. The intense process of liberation of the colonial peoples began, which continued until the complete abolition of the colonies in the second half of the twentieth century.

As a result of the war, the balance of forces in the world has changed dramatically. Germany, Italy, Japan were defeated, for a time turned into dependent countries, occupied by foreign troops. The war destroyed their economy, and they for many years could not compete with their former competitors.

Compared with the pre-war time, the positions of France and even Great Britain weakened considerably. The USA came out of the war significantly strengthened. Having surpassed all other countries economically and militarily, the United States became the sole leader of the capitalist world.

The second “superpower” was the Soviet Union. By the end of the war, the Soviet Union had the most massive land army in the world and substantial industrial potential. The USSR Armed Forces were in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe, East Germany and North Korea.

Some countries liberated by the Soviet Union took the road of non-capitalist development. After the liberation from the occupiers in Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, people’s democratic governments were established with the participation or under the leadership of the Communists, who began profound social transformations. By the Yalta agreements , these countries were considered to be the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union and were in fact under its control.

If the United States became the leader of the capitalist world, then the Soviet Union led the social forces that opposed capitalism. Two main poles of attraction of the world forces, conventionally called the East and the West, were formed; began to build two ideological and military-political blocs, the confrontation of which largely determined the structure of the post-war bipolar world.

The anti-fascist coalition split. Its participants came into conflict with each other, and the “ Cold War ” that lasted more than 45 years, until the collapse of the USSR.

This might be interesting for you:

Interesting History Essay Topics and Events to Write About
A List of History Websites for a Perfect Research
Essay on India after Independence: How-to Guide and Prompts
World War II Research Essay Topics: ThoughtCo
Coming in from the Cold: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association
A guide to historical research (BBC)
Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: The New York Times
Why Hitler’s grand plan during the second world war collapsed: The Guardian
Historical Research: ECU
Humanities Research Strategies: Historical Methodologies (USC Libraries)
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Thanks for these ideas for essays on World War II. These are what I need for my paper about WWII. Now I can start writing my essay on World War II.

To write World War II essays is very instructive – to know the reasons, the course of war events, the results. These all are necessary to comprehend and debar World War III as humanity won’t go through it!

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Interesting 50 Civil War Topics For Research Paper

Are you looking for an interesting research topic for your next civil war project, homework, or assignment? When you’re assigned a research paper task, it can be tough to draft new and interesting civil war topics to write about. But don’t worry – we’ve got you covered! In American history, the Civil War was a conflict lasting from 1861 to 1865. The Civil War took place due to growing tensions between Northern and Southern states. The primary reason for the conflict was that Southern states wanted to preserve slavery, while Northern states frowned upon it.

Civil War Topic Ideas for Students

Best civil war research paper topics, educative united states history research topics, straightforward topics on civil war research projects, captivating civil war thesis topics, outstanding civil war debate topics, thoughtful us history term paper topics, interesting us history topics for research paper, exciting historical argument topics, talk to us for the most interesting topics in history.

This article provides a list of 50 possible civil war paper topics to choose from. Whether you are a high school student or a graduate student, there is sure to be a topic that interests you. So get started today and get that grade you’ve always wanted. And more so, prepare your way to become an expert on the issues around the civil war.

Essentially, students need to think about their paper mission before exhausting the civil war topic ideas. The same applies when answering questions about the civil war causes. Here are some interesting civil war research paper topic ideas:

Arguing for or against is one of the most common disputes over the war.
Expounding on what states gain by interfering with civil war.
Do most residents nobly fight to defend their land and honor?
Discuss a lesser-known conflict that took place in a particular community.
You can also come up with topics about healers, women, soldiers, nurses, and their relationship with civil war.

Whether you are working on civil war writing prompts or the final civil war research project in your course, give the best. Some topics that trigger civil war debate questions include:

Civil and how government control comes into play.
Why civil war was not a natural occurrence.
The cultural changes were witnessed in the US after the war.
What economic interests made people fight during the civil war?
Who was the Civil war mastermind?

Students looking forward to writing a potentially interesting research paper on the civil war subject need to do some basic research. These history topics are a game-changer:

Civil war duration and mental health of participants.
What triggered the English civil war? The real mistake.
Was slavery that extensive during the civil war?
How civil war helped US authorities.
A retrospective view on women and civil rights violations during the civil war.

Your topics of the civil war must show your prowess in what you write. That’s why you need to be very keen on civil war topics to write about. Here’s a list of 10 civil war topics for a research paper worth considering:

How the Southern culture of honor contributed to the coming of the civil war
How politics changed after the civil war
Ethnic Polarization and civil war length
The long-term impact of the war on soldiers
Civil war and economic growth in the United States

Are you struggling to write civil war topics? Worry not. The best US history paper topics and the battle of Gettysburg project ideas in this list will enable you to achieve what you want. They include:

How the North strategized the war for a win.
Civil war problems still stand to date.
What days did the civil war happen at maximum?
The role of rivers in civil war.
How religion and civil war collided.

If your civil war topics for research capture what your examiners want, be ready for top grades. As you sit for your civil war research paper, these topics about the civil war will come in handy:

Civil war and long-term effect on future generations.
How the west determined the side that won the war.
The significance of communication among the societies during the civil war.
Civil war, slavery, and participants of civil war: The ultimate relationship.
North Carolina leadership contributions that transformed the civil war.

Just like you need the best civil war project topics for your civil war research papers, your civil war paper on debate also deserves an outstanding civil war topics list. That said, here are interesting history paper topics to consider:

How the North succeeded in winning the war.
Was the South able to rebuild fast after the Civil War?
Does racial injustice root down from the days of civil war?
What civil war chronology would have worked during the civil war?
Did the civil war change how American history used to trend?

Whether your goal is to settle on the best argumentative history topics and deliver an excellent paper or come up with random us history topics for a research paper, you must get the best. Let’s look at some of the best topics for American history research papers.

The significance of geography in determining which states seceded from the Union
The civil war cause that will forever be remembered in American history
The role of African-American soldiers in winning freedom.
The most notable battles of the civil war
The cultural, political, and social impact of the civil war

Civil war topics for projects that need detailed analysis must be well thought out. You need war research topics that enable you to write a civil war thesis statement that converts. Use these civil war ideas for your research papers on the civil war:

The role of blockades in winning the war.
Abraham Lincoln’s effects on American history: Ending slavery.
Effects of slavery: A significant factor in causing the war.
The collapse of the economy and society in the South following the Civil War.
How African-American soldiers fought for their freedom.

Topics for history papers don’t have to be boring. If you’re keen enough, many good questions about the civil war will allow you to write very exciting argument topics. Here are American history topics to write about :

Were women a major cause of the Civil War?
Was the United States able to avoid civil war before it happened?
To what extent did civil war contribute to industrialization: An expert view.
Relationship between civil war and feminism: Dating back in 1861.
The reality of civil war on men.

Some civil war discussion questions you might have come across will give you civil war project ideas for high school or university paper writing. But are these civil war project ideas enough? You must think over and beyond.

Talk to us for history assignment help and get the best topic and a civil war thesis statement that will convince your examiner. Remember, a good research paper will guarantee an excellent final grade and a full academic scholarship.

Developing a Thesis Statement

A thesis must be focused (specific and narrow enough for the scope of the assignment) arguable (not commonly accepted, open to debate) researchable (able to be verified or supported by evidence)

An Example Thesis Statement

Topic: World War II

Fancy topic (what might pass for a thesis in high school): World War II caused great economic devastation, affecting millions of people.

THESIS: World War II caused great economic devastation because the war displaced millions of refugees to countries whose post-war economies could not afford to support new citizens.

Notice the "Formula" we have here:

WWII caused economic devastation (assertion/thesis) because WWII (the war) displaced millions of refugees (proof/reason

A THESIS “FORMULA”

1. An assertion (thesis) that is a complete idea answering a question at issue. (CLAIM)

2. A because clause that provides the central reason in support of the assertion. (EVIDENCE)

3. The statement must answer a question at issue in the author's social or academic community. It must address something that the community cares about but does not necessarily agree upon.

4. There should be an unstated assumption behind the thesis. This is the "truth" on which the argument rests. The assumption must be something everyone in the author's audience is likely to agree with as an effective starting point for the argument. In the sample thesis above, the shared assumption might be “Economic devastation is always a result of a refugee crisis.”

5. There should, ideally, be a shared term that appears at the beginning of both the assertion and the because clause. This ensures that there is an obvious logical connection between the two. (The shared term may be implied by use of a pronoun—“it," "they.")

Explain how this thesis statement meets these five criteria of a sound thesis:

After-school jobs are bad for teenagers because they take away study time. After-school jobs are bad for teenagers because they [after-school jobs] take away study time.

1. The assertion is that "after-school jobs are bad for teenagers." (The term "bad" is a bit vague and would probably have to be more specific in a revised thesis.) 2. The reason is "because they take away study time." 3. The assertion has more than one side: Parents, teachers, and students are all likely to have different opinions on the matter, even within the groups.

4. The unstated assumption is that having less study time is bad for teenagers; this is the crux of the argument.

5. There is a shared term: "After-school jobs are bad for teenagers because they (after-school jobs) take away study time."

UWSSLEC LibGuides
Writing a Thesis Statement
Avoiding Plagiarism
Citing your Sources MLA Style
Presentation Template
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Book and Internet Resources
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Sample Presentations

Letters About the Civil War

Source: Letters About the Civil War retrieved 4/3/2012 from http://www.civilwarhome.com/letters.htm

What makes a good thesis statement?

The Thesis Statement

A thesis statement identifies a specific part of your writing topic. The statement declares your unique perspective on the topic. It gives you the necessary focus and direction to develop your essay. As your ideas evolve, you may find it necessary to revise your thesis once or twice. The following informtion will help you write clear, effective thesis statements.

A thesis statement:

is usually a single sentence and appears in the opening part of an essay
may be based on a feature of the topic or on a particular stand that you want to defend

The Process

Photo Credit: http://www.ehow.com/how_12001491_make-hortatory-exposition.html

Research Project Ideas

54th Massachusetts Regiment

Abolitionists

Abraham Lincoln

African Americans in the war

Andersonville Prison

Appomattox Court House

Battle of Shiloh

Battle of the Wilderness

Causes of death in the Civil War

Civil War foods

Civil War weapons

Clara Barton

Emancipation Proclamation

Frederick Douglass

George McClellan

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Tubman

Jefferson Davis

John Wilkes Booth

Medical Personnel of the Civil War

Medical Practices during the Civil War

Navy's role

Railroads in the war

Robert E. Lee

Rose Greenhow

Slavery in America

Sojourner Truth

Southern plantation life & buying slaves

Stonewall Jackson

Transportation during the Civil War

Ulysses S. Grant

Underground Railroad

William Tecumseh Sherman

Women in the war

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Home — Essay Samples — War — Cold War

Essays on Cold War

Hook examples for cold war essays, the tension-building anecdote hook.

Start your essay with a gripping anecdote from the Cold War era, such as a close encounter between opposing forces, a spy's daring mission, or a pivotal diplomatic negotiation.

The Iron Curtain Metaphor Hook

Draw parallels between the Iron Curtain that divided Europe during the Cold War and modern-day geopolitical divisions. Explore how historical lessons can inform contemporary politics.

The Cuban Missile Crisis Revelation Hook

Begin with a revelation about the Cuban Missile Crisis, a pivotal event during the Cold War. Discuss the world's reaction to this crisis and its implications for global peace.

The Space Race Innovation Hook

Highlight the innovative aspects of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Discuss the technological advancements and the impact on science and society.

The Proxy Wars Connection Hook

Start by exploring the concept of proxy wars during the Cold War. Discuss how these conflicts shaped the global political landscape and their relevance in today's world.

The Nuclear Arms Race Factoid Hook

Begin with startling facts about the nuclear arms race between superpowers. Discuss the fear of nuclear annihilation and its lasting effects on international relations.

The Espionage and Spy Games Hook

Introduce your essay by delving into the world of espionage during the Cold War. Discuss famous spies, intelligence agencies, and the intrigue of espionage operations.

The Cultural Cold War Reference Hook

Start with references to the cultural aspects of the Cold War, including the influence of literature, music, and art. Discuss how cultural diplomacy played a role in the conflict.

The End of the Cold War Paradox Hook

Begin with the paradox of the peaceful end of the Cold War. Explore the factors that contributed to its conclusion and the subsequent geopolitical shifts.

The Lessons from History Hook

Start by reflecting on the lessons that can be learned from the Cold War. Discuss how understanding this historical period can inform contemporary foreign policy and global relations.

Alas, Babylon: Analysis

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The Rise of Communism During The Cold War

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Understanding The Effects of The Cold War

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Beginning of The Cuban Missile Crisis

The role of "cold war" in bringing international order, american policy of containment during the cold war and its consequences, fears of america and the emergence of the cold war, america's leadership position at an international stage, the impact of world war ii and the cold war on the development of science in the 20th century, ronald reagan and mikhail gorbachev: discussion on resolving the cold war, analysis of the influence behind the actions of the united states army, cuban missile crisis as a world changing event, the korean war – a conflict between the soviet union and the united states, apocalypse now - cold war perspectives, the political situation in brazil during the cold war, the development of the peace corps in america, the geography of the cold war: why the us embarked on a containment policy, religion as one of the causes of the cold war, red scare: incitement to hatred of anarchy and communism, beware the red scare: another red threat to america, american containment strategy and the end of the cold war, history of american life in the early postwar era, advantages, disadvantages, and application of aip in modern submarines.

12 March 1947 – 26 December 1991 (44 years and 9 months)

North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Soviet Union, United States, Warsaw Treaty Organization.

Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nikita Khrushchev, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan

Cuban missile crisis, Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, Berlin crisis of 1961, collapse of the Soviet Union

The Cold War was a period of political tension and military rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. It emerged in the aftermath of World War II when ideological differences and geopolitical interests between the two superpowers intensified. The historical context of the Cold War can be traced back to the division of Europe after World War II, with the United States championing democratic principles and capitalism, while the Soviet Union sought to spread communism and establish spheres of influence. This ideological divide led to a series of confrontations and proxy wars fought between the two powers and their respective allies. The development of nuclear weapons added a dangerous dimension to the conflict, as both sides engaged in an arms race to gain a strategic advantage. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, a standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union over the placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

The division of the world into two ideological blocs: The capitalist bloc led by the United States and the communist bloc led by the Soviet Union. The arms race and nuclear proliferation, leading to the stockpiling of nuclear weapons by both superpowers and the development of advanced military technology. The establishment of military alliances such as NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the Warsaw Pact, which solidified the division between the Western and Eastern blocs. Proxy wars and conflicts fought between the United States and the Soviet Union or their respective allies, such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and various conflicts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The spread of communism to several countries, including Eastern European nations that became part of the Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc. The Cuban Missile Crisis, a tense standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, marking the end of the Cold War and the transition to a unipolar world with the United States as the dominant superpower.

One of the major effects of the Cold War was the division of the world into two competing blocs, the United States-led capitalist bloc and the Soviet Union-led communist bloc. This ideological divide created a bipolar world order and fueled numerous proxy wars and conflicts around the world, such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union was another significant consequence of the Cold War. Both superpowers invested heavily in the development and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, leading to an unprecedented level of global military buildup. The fear of nuclear annihilation and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction shaped military strategies and had a lasting impact on international security policies. The Cold War also had economic ramifications. The United States and the Soviet Union competed for influence and sought to spread their respective economic systems, capitalism and communism, across the globe. This led to the creation of economic alliances and aid programs, such as the Marshall Plan, as well as the establishment of the Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc and the NATO alliance. Furthermore, the Cold War influenced the course of decolonization and independence movements in many countries. The superpowers often supported or opposed regimes based on their alignment with capitalist or communist ideologies, leading to political instability and conflicts in various regions. In addition, the Cold War had cultural and social effects. It fostered a climate of suspicion and fear, which manifested in widespread political repression, surveillance, and the suppression of civil liberties. The ideological struggle between capitalism and communism influenced cultural productions, including literature, art, and film.

Studying and writing essays on the topic of the Cold War is essential for students due to its multidimensional significance. Firstly, exploring the Cold War provides students with a deeper understanding of the complexities of international relations, diplomacy, and ideological conflicts. It offers insights into the strategies, policies, and motivations of the superpowers involved, such as the United States and the Soviet Union. Secondly, writing essays on the Cold War promotes critical thinking and analytical skills. Students are encouraged to examine primary and secondary sources, analyze different perspectives, and evaluate the long-term consequences of historical events. This process enhances their ability to form well-reasoned arguments and develop a nuanced understanding of complex historical phenomena. Additionally, the Cold War has left a lasting impact on society, culture, and global dynamics. By exploring this topic, students can gain insights into the origins of the arms race, the nuclear age, the space race, and the proliferation of proxy wars. They can also examine the impact of the Cold War on civil rights, technological advancements, popular culture, and the formation of alliances.

1. The term "Cold War" was coined by the American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in a speech in 1947. It referred to the absence of direct military confrontation between the superpowers, but the ongoing ideological and political struggle between them. 2. The Cold War was characterized by a state of non-military confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. 3. The space race played a significant role during the Cold War, prompting the establishment of NASA and fueling competition between the superpowers. 4. The proxy wars fought between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War resulted in the loss of numerous lives, with casualties reaching millions. 5. Notable "hot" conflicts of the Cold War period included the Korean War, the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, and the Vietnam War. These conflicts involved direct military engagement or support from the superpowers, leading to significant human suffering and loss.

1. Gaddis, J. L. (2005). The Cold War: A new history. Penguin Books. 2. Westad, O. A. (2012). The Cold War: A world history. Basic Books. 3. Leffler, M. P. (2008). For the soul of mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War. Hill and Wang. 4. Beschloss, M. R. (1997). Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 affair. HarperCollins. 5. Zubok, V. M., & Pleshakov, C. (2007). Inside the Kremlin's cold war: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Harvard University Press. 6. Hogan, M. J. (Ed.). (2015). The Cold War in retrospect: The formative years. Oxford University Press. 7. LaFeber, W. (2002). America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2000. McGraw-Hill. 8. Lynch, T. (2010). The Cold War: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. 9. Matlock, J. F. (1995). Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War ended. Random House. 10. McMahon, R. J. (2003). The Cold War: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

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Is This Israel’s Forever War?

By Keith Gessen

A photo of an Israeli soldier walking through Gaza City outside of a hospital. There is a tank on his left.

Natasha Hall grew up in Arlington, Virginia, in the nineteen-eighties. Her mother, who was originally from Jordan, was an accountant at the World Bank; her father, who was a Vietnam War vet and marine biologist, worked at the Environmental Protection Agency. During the summers, they would sometimes visit her mother’s family in Jordan; in 1996, in the wake of the Oslo Accords, they were able to visit the West Bank. Hall, then thirteen, had heard about the territory’s occupation, but she was surprised by the obvious and quotidian restrictions on Palestinians’ lives. She remembers seeing people lined up at checkpoints with their hands on their heads, facing a wall. When the 9/11 attacks took place, she was in her first week of college. From what Hall already knew of the world, she immediately feared what the U.S. would do in response. She decided to study foreign policy. Shortly after graduating, she went to the Middle East and stayed there, on and off, for the next twenty years.

The foreign-policy world in Washington, D.C., is filled with people who have gone abroad and had a formative experience. Hall’s was the long American “war on terror.” In the late two-thousands, she worked for the RAND Corporation on evaluating reconstruction efforts in Iraq. (They were not going well.) In 2012, she took a job in government, travelling all over the world and interviewing refugees who wished to resettle in the U.S. But the process was slow, and, when it came to the conflict that had by then become her greatest area of focus, the Syrian civil war, the United States took so few people. She moved to Istanbul to work with Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, a volunteer organization that helped civilians caught up in Bashar al-Assad’s brutal counter-insurgency campaign. Hall saw people surviving in conditions in which survival seemed impossible. She saw what Western resources and preparation could and could not do. “Every time we would find a way to protect people, they”—the Syrian regime and its Russian backers—“would up the ante,” she told me. Russian fighter jets “were wiping out whole neighborhoods. Even if people had a basement to shelter in, the Syrian government might hit them with chlorine gas, smoking them out.” (Despite multiple reports from the United Nations and other organizations that Assad’s forces repeatedly used chemical weapons in Syria, the regime has denied these accusations.) Humanitarian aid and civilian protection were useless, she concluded, if they were not backed up with other forms of support. “If you drop a bunch of people that just want to save lives into a context where people are trying to do the opposite, structurally speaking, they will manipulate you in every way possible,” she said.

In 2017, in the wake of Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban,” Hall, a year and a half out of her government job interviewing refugees, published an editorial in the Washington Post arguing that whoever wrote the ban didn’t know about the intense vetting process that refugee applicants already had to endure. That month, a declaration signed by Hall, recapping her editorial, was filed as part of a lawsuit brought by refugee groups and individuals of Middle Eastern descent against the Trump Administration. The lawsuit led to a pause on the ban, later lifted by the Supreme Court, which eventually upheld a reworded version.

Hall moved back to D.C. a few years ago, in part because she had had a child and wanted to be closer to her parents, and in part because she wanted to be closer to the policymaking apparatus. She became a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a high-minded security-oriented think tank. She testified before Congress, briefed senior government officials, and wrote papers on Syria, civilian protection, and how to maximize the impact of humanitarian aid.

Hall was on a research trip in Jordan on October 7th of last year, when Hamas militants breached the fence that surrounded Gaza, murdered twelve hundred people, and took more than two hundred back to Gaza as hostages. Hall’s first reaction was horror. Next came bewilderment: How was it possible that Israel was so unprepared? After that, fear. She watched Joe Biden travel to Israel and urge the Israelis to learn from America’s errors after September 11th. “While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes,” he said. Hall worried that Israel would make those same mistakes. “That’s why some of the survivors of the October 7th attack came out to say that they didn’t want Israel to lash out at civilians,” Hall wrote to me. “Because they knew what would happen.”

The 9/11 attacks and the wars that followed fundamentally rearranged the American national-security apparatus, destabilized the Middle East, and left lasting scars on the American body politic. They also showed a generation of policy analysts and regional specialists what the quest for total security could look like. Among them was Annelle Sheline, who, in the fall of 2001, had just started her sophomore year in high school, in North Carolina. Even before anyone knew who had hijacked the planes and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center, one of her classmates announced, in fifth period: “We are going to kill those God damn Muslims.” At the time, Sheline later recalled in an essay about that day, she kept quiet. In retrospect, her classmate was right. “We were indeed going to kill a lot of Muslims,” she wrote.

In college, Sheline decided to study media, conflict resolution, and Arabic. She went on to get a Ph.D. in political science with a focus on religious authority in the Middle East, receiving a language fellowship for study in Egypt along the way. The experience, to some extent, was surreal: she was being paid to study the region, year after year, because the U.S. Air Force kept dropping bombs on it. After receiving her Ph.D., she settled in D.C. and worked at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which tries to present a foreign-policy alternative to American militarism. In early 2023, Sheline was hired by the State Department to work in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (D.R.L.).

Sheline said that she found the department still demoralized from the Trump Administration, and understaffed. Biden’s nominee to lead D.R.L., a longtime human-rights advocate named Sarah Margon, had just withdrawn her nomination; at a confirmation hearing, Margon had been confronted with a tweet she’d written in support of an announcement from Airbnb, in 2018, that it was not going to allow Israeli settlers in the West Bank to list their homes. (Airbnb backed off the policy in the face of several lawsuits. You can now book a stay in the settlement of your choice.) Those who remained in the department were dedicated to their mission. They believed that the United States could play a positive role in the world. Sheline felt, at first, a little “weird”—she was a lot less certain about American beneficence than some of her colleagues—but also inspired. After the Trump years, the country again had a President who seemed to believe that human rights should be a priority.

Sheline had been in government for just six months when the Hamas attacks took place. The killings shocked and dismayed her. With colleagues, she discussed what Israel’s response would likely be. She was encouraged that President Biden had warned Benjamin Netanyahu not to repeat America’s post-9/11 mistakes.

She did not have to wait long to see that Netanyahu had not listened. In the first week of Israel’s Operation Swords of Iron, its Air Force dropped more bombs on Gaza than had been dropped by the U.S. in the most high-intensity month of the campaign against ISIS , back in 2017. Civilians were being killed at an astonishing pace—more than three hundred Gaza residents died a day in the first month of the war, many of them children. In mid-October, a State Department official, Josh Paul , resigned. He had worked in the bureau that oversaw weapons transfers to Israel. In the past, he said, citing the example of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the attention paid to how weapons would be used had been “microscopic.” In this case, however, “there was none of that. It was, ‘Open doors. Go.’ ”

Sheline was impressed by Paul’s resignation, but she had no intention of following suit. For one thing, she was far more junior. For another, she had just arrived in government after a long period of trying to do so. She and her husband had a mortgage and a toddler—a little girl.

Sheline has trouble pinpointing the moment she changed her mind. During the next several months, she watched the State Department work on negotiations for a substantial ceasefire, which never seemed to come to fruition. She watched U.S. planes airdrop food packages into Gaza, Berlin Airlift-style, while its ally Israel endlessly inspected trucks that could have delivered far more food at the crossings into Gaza. She watched the Administration leak, over and over, that the President was very frustrated with Netanyahu. “It’s, like, Well, clearly he’s not,” Sheline said, “because he has a lot of power here.” If Biden were genuinely frustrated, she thought, he could demand that the ceasefire happen and that civilians be granted more access to humanitarian aid. “They’re building this stupid pier instead of just insisting on the trucks getting across the border,” she told me last month.

“Often, inside the State Department, there’s this belief in the process,” Sheline continued. “You know, ‘It’s a slow process. You have to just go through the steps.’ But, really, from what I’ve observed, the only thing that seems to be causing any shift is public pressure. I had done what I could. I had tried to do what small things are available for someone in my position on the inside.” In mid-February, citing the Israeli campaign in Gaza, she told her superiors that she was going to leave, though only after she finished a yearlong commitment to the job, and completed her work on the bureau’s annual human-rights reports. Once that was done, she shut down her personal Web site and wrote an editorial for CNN. “Unable to serve an administration that enables such atrocities,” she wrote, “I have decided to resign from my position at the Department of State.”

The experience was still very raw when we spoke over Zoom a few days later. “I know that I won’t ever probably get to work for the government again, which in D.C. may be tricky,” she said. “It’s hard to even say what a professional impact this may end up having. But, you know, I think about my daughter. I assume that she will learn about this in school. And I just want to be able to let her know that I did what I could on the inside. But then it became clear that that just wasn’t having any impact.”

The U.S. government is a very large bureaucracy. You go there to have some effect on what the government is doing. Your chances of having such an effect are inversely proportional to how much the issue matters at that moment. “I mean, not that I expected one person to shift the U.S.-Israel relationship,” Sheline said, “but I hoped that maybe by being on the inside, and working with others—there are many people inside State who are really trying, working very hard on this issue. But, you know, until the President decides that he wants the U.S. policy to change, it’s not going to change.”

For many people, in Washington and beyond, the American response to the 9/11 attacks settled an old question about the U.S. and its commitment to human rights. Clearly, it seemed to them, the U.S. had no such commitment. It was happy to preach to other people—to Serbs, Russians, Chinese—about human rights. But, when it came under attack, it would do just about anything to wipe out the threat.

Paradoxically, though, it could be argued that the American war on terror redeemed or even reconstituted the human-rights community in the U.S. In the context of that war, American human-rights advocates were no longer primarily criticizing other countries’ human-rights abuses; they were criticizing and trying to mitigate their own. In the past six months of war in Gaza, that community has been very vocal in its criticism of a longtime U.S. ally. Analysts and former government officials, many of them shaped by the American forever wars, have written eloquently about the principles of proportionality and the potential for war-crimes prosecutions not just of Israelis but of their American counterparts. They have demanded that the Biden Administration enforce American legal requirements for weapons provided by the U.S.

When I spoke to Hall last month, she said that she had never seen a war like this one. In Syria or Iraq or Ukraine, civilians could usually flee. In this conflict, Gazans are trapped. Neither Israel nor Egypt will let them in, and they know, from bitter experience, that if they leave, they may not be able to return. Another difference is the state of Gaza before the war. It was already ground down from multiple rounds of destruction and rebuilding, poor governance, and the Israeli-Egyptian economic blockade; some of the buildings that were bombed had been constructed out of concrete from previous buildings that had been bombed. (It does not help matters that, for years, Hamas put scarce resources toward its extensive underground tunnel network.) Then, there is Gaza’s water. In Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held area east of Damascus that was besieged by the Assad regime for more than five years—one of the longest sieges in modern history—Hall saw people digging wells in their back yards. In Gaza, this is hazardous. The coastal aquifer is depleted; the water underground is brackish without treatment. This greatly cuts down on the ability of Gazans to survive.

Above all, Hall was seeing an army prosecute a war using indiscriminate means. “Urban warfare is notoriously difficult, but we still have rules,” she said. “There is no military reason to withhold medicine, water, and food to a civilian-populated area—and some of the weapons being used don’t make sense.” Israel was dropping two-thousand-pound bombs (supplied by the U.S.), which have the capacity to kill within a quarter-mile radius; in Gaza, which is just five miles wide in certain places, this was a very large radius. “You don’t use weapons like that in densely populated urban areas, or, rather, shouldn’t,” Hall said. More than thirty thousand Gazans had been killed—more than a third of them reported to be children—and epidemiologists had begun to warn of famine .

For Hall and many other observers, Biden’s failure to intervene was the key factor. Hall thought Biden had made a simple political calculation: that the progressives in his party had nowhere to go. He also had a well-known soft spot for Israel, and believed deeply in its role as an American ally in the Middle East. He may also have been trying to keep Netanyahu close to prevent him from escalating with Hezbollah and Iran. Still, at some level, it was a mystery. “If you ask me what I am puzzled by, it’s not the barbarity of either Hamas or the Israeli government,” Ian Lustick, a political scientist and longtime student of Israeli affairs, told me in late March. “It’s why Biden is so slow on the uptake here.”

On April 1st, two events that had the capacity to alter the war took place. One was an Israeli strike on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, which killed two senior Iranian commanders. The other was the Israeli strike on three World Central Kitchen vehicles that were moving along the coastal road in Gaza, which killed seven aid workers who had just delivered food to a nearby warehouse.

The World Central Kitchen attack seemed to shock the President into action. In a thirty-minute phone call three days later, Biden demanded that Netanyahu start fighting with more deliberate care; that he let significantly more aid into Gaza; and that he agree to a ceasefire that will create conditions for the remaining hostages held by Hamas to be released. A readout of the call was delivered to the media by the National Security Council’s spokesman, John Kirby, who couched Biden’s warning in stern terms. “What we want to see are some real changes on the Israeli side,” Kirby said. “If we don’t see changes from their side, there will have to be changes from our side.”

But the Biden-Netanyahu phone call also had another topic: the Iranian threat of retaliation for the Israeli strike in Damascus. In the face of this threat, Biden said, the U.S. stood side by side with Israel, and would continue to support it. In more recent days, Biden’s tone has become more forceful. He has said that American intelligence indicates an attack from Iran against Israel could be imminent, and he has urged Iran to change course.

For Lustick, the call signalled a turning point in the conflict in Gaza. Israeli Prime Ministers, he said, almost never ended wars because they wanted to; instead, they did so when their allies, and in particular the United States, forced them to. This had happened in 1982, when Ronald Reagan called Menachem Begin to stop attacks on Lebanon; it happened in 2002, when George W. Bush leaned on Ariel Sharon to end his incursion into the West Bank. “Not a single war has ended because Israel’s war aims were achieved,” Lustick told me. “They always end when the United States says, ‘O.K., now you gotta stop,’—and they do. We say that in different ways, but we always have to say it, and it’s partly because the Israeli government needs it to be said, because otherwise they’d have to admit that they didn’t achieve their war aims.”

In the days after the Biden-Netanyahu phone call, this prediction seemed to be correct: Israel announced that it would soon open the Erez Crossing, in north Gaza, to allow in more humanitarian aid, and that it was pulling troops out of Khan Younis, in the south, signalling a halt, at least for now, of major military ground operations. Netanyahu said that his promised invasion of Rafah—the last city in Gaza more or less left standing, where much of the civilian population, and, the Israeli government claims, many Hamas militants, have taken refuge—would still go forward, and that a date had even been set. But his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, quickly contradicted him, telling his American counterpart that there was as yet no date for the proposed invasion.

Sheline was skeptical of the Israeli response. The bombs were still falling; the long-awaited ceasefire still hadn’t happened. And the humanitarian aid was inadequate. “They say they will open one more crossing, and they let in a hundred more trucks,” she said a few days after the Biden-Netanyahu call. “But at this point, after the World Central Kitchen attack, we have a lot of organizations pulling out because it’s a suicide mission for them. We need so much more now—there’s still nowhere near enough aid.”

Hall was worried about the so-called “day after.” “So you wipe out every Hamas soldier—then what?” she asked. “You just created a whole bunch of orphans and people who are forever traumatized by this without really anything on the other side of it.” Israel would not be able to simply leave the Strip, as it has after previous episodes of what it called “mowing the grass.” “This is very different,” Hall continued. “And I fear that if there isn’t a bigger reconstruction plan on the other end, this will be a festering wound, even more so than it has been, for decades to come.” Hall recently wrote a white paper for the Center for Strategic and International Studies about what she called “the new forever wars”—local conflicts that went on and on because they had become internationalized, as some had during the Cold War, but with more actors. Russia or China or Iran might support one side, the U.S. and Europe the other. Each side kept the other in the fight, while the root causes of the conflict remained unaddressed. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a very long-running example of such a conflict, but now more “kinetic,” more destructive, and more dangerous. And there was no end in sight.

For now, to Hall, the most immediate fear was famine. She had seen starvation in Syria. Once people started dying of hunger, as some have in Gaza, it was already too late. “In my experience, mothers will soon become so malnourished they can’t produce breast milk, they can’t get formula, and then things get really ugly,” she told me. “Society can break down from the inside. People will do anything to feed their kids.” ♦

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Theses on the Spanish Civil War and the revolutionary situation created on July 19, 1936 - BALANCE (Agustín Guillamón)

A 2001 text summarizing the results of the research carried out by Agustín Guillamón for the Spanish journal, BALANCE , concerning the lessons of the Spanish Civil War in Catalonia, denying the existence of “dual power” in Catalonia in 1936, discussing the struggles of the CNT rank and file against militarization and in favor of socialization, emphasizing the revolutionary potential of the ubiquitous committees and their neutralization and eventual destruction due to a lack of coordination and centralization, and claiming that the proletarian revolution requires the destruction of the capitalist state and the creation of a centralized workers power based on workers councils.

Theses on the Spanish Civil War and the Revolutionary Situation Created on July 19, 1936 in Catalonia - BALANCE 1

“The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing.” Karl Marx, Letter to Schweitzer (February 13, 1865)

“All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.” George Orwell, 1984

“The function of history would therefore be showing that the laws deceive, that the kings play a part, that power deludes and that historians lie.” Michel Foucault, The Genealogy of Racism

“It is ‘no longer a question of judging the past in the name of a truth that only we can possess in the present, but of risking the destruction of the subject who seeks knowledge in ... the will to knowledge’.” Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”

“The spectacle, as the present social organization of the paralysis of history and memory, of the abandonment of history built on the foundation of historical time, is the false consciousness of time.” Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

“Historical memory is a battlefield of the class struggle.” Combate por la historia. Manifiesto (July 8, 1999)

Hundreds of books have been written about the Spanish War and its historiography batters our minds with an accumulation of clone-books, which cite each other and repeat one after another the same errors or identical ideological interpretations, depending on the political tendency, without exhibiting even the least trace of critical spirit, when they do not restrict their ambitions to self-justification or castrate themselves in the Francoist moral, “that should never happen again”.

The manipulation of the facts, when they are not simply concealed, the theoretical confusionism in analyzing what took place and the errors accumulated by historiography and the compilers are on such a scale and magnitude that refuting them would require the (useless) work of an entire lifetime.

Let us take one of the most outstanding examples: the question of the existence of a situation of dual power in Catalonia, involving the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias and the government of the Generalitat. This question regarding the existence of a SITUATION OF DUAL POWER IS UNDOUBTEDLY FUNDAMENTAL for any analysis of the Spanish War. It is generally accepted so dogmatically that any doubts concerning the existence of a situation of dual power might appear to be foolishness. Nonetheless, those who participated in these great events, with ideologies as different as those of Tarradellas, Nin, Montseny, García Oliver, Azaña, etc., deny the existence of such a situation of dual power.

The theses we set forth below are the products of the study, published in various issues of BALANCE , of the diverse interpretations offered by the revolutionary minorities that intervened in the Spanish War concerning the historical facts and the prevailing ideologies of the period, 1936-1939. We exclude, because it is of no interest to us, the bourgeois view; nor are we interested in confronting the interpretations that issue from counterrevolutionary and/or Stalinist camp. The theses we elaborate here constitute an attempt to arrive at a theoretical synthesis concerning the Spanish War and the revolutionary situation that arose in July 1936, from the perspective of the revolutionary proletariat that was defended by the revolutionary minorities that existed at the time: Bordiguists, Bolshevik-Leninists, Josep Rebull and The Friends of Durruti.

Augustín Guillamón On behalf of BALANCE

Thesis no. 1. From July 17 to 19, 1936, there was a military uprising against the government of the Republic, an uprising that was supported by the Church, the majority of the Army, fascists, bourgeoisie, landlords … whose preparation had been tolerated by the republican government, which had won the elections in February 1936 thanks to the Popular Front coalition. The military, the fascists and the parliamentary REPUBLICAN democratic and the monarchist parties, parties of the left and of the right, pursued the policy that was most advantageous for the Spanish bourgeoisie, and for its preparations for a bloody coup d’état. The military uprising was defeated in the major cities and provoked, as a reaction (in the republican zone), a revolutionary movement, which emerged victorious from its armed insurrection against the army. The Defense Cadres and Committees of the CNT-FAI, which had been prepared since 1931, played a preponderant role in this insurrectionary victory. The loss of Zaragoza was due, among other reasons, to the lack of preparation and resolve on the part of a secret leadership, which was operating from a hidden refuge, and engaged in constant negotiation with the republican authorities and the “undecided” military elements, instead of organizing and leading the workers insurrection on the basis of the Defense Cadres.

The fact that the revolutionary movement of July 19, 1936 emerged as a reaction to a military uprising does not mean that it would not have taken place without the military uprising. In fact, since October 1934, and throughout the entire electoral campaign of February 1936, both the CNT and the POUM thought that a confrontation with the fascist forces was inevitable, concerning whose plans for a coup d’état they were aware, and against which they were conscientiously preparing for an armed confrontation, although they never rejected maintaining ties and collaborating with the republican parties or the government of the Generalitat.

In any event, the defeat of the military uprising cannot be attributed to the leadership of any political or trade union organization, but to the clandestine military organization of the confederal defense cadres, to the neighborhood defense committees, and to the “federation of the barricades” in Barcelona; and to the local committees in the various Catalonian towns.

Thesis no. 2. This victorious armed insurrection of the proletariat, in the republican zone, neutralized the coercive apparatus and therefore the capacity for repression of the capitalist state. This insurrection also led to a series of “revolutionary conquests” of a social and economic type. The republican state broke up into a multitude of local or sectoral powers, and many of its functions were “usurped” by the working class organizations. THERE WAS A VACUUM OF STATE POWER. Having lost its capacity for coercion, the republican state witnessed the emergence of autonomous regional powers, totally independent of the central government, which in turn (such as the government of the Generalitat in Catalonia) saw how its authority collapsed; and how the various revolutionary, local, sectoral, neighborhood, factory, defense, supply, trade union and party committees and popular and rearguard militias performed those functions that the government was incapable of exercising, because of the loss of its repressive apparatus and the general arming of the working class organizations. In many places, the revolutionary committees, which Munis theorized as government-committees, exercised all power on a local level, but there was no coordination or centralization of these local committees: there was A VACUUM OF CENTRAL OR STATE POWER. NEITHER THE REPUBLICAN STATE NOR THE AUTONOMOUS REGIONAL GOVERNMENTS (Generalitat) EXERCISED CENTRAL POWER; but neither did the local committees.

Thesis no. 3. The revolutionary committees—defense, factory, neighborhood, workers control, local, supply, etc.—comprised the embryo of the organs of working class power. They initiated a methodical expropriation of the property of the bourgeoisie, undertaking industrial and agricultural collectivization, organizing the popular militias that stabilized the fronts during the first days of the war, and organized control patrols and rearguard militias that imposed the new revolutionary order through the violent repression of the Church, employers, fascists and yellow trade unionists and their pistoleros . But these committees were unable to coordinate among themselves and create a centralized working class power. The initiatives and activities of the revolutionary committees bypassed the leaders of the various traditional organizations of the workers movement, including the CNT and the FAI. There was a revolution in the streets and the factories, and some POTENTIAL organs of the power of the revolutionary proletariat: THE COMMITTEES, which no party, organization or vanguard was able or wanted to COORDINATE, REINFORCE AND TRANSFORM INTO AUTHENTIC ORGANS OF WORKING CLASS POWER.

The majority of the leadership of the CNT opted for collaboration with the bourgeois state in order to win the war against fascism. García Oliver’s slogan of July 21, “go for broke”, was nothing but a Leninist proposal for the CNT bureaucracy to seize power; a proposal, furthermore, that Oliver himself knew would be rendered unviable and absurd when, at the CNT plenum, he posed the false alternative of “anarchist dictatorship” or antifascist collaboration. García Oliver’s spurious “extremist” proposal, Abad de Santillán’s warning about isolation and foreign intervention, and Durruti’s suggestion that they wait until Zaragoza was taken, led the plenum to vote for “provisional” antifascist collaboration. The revolutionary alternative of destroying the republican state and transforming the committees into organs of working class power and the militias into a proletarian army was never proposed.

One cannot speak of a situation of dual power, involving the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias (CCMA) and the government of the Generalitat, at any time during the existence of the former, because there was never a pole of centralized workers power at any time; we can, however, speak of an opportunity, already forfeited during the first few weeks after July 19, to establish a situation of dual power between the revolutionary committees and the CCMA. Some trade union, local and neighborhood committees expressed from the very beginning their mistrust and fear of the CCMA, because they foresaw the counterrevolutionary role that it would play.

Many of those who played their parts in the events, along with the historians, speak of a situation of dual power between the CCMA and the government of the Generalitat. It is a profound error, however, to believe that the CCMA was anything other than what it really was: a pact between the workers organizations and the bourgeois organizations and state institutions, an institution of class collaboration, a Popular Front government in which representatives of the government of the Generalitat, the bourgeois republican parties, the Stalinists, the POUM and the CNT participated.

The leaders of the CNT based their power on the “proximity” of the revolutionary committees, if only because the majority of their members were also members of the CNT, but at the same time they mistrusted the committees because they did not fit into their organizational and doctrinal plans, and also because, as a bureaucracy, they felt threatened by their activities, which they were unable to direct.

The CCMA in Catalonia was unlike the other similar institutions that arose in other regions of Spain, insofar as it was dominated by the CNT, and due to the fact that the CNT owed its power to the revolutionary committees, in which the majority of the elements were members of the CNT.

It was in Catalonia where the latter were most widespread and most enduring. In other institutions similar to the CCMA that had arisen in other parts of Spain, the impact, profundity, scope and duration of the committees was much less and/or they only lasted for a few days or weeks.

The revolutionary committees constituted the self-organization of the working class in a revolutionary situation, as was as the embryo of the organs of power of the Spanish revolutionary proletariat. But we must understand their weaknesses, and above all their inability to coordinate among themselves for the purpose of centralizing proletarian power in a workers state. There was no revolutionary party or workers vanguard capable of transforming these committees into workers councils, characterized by the democratic election of their delegates in assemblies, revocable at any time, and capable of coordinating their activities on a regional and national level, up to the formation of a State of Workers, Militia and Peasants Councils. The CNT and FAI ISSUED NO DIRECTIVES TO THEIR MILITANTS until July 28, when they threatened to shoot any “uncontrollables” who continued to expropriate the bourgeoisie and persisted in taking fascists, bourgeois, priests and former members of the yellow trade unions (the pistoleros of the employers) “for a ride”. In July 1936, the workers knew what to do without orders from their leaders, and proceeded to expropriate the bourgeoisie and suppress some of the institutions of rule of the capitalist state (army, Church, police), in such a manner that they went beyond not only the state structures, but also their own political and trade union organizations; but they were incapable of acting against their leaders, they respected the state apparatus and its officials, and in May 1937 they grudgingly accepted, but accepted nonetheless, capitulation to the class enemy.

Furthermore, these revolutionary committees, although they were potentially the organs of workers power, were hamstrung by the overwhelming influence of the ideology of antifascist unity and many of them were rapidly transformed into antifascist committees, composed of workers and bourgeoisie, in the service of the program of the petty bourgeoisie. The entry of the anarchist ministers in the Madrid government, and of anarchists and POUMistas in the government of the Generalitat, made it possible, in October 1936, without the least armed resistance, to dissolve the local committees and replace them with the antifascist municipal councils. The defense and factory committees, along with a few local committees, resisted, but could only postpone, their final dissolution.

Thesis no. 4. The overwhelming predominance of the anarchist movement in Spain cannot be explained by racial or psychological causes or reasons of character. Nor can it be explained by certain backward economic traits, such as the survival of “feudal relations” in the Andalusian countryside, or the predominance of small industry in Catalonia. And much less by the mythical evangelical influence of Fanelli in 1868, and his “indelible” legacy.

The evident difference between the Spanish and the international workers movements, with regard to the contrasting predominance of the anarchists in the Spanish workers movement and of the social democrats in the rest of Europe, is fundamentally due to the fact that it was possible to engage in the parliamentary, democratic and reformist struggle to obtain substantial reforms in the standard of living and the political representation of the working class in the rest of Europe. From 1919 to 1923, the Spanish employers created and financed a trade union of pistoleros (the Free Trade Union), which, with the help of the police and the government, proceeded to physically eliminate the working class leaders and militants. This unequal battle concluded with the establishment of the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the outlawing of the CNT.

The parliamentary road, or the possibility of achieving social reforms, was not opened up in Spain until the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931. During the thirties the extremely robust anarchist tradition, the recent unstable experiences of Spanish parliamentarism, and especially the extreme sluggishness and timidity that characterized social and political reform, were factors that made the anarchist movement very powerful and caused it to continue to enjoy the support of most workers. The committees that spontaneously arose everywhere in July 1936, were imperfect and incomplete organs of workers power. They were unlike the workers councils due to the fact that the delegates were not democratically elected by the workers in general assemblies in the factories, to whom they would have to be responsible for their policies. The committees were dependent on the trade union or political bureaucracies that had appointed them. This dependency hindered the coordination of the committees among themselves, the possibility of creating higher decision-making institutions, characterized by class unity, and the exercise of workers power in the economy or the militias. The committees were therefore transformed into the subordinate institutions of trade unions or parties, and the creation of powerful unified institutions of workers power was rendered impossible. Thus, instead of a revolutionary army of the working class, a centralized expression of workers power, a federation of militias arose in which each party or trade union competed to create its own army, more or less coordinated on the front with the other workers organizations. Instead of a socialized economy, directed by a Government of the Workers Councils, there was collectivization that unfolded within the framework of a kind of trade union capitalism, when it was not managed or coordinated by the bourgeois government of the Generalitat, at the service of the program of the petty bourgeoisie.

The entry of the trade unions and parties in the autonomous government of the Generalitat, and in the republican central government of Valencia, also meant the dissolution of the committees, and the end to the danger that they might be able to transform themselves into workers councils.

Thesis no. 5. Without the destruction of the capitalist state one cannot speak of a proletarian revolution. One may speak of a revolutionary situation , a revolutionary movement, a victorious insurrection, the “partial” and/or “temporary” disappearance of the functions of the bourgeois state, political chaos, the loss of real authority on the part of the republican administration, a VACUUM OF CENTRALIZED POWER or an atomization of power, but not of a proletarian revolution.

The REVOLUTIONARY SITUATION of July 1936 never led to a proposal to establish a working class power in opposition to the republican state: therefore, there was no proletarian revolution. In the absence of revolution the revolutionary situation rapidly evolved in the direction of the consolidation of the republican state, the weakening of the revolutionary forces and the definitive victory of the counterrevolution after the May Days of 1937, with the outlawing and political persecution of the POUM in June 1937, as well as with the driving underground of the Bolshevik-Leninist Section of Spain (SBLE) and The Friends of Durruti Group.

For the same reasons, one cannot speak of a situation of DUAL POWER, since there was no pole of workers power that proposed to destroy the capitalist state: it would be more proper to speak, in the Catalonian case, of a duplication of powers between the Generalitat and the CCMA. The CCMA was an institution of CLASS COLLABORATION, which acted as shock absorber and mediator between the myriad of revolutionary committees and the broken down apparatus of the capitalist state. But the CCMA was above all the only instrument of the antifascist front that was CAPABLE of sterilizing, channeling, truncating and subduing the popular revolutionary initiatives that were undertaken by the revolutionary committees, BY MEANS OF their integration in ambiguous institutions (subordinated to the CCMA), which were characterized by their SUBMISSION to the antifascist program and the government of the Generalitat. This process was exemplified in institutions like the Central Committee for Supply, the Rearguard Militias, the Control Patrols, the Revolutionary Tribunals, the Committee of Investigation, the Workers Control Committees, the Councils of Workers and Soldiers, etc., which were created to REPLACE, DESTROY OR CHANGE THE CLASS NATURE of the popular and working class initiatives of a revolutionary character; after a transitional period of two or three months, during which time they functioned as institutions subordinated to the CCMA, they were integrated into the structure of the government of the Generalitat, and were later dissolved or replaced by institutions of the republican state apparatus. The anarchists, however, thought they were clever enough and powerful enough to manipulate the state as a technical instrument in their service of their plans. On August 11 the CNT and the POUM joined the Council of the Economy of the Generalitat, whose purpose was the coordination and planning of the Catalonian economy.

The participation of the CNT (and also the POUM and FAI) in the bourgeois institutions, with its corresponding offer of public responsibilities, together with a massive influx of new trade union members, and the departure to the front of the best militants, the most experienced in the social struggle and the most theoretically advanced, favored a rapid process of bureaucratization in the CNT.

The revolutionary militants found themselves isolated in the assemblies and condemned to a permanent minority status they could not overcome. The fundamental principles of anarchosyndicalism collapsed and gave way to an opportunism disguised by the ideology of antifascist unity (“renounce the revolution to win the war”) and the pragmatism of loyal and faithful collaboration with the parties and the government of the republican bourgeoisie, with the exclusive goal of enforcing the program of the bourgeoisie. THE TRADE UNION BUREAUCRACY OF THE CNT DEMONSTRATED ITS COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY NATURE IN MAY 1937. The struggle against fascism was the alibi that permitted the renunciation of the destruction of the republican bourgeois state, defended by the counterrevolutionary forces of the PSUC and the ERC. The confrontation between the revolutionary proletariat and the CNT bureaucracy, which was now in the counterrevolutionary camp, was inevitable. The CNT-UGT pact of March 1938 established a de facto state capitalism similar to that which prevailed in the Soviet Union.

Thesis no. 6. No revolutionary organization existed that was capable of proposing the destruction of the capitalist state: therefore one cannot speak of a situation of dual power. This does not mean that there were not organized revolutionary nuclei, nor do we have to doubt the (subjective) “revolutionary will” of POUMistas or anarchists. It means that the class struggle in Spain, during the 1930s, had not generated a revolutionary movement that was capable of proposing the program of the proletarian revolution (and the social dictatorship of the proletariat) and its ANTAGONISM to the existence of the capitalist state. BECAUSE THIS ATOMIZED POWER, incapable of centralizing itself and coordinating itself in a WORKERS POWER, confronted the republican state power, usurped the functions of the capitalist state, which were taken from the republican authorities against their will, but most of all, DUE TO THE FACT THAT IT DID NOT HAVE THE NECESSARY ABILITY TO COORDINATE ITS ACTIVITIES AND TO THE FACT THAT NO WORKING CLASS ORGANIZATION TOOK THE INITIATIVE TO DO SO, a few weeks after the victorious insurrection, the situation of the VACUUM OF CENTRAL POWER caused all the working class organizations to put themselves at the service of this same republican state. The revolutionary potential of the proletarian committees was transformed into the submissiveness of the antifascist committees, or else they were replaced, at the local level, by the new popular front municipal councils beginning in October 1936.

THERE WAS NO WORKERS POWER THAT WAS ANTAGONISTIC TOWARDS THE CAPITALIST STATE. THE STRUGGLE FOR A WORKERS STATE THAT WAS INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE EXISTENCE OF THE CAPITALIST STATE NEVER TOOK PLACE. There was never a situation of dual power, because there was never a struggle for workers power, nor was there even a pole of attraction for the formation of such a workers power. In any event (in Catalonia, and only for two or three months), one must speak of a REVOLUTIONARY SITUATION polarized between two antagonistic alternatives: the revolutionary committees, WHICH WERE NEITHER COORDINATED AMONG THEMSELVES NOR CENTRALIZED, AND WERE UNAWARE OF THEIR OWN ROLE; and the CCMA, AN INSTITUTION OF CLASS COLLABORATION formed of representatives of the government of the Generalitat, the antifascist republican and workers organizations, and the extreme left of the Popular Front—the CNT-FAI and the POUM. This antagonism between the committees and the CCMA cannot be defined as a situation of dual power, insofar as there was never a workers power, not even an attempt to coordinate and centralize these committees in order to form a pole of attraction for such a workers power. The CNT and the POUM, instead of reinforcing these revolutionary committees as organs of a new workers power, felt left behind and threatened by the “incontrolados”, so much so that not only did they not issue any directives to coordinate the committees, but their very first directives and measures consisted precisely in threats and denunciations directed against the “incontrolados”. These threats, regardless of whether or not there were any acts of vandalism, were to bear fruit in the summary shooting, in obedience to these directives “against the ‘incontolados’” issued by the superior committees of the CNT, of José Gardeñas of the Construction Trade Union and Fernández, president of the Food Supply Trade Union. Months later, once the counterrevolution had already been underway for some time, it would be the Stalinists and republicans who would bestow this undeserved moniker of “incontrolados” upon the POUM and the CNT, for the purpose of physically and politically eliminating them.

The predominant school of historiography not only fails to view this revolutionary situation as one posing two antagonistic alternatives, the revolutionary committees or the CCMA; it speaks of a situation of dual power between the CCMA and the government of the Generalitat!

Thesis no. 7. The capitalist state was not destroyed and continued to perform (even if in a “diminished”, “nominal” or “partial” capacity) its functions. Furthermore, the state’s repressive apparatus—the Civil Guard, the Assault Guard and the carabineros—was not dissolved, but confined to their barracks to wait for better times, which were to come a few months later. The economic internationalization of capitalism in the wake of the First World War signaled the end of the epoch of bourgeois revolutions and the beginning of the epoch of proletarian revolutions. In the absence of a revolutionary vanguard, one that would be capable of proposing the antagonism between the proletariat and the capitalist state and positing the dictatorship of the proletariat, any revolutionary movement, regardless of its proletarian composition, was destined to fail. Given the inability of the workers organizations to seize power, or, more accurately, to coordinate and centralize the local powers of the various revolutionary committees on a regional and national scale, in order to constitute a workers pseudo-state, the only way left was that of collaboration with the other bourgeois political organizations and with the CAPITALIST STATE, which could have no other goal than the restoration and reinforcement of the republican state. The bases of the counterrevolution were solid enough to facilitate a rapid recovery of the capitalist state, which soon recouped all its functions and, after the “inevitable and necessary” bloody defeat of the proletariat in May 1937, decapitated any revolutionary threat that the workers movement posed, by way of a double policy of repression of the “permanent ‘incontrolados’” (revolutionaries), and the social-democratization and integration of the working class organizations into the apparatus of the capitalist state, via the cooptation of the trade union and political bureaucracies and their incorporation into the bureaucracy of the state.

Thesis no. 8. The CNT and POUM were the extreme left of the Popular Front. Actually, neither of these organizations was part of the Popular Front; both, however, made a decisive contribution to its success in the elections of February 1936. After July 19, 1936, both organizations were left behind by the events. In the midst of the revolutionary euphoria they were incapable of issuing any directives until July 28—“to warn the ‘incontrolados’”! On July 20 a planned radio broadcast announcing a “progressive” labor agreement signed by the Minister of Labor of the Companys government and the Catalonian employers, which granted the 40-hour week, a 15% wage increase and a reduction of rents by 50%, was cancelled, because several of the eminent employers who had signed the agreement had received warnings not to return to their homes because patrols of armed men were waiting for them. The revolution proceeded by fits and starts, and the stage of economic demands had been surpassed. The revolutionary committees had spontaneously proceeded to carry out the expropriation of the bourgeois class. Collectivization was not undertaken because the employers, technicians and directors had fled and it was necessary to pay the weekly wages of the workers (as some of the protagonists and historians have claimed), but because the revolutionary committees were carrying out a methodical expropriation of the bourgeoisie. The leaders of the workers organizations (CNT and POUM) PROVISIONALLY replaced the state with regard to those functions that the latter had lost, and created institutions of class collaboration in cooperation with reformist and counterrevolutionary workers organizations (PSOE, PSUC, PCE) and bourgeois organizations (ERC, Estat Catalá, Izquierda Republicana) with the goal (conscious or not) of restoring all its functions to the capitalist state and thus helped to fill the VACUUM OF STATE POWER created by the victory of the workers insurrection.

The CCMA could have exercised all the functions of a provisional “revolutionary” government, because the local revolutionary committees, which were trying to coordinate and centralize their activities, turned to the CCMA for help, directives, solutions, orientations, etc.; but the CCMA never performed any other function than that of a LIAISON COMMITTEE for these local revolutionary committees in their dealings with the Generalitat. Furthermore, these local revolutionary committees, in accordance with the policy and the collaborationist nature of the CCMA, were rapidly transformed into antifascist committees, and thus lost their revolutionary and proletarian origin and potentials.

Thesis no. 9. The CCMA was the product of both the victory of the insurrection of July 19-20 and the political defeat of July 21. For the first time in history, a militarily victorious workers insurrection was defeated politically on the very next day after its triumph due to its political incapacity and its refusal to seize power. The CCMA was never an organization of workers power or of dual power, but an organization of class collaboration. And this is just what Munis, Nin, Molins, Tarradellas, Companys, Azaña, Peiró, García Oliver, Montseny, Abad de Santillán, etc., have already said, and it was the product of its own nature as an institution of antifascist unity and class collaboration, formed by the diverse workers, reformist, Stalinist and republican organizations. And there was no revolutionary organization that was capable of opposing the CCMA, capable of creating an institution of coordination and centralization of the local committees, that is, an organ of WORKERS POWER opposed to the government of the Generalitat, to the Popular Front-style government known as the CCMA, and to the central government of the Republic.

Paradoxically, a posteriori , the dissolution of the CCMA was characterized, by many of those who have revealed the CCMA’s nature as an institution of class collaboration, as the end of a stage of “dual power”. The advance of the counterrevolution and the loss of revolutionary impulse on the part of the masses seems to be reflected in the weakness of the theoretical analyses of the revolutionaries.

The real power of the CCMA has always been greatly exaggerated. After its first month of existence this power was already reduced, with the creation of other institutions like the Council of the Economy, the Control Patrols, the Supply Committee, etc., to that of just one more CNT institution of technical collaboration with the government institutions, an institution of antifascist collaboration in the command of the militias, thus losing (if it every really possessed it) its capability of exercising “government” functions. Furthermore, the military expedition to Mallorca, staged by the Generalitat in mid-August 1936, in collaboration with the CNT Maritime Transport Trade Union, without the involvement or even the knowledge of the CCMA, constituted irrefutable proof that the CCMA did not even have full control of command over the militias.

Once the CNT decided that antifascist collaboration was necessary and inevitable, the pressure imposed by the government apparatus (both the central government and the autonomous regional governments), among which the refusal to deliver arms (or currency to buy them) to the confederal militias particularly stands out, caused the anarchosyndicalist leaders to accept the necessity of dissolving the CCMA, the revolutionary committees and the Militias, and with them all revolutionary possibilities, in order to participate in the government apparatus (central and autonomous regions) like any other “antifascist” organization.

At the beginning of September 1936 the CNT proposed the dissolution of the CCMA; this proposal was approved by the other antifascist forces, which, over the course of the last meetings of the CCMA, had approved the formation of a new government of the Generalitat with representatives from all the antifascist organizations that formed the CCMA. The only other things that were discussed were the name and the program this government would adopt. A “verbal” concession was made to the principles of the CNT by calling the new government “the Council of the Generalitat”, and its program would be the one that had already been established by the existing “Council of the Economy”.

Thesis no. 10. A war in defense of a democratic state, for the victory of the latter against a fascist state, could not be a revolutionary civil war; it was a war between two fractions of the bourgeoisie—the fascist and the republican fractions—in which the proletariat had ALREADY been defeated. This was not because the July insurrection was militarily suppressed in the republican zone (as it had been in the fascist zone), but because the nature of the war AT THE SERVICE OF A DEMOCRATIC BOURGEOIS STATE had transformed the class nature of the revolutionary insurrection of July. The methods, goals and class program of the proletariat had been replaced by the methods, goals and program of the bourgeoisie. That is, when the proletariat fights with the methods and for the program of the bourgeoisie, even if it does so in favor of the democratic fraction and against the fascist fraction, HAS ALREADY BEEN DEFEATED. The proletariat is revolutionary or it is nothing. The proletariat either fights with its own class methods (strike, insurrection, international solidarity, revolutionary militias, destruction of the state, etc.) and for its own program (suppression of wage labor, dissolution of the army and police, abolition of international borders, the dictatorship of the proletariat organized in workers councils, etc.), or it collaborates with the bourgeoisie, renouncing its class methods and program, and then it has ALREADY been defeated.

Thesis no. 11. The collectivizations meant nothing, and were incapable of further development in the future, if the capitalist state was not destroyed. In fact, the collectivizations ended up serving the imperative needs of a war economy. The situation rapidly evolved, assuming a wide variety of forms between the expropriation of the factories from the bourgeoisie in July 1936 and the militarization of industry and labor, which largely characterized the situation in 1938. It was, and still is, impossible to separate the political revolution from the social and economic revolution. Revolutions are always TOTALITARIAN, in both meanings of the word: total and authoritarian. THERE IS NOTHING MORE AUTHORITARIAN THAN A REVOLUTION: expropriating a factory from its owners, or a rural estate from its owner, will always be an authoritarian imposition. And it can only take place when the repressive forces of the bourgeoisie, the army and the police, have been defeated by a revolutionary army that imposes the new revolutionary legal system IN AN AUTHORITARIAN MANNER. Anarchosyndicalism and the POUM, due to the theoretical incapacity of the former and the numerical weakness, verbalism and lack of audacity of the latter, never posed the question of power, which they abandoned to the hands of the professional politicians of the republican bourgeoisie and the socialists: Azaña, Giral, Prieto, Largo Caballero, Companys, Tarradellas, Negrín … or they shared it with them, when their participation was necessary to thwart the development of a revolutionary alternative.

On the economic terrain, the historiographic myth that can be encompassed by the generic concept of “COLLECTIVIZATION” underwent (in Catalonia) four stages:

1. The expropriation by the workers (July to September 1936);

2. The adaptation of the confiscated enterprises to the Collectivizations Decree (October to December 1936);

3. The attempt by the Generalitat to direct the economy and control the collectives, in confrontation with the attempt to socialize the economy spearheaded by the radical sector of the CNT militants (January to May 1937);

4. The gradual state intervention and centralization (on the part of the central government) imposed a war economy and the MILITARIZATION of labor (June 1937 to January 1939).

Thesis no. 12. The antifascist ideology, the sacred union of all the antifascist working class and bourgeois parties, justified the abandonment of class frontiers in favor of the practice of class collaboration. Antifascism was the extension of the electoral Popular Front policy of February 1936, in a situation of war, after a victorious working class insurrection. The need for antifascist unity in order to win the war against fascism ALREADY implied the defeat of the revolutionary alternative. Failure to recognize this, and to devote oneself to making attempts to differentiate, as Trotsky did, a rejected Popular Frontism from a “temporary” antifascism, necessary until fascism had been defeated, meant to objectively fall into the nets of antifascist unity, to the same degree and for identical reasons as the POUM and the CNT. THE POPULAR FRONT (after the purging of the most right-wing parties after July 19) AND THE ANTIFASCIST FRONT WERE NOT SO DIFFERENT, AND AS THE WAR PROGRESSED THEY TENDED TO MERGE. In fact, it was the CNT and the FAI, after May 1937 and the fall of the Largo Caballero government, which led the movement to form an ANTIFASCIST POPULAR FRONT, as a means of exerting pressure to once again obtain libertarian representation in the republican government. This actually led to an accelerated process of social-democratization of all the workers organizations that rapidly obtained a majority position in all of them, thus bringing about the absolute marginalization of the revolutionary minorities, which were totally residual, powerless and very confused, which facilitated the rise and seizure of state power by the Stalinists, with their reactionary, but very clear and resolute, program of strengthening the republican state.

Thesis no. 13. The so-called “revolutionary conquests” were simultaneously the culmination of the insurrectionary victory of the workers organizations and the political defeat of the proletarian revolution.

The CCMA was the product of the victory of the workers insurrection, but it was also the product of the inability of the workers organizations, especially the CNT, as it was the most powerful force, to destroy the capitalist state. These social, economic, political, cultural, and quotidian “conquests” responded perfectly to the anarchosyndicalist ideology of apoliticism “ tout court ”, which was not interested in the “seizure of power”, but with carrying out the social revolution by destroying the army, abolishing the Church and taking over management of the factories. To many anarchosyndicalist workers, the question of whether to “go for broke” or not was absurd; they already had everything they were interested in: a gun, control of the factory, control over public order, the municipal council….! Why seize power? Why replace the republican state with “another”, workers, state?

WITHOUT REVOLUTIONARY THEORY THERE IS NO REVOLUTION. Very quickly the anti-militarists became militarists, and soon thereafter staunch advocates of an efficient professional bourgeois army. It did not take long for the anti-statists to become the best support for the reconstruction of the capitalist state, and the government of the Republic had four anarchist ministers among its ranks. Anarchist ministers! Nor was this the greatest contradiction in which the Spanish anarchist movement would become enmeshed. Faced with a lack of alternatives and directives from the CNT, the expropriated enterprises were transformed into collectives, which were nothing but the establishment of a kind of trade union capitalism—powerfully centralized and coordinated by the government of the Generalitat—which degenerated within a few months into the militarization of the enterprises and labor.

Thesis no. 14. The revolutionary committees—of defense, labor, enterprise, locality, supply, neighborhood, rearguard militias, etc.—were the potential organs of workers power, which often exercised the only real power, on a local or sectoral level, in July 1936. But they were rapidly transformed into antifascist committees or trade union committees for enterprise management, or else underwent a prolonged period of dormancy (like the confederal defense committees) or were transformed into state institutions, like the Control Patrols, which were nothing but control exercised by the (revolutionary or radical) “incontrolados” and the defense committees, neighborhood committees and rearguard militias (although they were at the same time the new organization that supplanted government control over public order). The ambiguous and ambivalent nature of the Control Patrols, the collectives, the Militias, the defense committees, and ultimately the whole “Revolution of July 19”, was the direct consequence of the ambiguity and ambivalent nature of the organizations of the extreme left of the Popular Front themselves (the CNT and POUM), which were not only incapable of seizing power and championing the historical program of emancipation of the proletariat against the counterrevolutionary forces, but also opted for class collaboration with the bourgeois parties and the capitalist state with the goal of defeating fascism. They were ambiguous because the CCMA was the product of the insurrectionary PROLETARIAN victory of July 19, but also of the political fiasco of July 21, WHEN CLASS COLLABORATION WAS ACCEPTED.

Thesis no. 15. On July 21, 1936 the CNT opted for collaboration with the other antifascist forces, without issuing any political directives concerning either the seizure of power, the economic organization of the enterprises, the coordination of the revolutionary committees or that of the different economic and industrial sectors. On August 11, 1936, at the request of the CNT, the Council of the Economy of the Generalitat assumed the responsibility for coordinating and reorganizing the Catalonian economy.

The provisional character of the enterprise expropriations, which were implemented in the heat of the moment of the insurrectionary victory of July, in a situation of a power vacuum, caused them to be oriented towards the sole objective of guaranteeing the everyday functioning of the enterprises. Only in a few economic sectors (food, health and sanitation, education), to a limited extent, and in some isolated enterprises, was there an attempt to carry out a process of socialization in which the trade union acted as both initiator and organizer. The Collectivizations Decree of October 1936 legalized a fait accompli, that is, the confiscation of the enterprises by the workers, but only for the evident purpose of centralizing the Catalonian economy through the Council of the Economy of the Generalitat, eliminating the organs of workers power from the enterprises, and nipping in the bud the socializing experiments of certain sectors and enterprises.

Collectivization in the Catalonian economy underwent four stages:

1. The expropriation of the enterprises. The revolutionary committees, which the counterrevolutionaries called “incontrolados”, once the military uprising had been defeated, proceeded to expropriate the bourgeoisie, and to take priests, bourgeois, caciques and former members of the employers’ pistoleros trade union “for a ride”. Not only was there a total absence of political or economic directives from the superior committees of the CNT and the CCMA, but the latter also threatened to shoot the “incontrolados”. They faced a fait accompli, however: the factories had been confiscated. The CNT, faced with its own inability and lack of will to coordinate and manage the Catalonian economy, proposed to the Generalitat the creation of a Council of the Economy: it handed over to the petty bourgeois government of the Generalitat the management and coordination of the Catalonian economy!

2. Adaptation to the Collectivizations Decree. In October 1936, together with the dissolution of the CCMA, the entry of the POUM and the CNT into the government of the Generalitat, the Decree on the militarization of the Popular Militias, the dissolution of the local committees—which were replaced by Popular Front Municipal Councils—and a long etcetera of counterrevolutionary measures of lesser importance, the Collectivizations Decree was approved with the indispensable support of the CNT. What it actually did was establish a trade union capitalism in the enterprises, with major state intervention and centralization on the part of the government of the Generalitat, and this was called COLLECTIVIZATION. The former bourgeoisie, the private owners, had been replaced by management by the trade union delegates of each enterprise, organized in Workers Control Committees (which were often the result of a pact between manual, technical and administrative workers and even some of the former owners), whose activities were completely mediated by and subject to the tutelage of the inspectors appointed by the Generalitat, which nonetheless considered the enterprise to be the property of the trade union.

3. COLLECTIVIZATION versus SOCIALIZATION (December 1936-May 1937). On the one hand, the government of the Generalitat, relying on its social base that consisted of the petty bourgeois sectors—administrative, technical, former business owners, members of the liberal professions and even workers professing a right wing ideology, often members of the UGT—initiated an offensive to expand its control over the enterprises, based on the Collectivizations Decree and the implementation of a series of financial decrees, approved by Tarradellas at S’Agaró in January 1937. At the same time the radical sector of the CNT militants was attempting to SOCIALIZE production, which implied increasing the power of the Trade Union Industrial Federations in the enterprises.

SOCIALIZATION, for this radical sector of the CNT, meant the direction of the Catalonian economy by the Trade Unions (of the CNT) and a break with the dynamic of trade union capitalism, and the establishment of an equitable distribution of wealth that would put an end to the scandalous differences between workers in rich and poor collectivized industries, and between the former and the unemployed. Such a form of direction over A SOCIALIZED Catalonian ECONOMY required in turn the creation of the necessary organs within the CNT, that is, the replacement of the Sindicatos Únicos (which were appropriate for directing a strike, but not for managing the enterprises) by Industrial Trade Unions (better adapted for managing the various economic sectors), which was implemented in the first months of 1937. The SOCIALIZATION of the Catalonian economy meant the direction of the economy (and of the war) by the CNT, and this in turn required the abolition of the government of the Generalitat.

The counterrevolutionary offensive of the Generalitat to expand its control, extending it to every enterprise, therefore clashed head-on with the socialization program of the radical sector of the CNT. A struggle was waged, one enterprise at a time, in which the assemblies that were supposed to vote for socialization were subjected to a wide variety of forms of pressure and manipulation, from the most despicable political intrigues to the use of the police. In this bitter struggle, unfolding in one enterprise at a time, a struggle that the superior committees of the CNT never wanted to centralize, because to do so would have implied breaking with the antifascist unity pact, an increasingly more obvious and “painful” division emerged among the trade union militants, between the collaborationist sector and the radical sector of the CNT. During the course of this campaign to socialize the Catalonian economy, the radical militants of the CNT attempted to compete with the collaborationist militants in an attempt to obtain the support of the majority of the trade union members. The radical militants, however, were almost always in the minority in the factory assemblies, due to the flood of opportunists who joined the CNT in the wake of July 19 and attrition caused by the revolution itself among the ranks of the revolutionaries, many of whom joined the Militias or had been promoted to positions of responsibility.

A major role in the opposition to the militarization of the Popular Militias (decreed in October 1936) was played by the fourth company of the Gelsa unit of the Durruti Column, which, after narrowly avoiding an armed confrontation with other forces of the Column, which supported the militarization decree, decided to abandon the front (in February 1937) and return to Barcelona, taking their weapons with them.

These militiamen, together with other radical CNT militants who were involved in the ongoing struggle for socialization in the enterprises, founded The Friends of Durruti Group in March 1937, which soon attracted between four and five thousand members and constituted, in Catalonia, a revolutionary alternative to the (collaborationist) superior committees of the CNT-FAI.

4. From June 1937 until the end of the war, the radical sector of the CNT, the Trotskyists and the POUM were subjected to persecution, driven into hiding, and physically annihilated.

During this same period, the CNT (its revolutionary minority having been amputated) continued to collaborate faithfully with a Stalinist state that imposed the militarization of labor and of life, the most draconian rationing and a war economy. STATE ANARCHISM consolidated its collaborationism with the republican bourgeoisie, embraced its program of victory over fascism, repressed any revolutionary threats within its ranks and assumed the tasks that are natural to any bureaucracy that aspires to integrate itself into the state apparatus.

Thesis no. 16. May 1937 marked the armed defeat of the most advanced sector of the revolutionary proletariat that was required by the counterrevolution so it could proceed to implement its counteroffensive. The causes of May were rooted in the rising cost of living, the scarcity of basic goods, the resistance to the dissolution of the control patrols and the militarization of the militias, and the constant struggle being waged by the workers in the collectivized enterprises to preserve their control over production in the face of the growing interventionism of the Generalitat, facilitated by the implementation of the S’Agaró Decrees. It was not by chance that the May events began at a collectivized enterprise, the Telephone company, with the armed opposition mounted by the rank and file CNT workers against its seizure by the Generalitat’s forces of repression. The rapid extension of the struggle throughout the entire city of Barcelona was the work of the defense committees and the neighborhood committees, linked by telephone, which acted independently of the superior committees of the CNT.

On the one side of the barricades were the forces of public order, the Stalinists of the PSUC, and the Catalanist Pyrenees Militias under the command of the government of the Generalitat. On the other side of the barricades were the workers of the CNT. Only the anarchists of The Friends of Durruti Group and the Trotskyists of the Bolshevik-Leninist Section of Spain attempted to provide any revolutionary objectives to the struggle of the barricades.

The CNT militants as a whole, however, were incapable of, and did not know how to act in opposition to the COLLABORATIONIST directives issued by the leaders and the superior committees of the CNT. Some actually fired their guns at radios that were broadcasting the conciliatory speeches of García Oliver and Federica Montseny, but in the end they complied with their directives.

The Friends of Durruti Group referred to the activity of these leaders and superior committees as an “enormous betrayal”.

After May 1937 the attempts ON THE PART OF THE SUPERIOR COMMITTEES OF THE BUREAUCRATIZED CNT to expel The Friends of Durruti Group from the CNT failed, as no trade union assembly would ratify this proposal.

A split that could have clarified the contradictory and irreconcilable positions within the CNT never took place, however.

Subsequent historiography underestimated, or ignored, the important role played by the Group, and the CNT bureaucracy even succeeded in recuperating for its own benefit “the true revolutionary prestige” of a Group that it had persecuted and attempted to expel from its ranks. Ambiguity always favors the counterrevolution. AND TODAY WE CAN SEE, WITHOUT ANYBODY BEING SCANDALIZED, HOW THE CNT AND THE FAI CLAIM THE “LEGACY” OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PRESTIGE OF THE FRIENDS OF DURRUTI GROUP. Bureaucracies and capitalism are capable of recuperating anything, even what they slandered and persecuted for constituting a revolutionary alternative, antagonistic to the bureaucracy and capitalism.

Thesis no. 17. The characteristics of the Stalinist counterrevolution were and are:

a) Incessant, ubiquitous and omnipotent police terrorism;

b) The indispensable misrepresentation of its own nature, and the nature of its enemies, especially the revolutionaries;

c) Exploitation of the workers by a form of state capitalism, directed by the Party-State.

The Negrín-Stalin government transformed the initial class collaboration of the CCMA, and the ideology of antifascist unity, into NATIONAL UNITY and orderly government; it converted the reformist impotence against the revolution of the socialists, Catalanists and anarchosyndicalist bureaucracy into a complete counterrevolutionary program, which abolished the least vestige of workers democracy, and transformed the bourgeois democracy into the police dictatorship of the GPU and the SIM.

The Stalinists have never been a reformist sector of the workers movement. No collaboration of any kind is or ever has been possible with Stalinism, only unremitting war. Stalinism, always and everywhere, leads and guides the counterrevolutionary forces, finds its power in the idea of national unity, in the practice of a policy of law and order, in its struggle to establish a strong government, in the penetration of the militants of the Stalinist party into the state apparatus, and above all by disguising their reactionary nature within the workers movement.

Thesis no. 18. It is necessary to set forth a chronology, because a defense committee was not the same thing in 1931 as a defense committee in July 1936, nor was the latter the same thing as a defense committee was one week later, when it might have been transformed into an antifascist committee, nor in January 1937 when the defense committees had gone into hibernation, nor in May 1937 when their existence rose to the surface with the “spontaneous” organization of the insurrection, nor in December 1937 when they could be said to have disappeared. Similarly, a self-managed enterprise in July 1936 could have come under the financial control of the government of the Generalitat in 1937, and the same enterprise might have been militarized in 1938.

The Popular Militias, voluntary, popular and of a revolutionary character, after several months (between October 1936 and May 1937) of discussions about whether or not to accept militarization, became regiments or divisions of a regular army, and the militiamen were turned into soldiers.

THIS CHRONOLOGY MAY BE CATEGORIZED (for Catalonia) in four stages:

1. The revolutionary stage (July 19, 1936 to September 26, 1936);

2. The advance of the counterrevolution (September 26, 1936 to June 16, 1937);

3. The repression of the revolutionary movement (June 16, 1937 to April 1938);

4. The disappearance of the revolutionary movement (April 1938 to the end of the war).

Thesis no. 19. July 19, 1936 to September 26, 1936:

The “revolutionary” stage or the stage of the victory of the insurrection and the revolutionary movement. VACUUM OF (CENTRALIZED) STATE POWER. ATOMIZATION OF POWER and confusion of powers. Local revolutionary committees and revolutionary defense committees, neighborhood committees, supply committees, workers control committees, popular militias, workers and soldiers councils, rearguard militias. The bourgeois state was “partially broken down” but preserved its legal authority, and did not fail to legalize and proclaim the revolutionary conquests that had taken place. Above all, however, it impeded and hindered the capacity for coordination and centralization of the revolutionary committees, which held all power at the local level. The CCMA acted as an institution of class collaboration, as an intermediary between the real local powers of the committees and the legal power of the Generalitat. The CCMA’s Juridical Office imposed a popular justice extraneous to the existing laws (and supported spontaneous popular justice). A very theoretical and historical-analytical error that is very widespread among both the participants in the CCMA and subsequent historians consists in positing a situation of dual power between the CCMA and the government of the Generalitat, which is in this version said to have disappeared with the dissolution of the CCMA.

We maintain that the CCMA did not create a situation of dual power with respect to the Generalitat and that at no time did the CCMA imply any more than a duplication of powers previously exercised by the Generalitat, which was necessary in order to reestablish the authority of the latter.

Thesis no. 20. September 26, 1936 to June 16, 1937:

The advance of the counterrevolution. Retreat of the revolutionary movement and offensive by the Generalitat to reconquer all its functions (even assuming some of the powers of the Valencia Government). Dissolution of the CCMA, entry of the POUM and the CNT into the government of the Generalitat. DECREE DISSOLVING THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEES AND FORMING POPULAR FRONT MUNICIPAL COUNCILS. Nin, the Minister of Justice, abolished the Juridical Office. The CNT and the POUM facilitated the dissolution of the revolutionary committees and their replacement by Popular Front municipal councils. Nin and Tarradellas went to Lérida to compel the local committee there, controlled by the POUM, to submit to the decree. The Decree ordering the militarization of the Popular Militias was proclaimed. In mid-December the Stalinists expelled Nin from the Government and established an alliance between the ERC and the PSUC to reduce the power of the CNT and to abolish the “revolutionary conquests” of July, which were only temporary concessions and transfers of state functions. May 1937 signified the final defeat of the revolutionary movement. The PSUC and the ERC led the counterrevolution, but the POUM and the CNT were OBJECTIVELY indispensable collaborators when the revolutionary movement was still strong enough to constitute a workers power.

Thesis no. 21. June 16, 1937 to April 1938:

Dissolution of the Control Patrols. Outlawing and repression of the POUM and the revolutionary movement. The CNT was divided into a critical sector that was repressed (or removed from its positions and deprived of its functions in the organization) and a governmental sector that integrated itself into the state apparatus. Stalinist repression of the revolutionary movement. In July 1937 the FAI renounced its organization by affinity groups and adopted a territorial form of organization instead. The affinity groups based on shared ideological conceptions had permitted the emergence of The Friends of Durruti Group (between four and five thousand members) as a revolutionary opposition to the collaborationism of the FAI. The FAI’s new territorial form of organization, of a pyramidal and hierarchical character, granted the superior committees absolute control over the organization, and also converted the FAI into an efficient political party, capable of assuming positions in all the administrative levels of the state apparatus. The Council of Aragón was abolished in August 1937. The Aragón collectives were dissolved by the military expedition of the division under the command by the Stalinist Lister. In September Los Escolapios, the headquarters of the confederal Defense Committee, was taken by assault, without any other response on the part of the ruling bureaucracy of the CNT than the order to surrender.

Thesis no. 22. April 1938 to January 1939:

Disappearance of the revolutionary movement. The militants who had not been assassinated or imprisoned tried to carry on their work in strictly clandestine conditions, joined the army or went into hiding. All the revolutionary publications either disappeared or acquired a purely apologetic character. The CNT-UGT unity pact. The FAI and the CNT campaigned for the creation of an ANTIFASCIST POPULAR FRONT as a pressure tactic to obtain the readmission of libertarian representatives to the republican government. War economy, Stakhanovism and the militarization of labor and of everyday life. The Negrín government attempted to establish a dictatorial Stalinist state.

Thesis no. 23. THE ERRORS OF THE POUM:

1) The POUM never posed the question of working class power, not in July 1936 and not at any time during the revolutionary stage of July, August and September 1936.

2) The POUM accepted the liquidation of the committees, which were the potential organs of workers power. That is, the leadership of the POUM called for the suppression of the revolutionary committees instead of working for their extension, democratization and coordination. It never proposed a struggle for the destruction of the capitalist organs of power, or for the destruction of the capitalist state. The committees, although incomplete and defective, were the potential organs of workers power. The task of a revolutionary party (the POUM was never a revolutionary party) would have been to reinforce, democratize and coordinate these committees in such a way as to transform them into workers councils, elected by general assemblies and revocable at any time, capable of constituting a government of workers councils.

3) The POUM was incapable of making the fundamental distinction between the Party and the Popular Front, and followed the latter road, which led to government collaboration.

4) The leadership of the POUM was always following behind the CNT-FAI, whose leaders it considered to be revolutionaries, instead of engaging in a powerful, consistent and objective polemic against the series of false positions assumed by the CNT-FAI.

5) The leadership of the POUM never really understood the relation between war and revolution, insofar as it made a distinction between the two. The slogan, “War or Revolution” is false in and of itself.

6) The POUM, almost as rapidly as the other groups, sacrificed the revolution to what seemed to be the interests of the “war” (government collaboration, an indecisive policy with regard to the question of the Army, etc.) instead of clearly demonstrating that the war did not merit the sacrifices of the working class except to the extent that it was an integral part of the revolutionary process, that is, insofar as it was subordinated to the decisive question of power. It did nothing to establish the foundations of the organs of a new power (revolutionary workers Front), not even in those locations where the party’s influence was preponderant. The POUM leadership allowed members of the party, the commanders of the Lenin division, to sabotage all political activity oriented towards the militiamen, thus helping the plans of the counterrevolution instead of favoring agitation for workers democracy in the mass organizations.

7) The leadership of the POUM shared certain obsolete ideas concerning nationalism and regional autonomy with the Catalonian petty bourgeoisie.

8) The POUM never engaged in any critique of the collectivization of industry as a new form of “trade union capitalism”.

9) Nin dissolved the FOUS under the erroneous trade union slogan of “CNT-UGT”, instead of issuing the directive, “Neither CNT nor UGT: one central trade union”.

10) The capitulation of May:

a) the leadership had no independent, clear line;

b) it took no independent initiative of its own;

c) it tried to provide a cover for the treason of the anarchist leaders;

d) it learned nothing: it even claimed that May was a workers victory.

Many of these errors of the Executive Committee of the POUM were personally attributable to Nin, whether or not he was supported by the other members of the Executive Committee of the POUM, who sometimes opposed Nin’s personal decisions, or were not even consulted. On the other hand, we must not forget that the policy of the Executive Committee of the POUM, which was largely determined by Nin, was considered by a broad critical sector of the party as a catastrophic policy for the revolution, and moreover as an abandonment of the founding principles of the POUM:

1) Nin’s entry, as a representative of the POUM, in the Council of the Economy signified the recognition of the government of the Generalitat’s authority over and prerogatives for planning of the Catalonian economy.

2) The merger of the FOUS into the UGT instead of the CNT.

3) Nin’s acceptance of the position of Minister of Justice (which Andrade also referred to as a mistake) in the government of the Generalitat (which he held from September 26 to December 13, 1936, when he was forced out as a result of pressure from the Stalinists), because it strengthened the government of the Generalitat, laid the ground-works for the dissolution of the local committees and constituted a practical rejection of the calls for a workers government.

4) Nin’s first job as Minister of Justice was to accompany Tarradellas, the Prime Minister of the government of the Generalitat (“ conseller en cap ”), to Lérida, which was at the time governed by a Committee dominated by the CNT and the POUM, to REESTABLISH THE AUTHORITY OF THE CATALONIAN GOVERNMENT in that city.

5) Nin asserted that the dictatorship of the proletariat existed in Catalonia and also (in contradiction with this first assertion) that it was possible for the working class to take power peacefully.

6) On October 9, 1936, the government of the Generalitat—WE MUST NOT FORGET THAT this was made possible thanks to the participation of the POUM and the CNT, WITHOUT WHOSE INVOLVEMENT AND HELP THE GOVERNMENT OF THE GENERALITAT WOULD HAVE BEEN POWERLESS—was able to decree the dissolution of the local committees, OF A REVOLUTIONARY OR POTENTIALLY REVOLUTIONARY NATURE, which were to be replaced by Popular Front Municipal Councils; on October 13 a decree drafted and signed by Nin himself nullified the revolutionary work of Barriobero (and of the cenetistas) in the justice tribunals; on October 24 the decree ordering the militarization of the Popular Militias and the decree regarding public order were approved by a Junta of Internal Security. NIN WAS THE MINISTER OF JUSTICE OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE GENERALITAT THAT TOOK THESE COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY MEASURES.

7) In January 1937 Nin wrote to the Executive Committee of the PSOE proposing the participation of the POUM in the unification conferences being held between the PSOE and the PCE. Only a few days later the Stalinist repression of the POUMistas began in Madrid.

8) In May 1937 he issued an order by telephone to disband the column formed in Gracia by militants of the POUM and the CNT for the purpose of seizing the center of the city held by counterrevolutionaries.

9) In May 1937 he rejected the plan to seize power elaborated by Josep Rebull … because power was not a military question, but a political one.

10) Nin thought that May 1937 was a workers victory!

Thesis no. 24. CRITIQUE OF THE POSITIONS OF BILAN : Bilan was the French-language journal of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left (Bordiguists), best known during the thirties as the Prometeo Group ( Prometeo was the Italian-language journal of the Fraction). Bilan has been sanctified by various left organizations as the nec plus ultra of the revolutionary positions of the 1930s. Bilan denied, in a brilliant and flawless analysis (with which we agree), that a proletarian revolution had triumphed in Spain in 1936. Bilan also claimed, however, that, due to the lack of a (Bordiguist) class party, there was not even a possibility for a REVOLUTIONARY SITUATION (we think this is a serious error, with important consequences). According to Bilan the proletariat was immersed in an antifascist war, that is, it was enrolled in an imperialist war between a democratic bourgeoisie and a fascist bourgeoisie. In this situation, the only appropriate positions were desertion and boycott, or to wait for better times, when the (Bordiguist) party would enter the stage of history from the wings where it had been biding its time.

The analyses of Bilan have the virtue of decisively highlighting the weaknesses of and dangers that threatened the revolutionary situation after the triumph of the workers insurrection of July 1936, but they are incapable of formulating a revolutionary alternative. In any event the revolutionary defeatism of abandoning the Spanish proletariat into the hands of its reformist or counterrevolutionary organizations, as proposed IN PRACTICE by Bilan , was certainly not a revolutionary alternative. The incoherence of Bilan is made evident by its analysis of the May Days of 1937. It turns out that the “revolution” of July 19, which one week later ceased to be a revolution, because its class goals had been turned into war goals, now reappears like the Phoenix of history, like a ghost that had been hiding in some unknown location. And now it turns out that in May 1937 the workers were once again “revolutionary”, and defended the revolution from the barricades. Was it not the case, however, that, according to Bilan , a revolution had not taken place? Here, Bilan gets all tangled up. On July 19 (according to Bilan ) there was a revolution, but one week later, there was no longer a revolution, because there was no (Bordiguist) party; in May 1937 there was another revolutionary week. But how do we characterize the situation between July 26, 1936 and May 3, 1937? We are not told anything about this. The revolution is considered to be an intermittent river [“Guadiana”: a river in Spain that runs on the surface, then underground, then reappears on the surface—Translator’s note] that emerges onto the historical stage when Bilan wants to explain certain events that it neither understands, nor is capable of explaining. The revolution is viewed as a series of week-long explosions, separated by ten months of inexplicable and unexplained limbo. And these revolutionary explosions, May 1937 as well as July 1936, are so inconsistent with the theses of Bilan concerning the non-existence of a revolutionary situation, that we are led to affirm its absolute lack of understanding of the characteristics and nature of a proletarian revolutionary process.

On the one hand, Bilan acknowledges the class character of the struggles of July and May, but on the other hand not only denies their revolutionary character, but even denies the existence of a revolutionary situation. This viewpoint can only be explained by the distance of an absolutely isolated Parisian group, which placed a higher priority on its analyses than on the study of the Spanish reality. There is not even one word in Bilan about the real nature of the committees, or on the struggle of the Barcelona proletariat for socialization and against collectivization, or on the debates and confrontations within the Militia Columns concerning the militarization of the Militias, or a serious critique of the positions of The Friends of Durruti Group, for the simple reason that they are practically totally unaware of the existence and the significance of all these matters. It was easy to justify this ignorance by denying the existence of a revolutionary situation. Bilan ’s analysis fails because in its view the absence of a revolutionary (Bordiguist) party necessarily implies the absence of a revolutionary situation.

On July 19, 1936, throughout all of Spain, but especially in Catalonia, there was a victorious workers insurrection. This insurrection, which was dominated by its libertarian element, faced the competition of other political forces, such as the POUM and the republicans, and of some units of the forces of public order, like the Assault Guards and the Civil Guards, which remained loyal to the government of the Generalitat and the Republic. But it is certainly true that the result of this insurrection, thanks to the assault on the barracks of San Andrés, meant the arming of the Barcelona proletariat, and by extension the proletariat of all of Catalonia. The indisputable hegemonic power that resulted from this revolutionary insurrection was anarchist. The rest of the working class forces, the Generalitat and the overwhelmed forces of public order were, in Catalonia, in an absolutely minority position.

The product of this revolutionary insurrection was the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias (the CCMA). The CCMA, however, was simultaneously the product of this victory and also of the refusal of the anarchists to seize power. The CCMA was not an organ of workers power to confront the power of the republican bourgeoisie, that is, the Generalitat, but an institution of collaboration of the anarchists with the other political forces, both the working class forces as well as those of the bourgeoisie: it was therefore an institution of class collaboration. In practice, the CCMA performed the functions of public order, and recruiting and training antifascist militias, which the government of the Generalitat was incapable of performing. The CCMA acted as a kind of Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of War OF THE GENERALITAT. Regardless of how much autonomy and independence it had, it was still a Ministry of the Generalitat.

Neither the CCMA, nor the CNT-FAI, nor the POUM issued any directives (except the order to end the general strike), or gave any orientation, or proclaimed any orders, until July 28, when the CNT and the CCMA issued a communiqué and decree, respectively, which coincided in threatening “incontrolados” who were acting without the authorization of the CCMA with harsh repression. The insurrection of July 19 spread the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the process of collectivization to the majority of Catalonian enterprises, WITHOUT ANY DIRECTIVE FROM THE WORKERS ORGANIZATIONS, AND WITHOUT ANY ORDER OR RULING FROM THE CCMA.

We must, however, clearly and precisely identify the characteristics of this revolutionary situation: rather than dual power (which did not exist because the CCMA was not created to oppose the Generalitat, but to serve it) we must speak of a vacuum of centralized power. The power of the autonomous government of the Generalitat had fragmented into hundreds of committees that held all power at the local and enterprise level, most of which were in the hands of the working class.

These committees, however, incomplete and deficient, were not coordinated among themselves, and were not reinforced as organs of workers power. The CNT-FAI were neither capable nor desirous of giving these committees any coordination, WHICH WAS ESSENTIAL for the triumph of the revolution. The organizational structure of the CNT, articulated in Sindicatos Únicos , its weakness resulting from its recent period of clandestine activity and the treintista split, but above all its glaring theoretical shortcomings, rendered the CNT incapable of coordinating these committees, which held all power in their hands at the local and enterprise levels. Even the organization of economic life in Catalonia, and the indispensable coordination of the various economic sectors, was left in the hands of the government of the Generalitat, for which purpose the Council of the Economy was created on August 11, 1936. An unstable and transitory revolutionary situation prevailed, which had defeated the fascist bourgeoisie and overwhelmed the republican bourgeoisie, but one that had also escaped the control of the workers organizations themselves, which were incapable of organizing and defending the “revolutionary conquests” of July and of decisively tipping the scales in favor of the final triumph of the revolution, by seizing power, installing the dictatorship of the proletariat and destroying the apparatus of the republican state, simply because anarchosyndicalist theory and organization proved to be alien and foreign to the organization of the revolutionary proletariat. For the spontaneity of the masses has its limits. The inability of the CNT Trade Unions to stabilize and further motivate the revolution was acknowledged by the participants themselves. The CNT, as a trade union organization, was inadequate and incapable of performing the tasks that would have corresponded with the mission of a revolutionary vanguard or party, and the same thing was true of the other organizations of the working class. This is why the revolutionary situation, instead of moving in the direction of a full-blown revolution, was rapidly transformed into a counterrevolutionary situation that favored a rapid consolidation of the structures of the bourgeois state.

Not taking power in July meant leaving it in the hands of the bourgeoisie, and sharing it with the bourgeoisie within the CCMA meant “helping” the bourgeoisie to recover and fill the power vacuum that had been produced by the July insurrection. Furthermore, the collectivization process was not viable nor did it have any meaning at all if the capitalist state remained intact. And this is all the more true if we take into account the fact that the anarchists compensated for the shortcomings of the government of the Generalitat so that it could take over planning of the Catalonian economy, which it was itself incapable of coordinating.

The government of the Generalitat took into its hands, beginning in August 1936, nothing more or less than economic planning, financing of enterprises, the possibility of controlling every enterprise through an inspector appointed by the Generalitat, and the power to enact laws concerning the collectivizations. This was the foundation of the rapid recovery of political power by the Generalitat. If we add to the foregoing the fact that the Civil Guards and Assault Guards had not been dissolved, but only confined to their barracks in the rearguard, far from the front, we may safely conclude that the counterrevolution in Catalonia had some very solid foundations, which explain the rapid restoration of all the prerogatives of the capitalist state.

There is, however, an important difference between claiming that the insurrection of July 1936 was not a revolution, or even that it did not entail a revolutionary situation (as Bilan , the ICC and Robert Camoin, among others, assert) and claiming that the revolutionary situation of July came to naught due to a series of insufficiencies, incapacities and errors on the part of the existing workers organizations. In July 1936 there was a revolutionary situation that imposed the hegemony of the working class and its revolutionary threat on the republican bourgeoisie for ten months, despite the fact that there was no CENTRALIZATION OF POWER of the workers, because that power had been fragmented into hundreds of local committees, enterprise committees, the committees of various workers organizations, and the militias of various parties, in control patrols, etc.

In July 1936 the working class masses knew how to go into action without leaders, without directives from their trade union and political organizations; in May 1937, however, these same masses were incapable of acting in opposition to their leaders, and against the directives of their trade union and political organizations.

May 1937 did not fall out of the clouds, it was the result of the rising cost of living and the shortages of staple foods and basic goods, of the resistance to the dissolution of the control patrols and the militarization of the militias, but above all it was due to the working class offensive/resistance in the enterprises, one by one, totally isolated, in an attempt to consolidate and exercise control over the process of socializing the Catalonian economy, in confrontation with the liquidation of the “conquests of July”. The “normalization” offensive of the Generalitat, which sought to implement the S’Agaró decrees, signed by Tarradellas in January 1937, implied the elimination of the “revolutionary conquests” and absolute control over the Catalonian economy by the government of the Generalitat.

The lessons that should be learned from this are evidently the need to totally destroy the capitalist state, to dissolve its forces of repression, and to establish the social dictatorship of the proletariat, which the anarchists organized in The Friends of Durruti Group identified with the formation of a Revolutionary Junta, composed of all those organizations that had participated in the revolutionary battles of July 1936.

May 1937 was the consequence of the errors committed in July 1936. There was no revolutionary party in Spain, but there was a profound and powerful REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITY of the working class which suppressed the fascist coup, outside the control of the workers organizations that existed in July 1936, and which in May 1937 confronted Stalinism, although it finally failed because it was incapable of confronting its own trade union and political organizations (the CNT and POUM), when the latter were defending both the bourgeois state and the program of the counterrevolution. The fact that the revolutionary movement that existed in Spain between July 1936 and May 1937 failed, and was turned aside from its class goals toward antifascist goals, does not obviate the existence of this revolutionary situation. No proletarian revolution has won yet, and the failure of the Commune and the success of Stalinism is no refutation of the revolutionary character of the Commune and October.

It is obvious that, without the seizure of power and establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Spanish collectivization process could not but fail, and that all the collectivizing experiences would be conditioned and distorted by this absence of the seizure of centralized power; but it is no less obvious that the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, entailed by the collectivization process, with all of its limitations, was the fruit of the proletarian revolutionary movement of July. The fundamental lesson of the “Spanish Revolution” (or more precisely of the Spanish revolutionary situation) is the ineluctable need for a vanguard that would defend the revolutionary program of the proletariat, the two first steps of which are the total destruction of the capitalist state and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, organized in workers councils, which would unify and centralize power. But to assert on the basis of these considerations that without a party there is no revolution, or even a revolutionary situation (as Bilan , the ICC and Robert Camoin claim) reflects the lack of understanding of the fact that not the party, but the proletariat, makes the revolution, although a proletarian revolution will inevitably fail if there is no vanguard capable of defending the revolutionary program of the proletariat (as The Friends of Durruti and the Bolshevik-Leninist Section of Spain unsuccessfully attempted to do). Bilan put the cart in front of the horse. The analyses of those who assert their claim “to be the party” never cease to be tragicomic; they do not know how to see the revolutionary situation that is unfolding right under their noses. The analyses of Bilan are very valuable with regard to its denunciations of the weaknesses and errors of the Spanish revolutionary process; but they are unfortunate and pathetic when its analysis leads it to the absurdity of denying the revolutionary and proletarian nature of the historical process experienced by the Spanish working class between July 1936 and May 1937. Bilan ’s denial of the existence of a revolutionary situation is the product of its Leninist, totalitarian and substitutionist concept of the party: if there is no party there is not even the chance for a revolutionary situation to arise, regardless of the revolutionary activity of the proletariat. The consequences of this denial of the existence of a revolutionary situation in Catalonia in 1936-1937 led Bilan to advocate (solely on the theoretical plane) reactionary political positions such as breaking up the military fronts, fraternization with the Francoist troops, cutting off weapons to the republican troops, etc. It is not at all surprising that Bilan , or more precisely the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, underwent a split as a result of open debate over the nature and characteristics of the Spanish Revolution.

To summarize: it is true that without a revolutionary party or vanguard, a proletarian revolution will fail; and this is the lesson of the Spanish example and the magnificent analysis of Bilan . But it is not true that a proletarian revolutionary situation cannot arise if a revolutionary party does not exist. And this claim is the one that led Bilan to make a false analysis of the situation created on July 19, 1936 in Catalonia, and also explains its failure to understand the events that led the proletariat to engage in a second revolutionary insurrection in May 1937.

Thesis no. 25. There are a number of shared revolutionary political positions that allow us to distinguish, in 1936-1939 in Spain, revolutionary from reformist, bourgeois or counterrevolutionary groups. These positions, which are in addition class frontiers, are based on the defense, not just theoretical but above all active and political, of the following points:

A) Advocate the necessity of the destruction of the capitalist state;

B) Opposition to political collaboration with bourgeois organizations and parties;

C) Advocate the establishment of a social dictatorship of the proletariat;

D) Opposition to the militarization of the Popular Militias;

E) Defense of the future organs of workers power, which are usually identified with the committees;

F) Deny the validity of or any future at all for the collectivizations without the political conquest of power by the working class.

These common denominators that identified, during the Spanish War, the revolutionary as opposed to the non-revolutionary groups, are shared, with greater or lesser emphasis on one point or another, and with varying degrees of theoretical clarity, by Balius and The Friends of Durruti Group, Josep Rebull and Cell 72 of the POUM, Munis and the Bolshevik-Leninist Section of Spain, Fosco and the Bolshevik-Leninist Group “Le Soviet”, as well as the (Bordiguist) militants of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, which split as a result of its internal debate concerning the nature of the Spanish Revolution and War.

The theoretical and practical differences between these different revolutionary groups are important, and were the outcome of the weaknesses of the revolutionary movement of that time. A rigorous study of these groups, unimpaired by ideological prejudices, which restrict inquiry to labeling and/or embalming them as anarchist, Trotskyist, Bordiguist or Marxist, as well as a critique of their errors and the deficiencies of their positions is rendered imperative due to the lack of knowledge concerning these issues, because there is no movement with a future that has no knowledge of its past, and this is all the more true of a revolutionary movement.

Thesis no. 26. The Civil War was not a fratricidal war, as the propaganda of the Francoist dictatorship taught us for forty years and was we have been told by the formal democracy of the post-Franco period for the last fifty years, but a war of extermination of “the reds” by the fascists. In the so-called nationalist zone, from July to August 1936, the rebel military implemented, in their lightning advance from Andalusia and Estremadura, a war of extermination of the enemy, of an arbitrary and class nature and utilizing colonialist methods, for the purpose of sowing terror in a hostile rearguard and imposing political cleansing, directed against neutral elements as well as potential enemies. The goal was to destroy the social base of the workers movement and the left wing parties.

This extermination plan, carefully planned before the uprising, and justified by the need to ensure the victory of a colonial army that confronted the vast majority of the population of the country, was extended not only throughout the three years of warfare, but was legalized and institutionalized in the new Francoist state.

Thesis no. 27. The war did not end on April 1, 1939; it was the beginning of the Victory. A Victory whose first priority was to destroy the vanquished and quench the thirst for vengeance of the victors by assuring them total impunity. After a period of mass executions, imprisonment and torture of hundreds of thousands of persons, a regime of terror was imposed in which all of Spain became one vast prison. The Francoist state was a genocidal state , if we define genocide as the condition of systematic criminalization of a group, or as systematic extermination of a social group for religious, ethnic or political reasons. The essence of the Francoist state throughout its entire existence, and despite its unquestionable evolution over the course of the years, was the persecution, repression and extermination of the “reds”, a concept that was particularly applied to the organizations of the workers movement, but also to the militants of all the leftist, republican or liberal parties, as well as anyone who engaged in the mere defense of the most basic democratic rights and freedoms, and of course the national demands of the Basque and Catalonian people against whom an implacable cultural and linguistic genocide was waged.

Thesis no. 28. The war of extermination waged against the reds by the nationalist bloc and the Francoist genocidal state were not denounced as such during the Transition to democracy.

The post-Francoist heirs granted an amnesty to the political prisoners of Francoism for a handful of crimes that were only crimes because they had been legislated as such by the genocidal Francoist state.

The pact between Francoism and anti-Francoism also imposed another amnesty: an amnesia regarding the past. The first attempts to expose the notorious genocidal acts and to locate and identify the remains of those shot or disappeared in mass graves were interrupted by the attempted coup d’état of February 23, 1981. The future of the democracy, social and political stability and economic progress of the country seemed to be dependent on the forgetting of history and of the Francoist genocide as well as on the renunciation of any attempt to identify the bodies of those who were murdered and buried in mass graves, and even the mere memory of the location of these graves. The fear of the vanquished was prolonged in the form of the fear of the children of the vanquished, which continued to prevail in this curious “vigilant and endangered” democracy. Everything was nicely wrapped up.

Thesis no. 29. Genocide and crimes against humanity, however, are not subject to any statue of limitations. The Francoist genocide cannot be forgotten. It is no longer a matter of prosecuting individuals, but of the right to know the whole truth about what happened and also, of course, of the right to unhindered access to archival materials. It is a matter of vindicating the memory of those who were disappeared, assassinated, shot and thrown into mass graves, the exiles and all those fighters for liberty or for utopia who suffered imprisonment or forced labor without having committed any other crime than being reds, that is, members of the collective of the defeated in the war, whom the Francoist state sought to exterminate. A state that was based on the alliance of the military, reactionary bourgeoisie, big landowners, Falangists and the Catholic Church. It is also about destroying or transforming those places, monuments or plaques that commemorate fascist crimes and war crimes. Especially the “Wall of those who Died for God and Spain”, built by enslaved prisoners of war. And it is above all about recovering historical memory and uncovering concepts that have been hidden under the flood of fascist and clerical propaganda:

1. The Spanish civil war was not a fratricidal war , between brothers: it was a war of extermination against the “reds”;

2. Academic debates about whether the Franco dictatorship was a fascist or an authoritarian regime are of little importance; in any event it was a genocidal state , based on nothing but the victory of the military, the clergy and the fascists in a war against the people and the working class;

3. It is true that the Catholic Church suffered from religious persecution in the republican zone during the first ten months of the war that produced a total of seven thousand martyrs (who have now been beatified ); but it is no less true that it was an active and terrible accomplice , necessary and indispensable at the beginning of the war, in its character as a war of extermination and in the subsequent genocide of the defeated by the Francoist state. It was a martyr for ten months and executioner for forty years.

Translated from the Spanish original in November 2013.

Spanish original published in: BALANCE. Cuadernos de historia del movimiento obrero , Cuaderno No. 21, Barcelona, June 2001 (2nd edition).

Source: http://www.ecn.org/ab-imis/testi/Tesis.pdf

1 BALANCE . Cuadernos de historia del movimiento obrero , Cuaderno No. 21, Barcelona, June 2001 (2nd edition).
bureaucracy
Spanish civil war
Friends of Durruti
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT)
Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI)
Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM)
Agustín Guillamón
The Italian Fraction of the Communist Left

This article is tagged

This article is tagged 'Bilan', but presumably it a different Bilan from the left communist 'Bilan'

Quote: Bilan was the

Bilan was the French-language journal of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left (Bordiguists), best known during the thirties as the Prometeo Group (Prometeo was the Italian-language journal of the Fraction).

Appears to be referring to the same

Having no idea whatsoever…

Having no idea whatsoever where this should be posted, I'll post it here:

The CWO's review of 'Revolution and the State: Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939' by Danny Evans:

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-11/revolution-and-the-state-anarchism-in-the-spanish-civil-war

Revolution and counterrevolution in Catalonia - Carlos Semprún Maura

Slippery slopes (the anarchists in Spain) - Manuel Azaretto

From defense cadres to popular militias - Augustín Guillamón

Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell

1868-1936: Anarchism in Spain

Barricades in Barcelona: The CNT from the victory of July 1936 to the necessary defeat of May 1937 - Agustín Guillamón

149 American Revolution Essay Topics & Examples

If you’re looking for American Revolution topics for research paper or essay, you’re in the right place. This article contains everything you might need to write an essay on Revolutionary war

🗽 Top 7 American Revolution Research Topics

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American Revolution, also known as Revolutionary War, occurred in the second half of the 18th century. Among its causes was a series of acts established by the Crown. These acts placed taxes on paint, tea, glass, and paper imported to the colonies. As a result of the war, the thirteen American colonies gained independence from the British Crown, thereby creating the United States of America. Whether you need to write an argumentative, persuasive, or discussion paper on the Revolutionary War, this article will be helpful. It contains American Revolution essay examples, titles, and questions for discussion. Boost your critical thinking with us!

Townshend Acts and the Tea Act as the causes of the American Revolution
Ideological roots of the American Revolution
English government and the American colonies before the Revolutionary war
Revolutionary War: the main participants
The American Revolution: creating the new constitutions
Causes and effects of the American Revolution
Revolutionary War: the key battles

Signifying a cornerstone moment for British colonial politics and the creation of a new, fully sovereign nation, the events from 1765 to 1783 were unusual for the 18th century. Thus, reflecting all the crucial moments within a single American Revolution Essay becomes troublesome to achieve. However, if you keep in mind certain historical events, then you may affect the quality of your paper for the better.

All American Revolution essay topics confine themselves to the situation and its effects. Make sure that you understand the chronology by searching for a timeline, or even create one yourself! Doing so should help you easily trace what date is relevant to which event and, thus, allow you to stay in touch with historical occurrences. Furthermore, understand the continuity of the topic, from the creation of the American colony until the Declaration of Independence. Creating a smooth flowing narrative that takes into consideration both the road to revolution and its aftereffects will demonstrate your comprehensive understanding of the issue.

When writing about the pre-history of the Revolution, pay special attention to ongoing background mechanisms of the time. The surge of patriotism, a strong desire for self-governed democracy, and “Identity American” all did not come into existence at the Boston Tea Party but merely demonstrated themselves most clearly at that time. Linking events together will become more manageable if you can understand the central motivation behind them.

Your structure is another essential aspect of essay writing, with a traditional outline following the events in chronological order, appropriately overviewing them when necessary. Thus, an excellent structure requires that your introduction should include:

An American Revolution essay hook, which will pique your readers’ interest and make them want to read your work further. Writing in unexpected facts or giving a quote from a contemporary actor of the events, such as one of the founding fathers, are good hook examples because they grab your readers’ attention.
A brief overview of the circumstances. It should be both in-depth enough to get your readers on the same level of knowledge as you, the writer, and short enough to engage them in your presented ideas.
An American Revolution essay thesis that will guide your paper from introduction to conclusion. Between overviewing historical information and interest-piquing hooks, your thesis statement should be on-point and summarize the goal of your essay. When writing, you should often return to it, assessing whether the topics you are addressing are reflective of your paper’s goals.

Whatever issues you raise in your introduction and develop in your main body, you should bring them all together in your conclusion. Summarize your findings and compare them against your thesis statement. Doing so will help you carry out a proper verdict regarding the problem and its implications.

The research you have carried out and the resulting compiled bibliography titles will help you build your essay’s credibility. However, apart from reading up on the problem you are addressing, you should think about reading other sample essays. These may not only help you get inspired but also give excellent American Revolution essay titles and structure lessons. Nevertheless, remember that plagiarizing from these papers, or anywhere else, is not advisable! Avoid committing academic crimes and let your own ideas be representative of your academism.

Want to sample some essays to get your essay started? Kick-start your writing process with IvyPanda and its ideas!

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Women’s Rights After the American Revolution
Philosophical, Economic, Political and Social Causes of the American Revolution
American Revolution: The Result of Taxation, Military Occupation in the Colonies and the Negligence of the British
The American Revolution and Women’s Freedom
Reasons for the American Revolution – Tax, Military Presence, Merca
Colonial Independence and the American Revolution
The History, Transformative Quality, and Morality of the American Revolution
Political and Economic Cause of the American Revolution
American Revolution and Mexican Independence
American Revolution: The Result of the French and Indian War
Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution
Battles That Changed the Outcome of the American Revolution
After the American Revolution: Conflicts Between the North and South
The Reasons Why People Chose to Be Loyalist During the American Revolution
Identity: American Revolution and Colonies
The Expansion and Sectionalism of the American Revolution
The Relationship Between Nova Scotia and the American Revolution
World Events That Coincided With the American Revolution
The American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence
The Republican Ideology and the American Revolution
The Men Who Started the American Revolution
Slavery and the American Revolution
Economic and Political Causes for the American Revolution
Ideas, Movements, and Leaders in the American Revolution
American Revolution and the American Civil War
Cultural Differences, the Ineffectiveness of England’s Colonial Policy, and the Effects of the French and Indian War as the Causes of the American Revolution
American Democracy, Freedom, and the American Revolution
Benjamin and William Franklin and the American Revolution
The Major Factors That Led to the American Revolution
Labor During the American Revolution
Finding Stability After the American Revolution
Autonomy, Responsibility and the American Revolution
George Washington and the American Revolution
African Americans and the American Revolution
British and American Strengths in the American Revolution
American Revolution and How the Colonists Achieved Victory
What Was The Catalyst Of The American Revolution?
Was the American Revolution a Conservative Movement?
How Inevitable Was the American Revolution?
Was the American Revolution Inevitable?
Was the American Civil War and Reconstruction a Second American Revolution?
How did the French and Indian War shape the American Revolution?
What Were the Origins of the American Revolution?
Why Did Tensions Between Great Britain and their North American Colonies Escalate so Quickly in the Wake of the French and Indian War?
How the American Revolution Changed American Society?
Was the American Revolution About Freedom and Political Liberty, or Just About Paying Fewer Taxes?
Why Was American Revolution Unjust?
How America and Great Britain Benefited from the American Revolution?
Was The American Revolution A British Loss or An American Victory?
How Did the American Revolution Impact Concordians, and Americans, not just Physically but Emotionally and Politically?
Was the American Revolution Moderate or Radical?
How Radical Was the American Revolution?
Did the American Revolution Follow the Broad Pattern of Revolutions?
How Did The American Revolution Affect Slaves And Women?
How Did the American Revolution Get Started?
How England Instigated the American Revolution?
Who Benefited Most from the American Revolution?
How Did People Contribute to the Political and Grassroots Areas to Gain Support of the American Revolution?
Was the American Revolution the Fault of the United States or England?
Was the American Revolution a Genuine Revolution?
How Did Labor Change After The American Revolution?
Did The American Revolution Help Spur The French Revolution?
How Freemasonry Steered the American Revolution and the Revolutionary War?
How Outrageous Taxation Lead to the American Revolution?
How American Revolution Affect Natives?
Is British Oppression: The Cause of the American Revolution?
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Chicago (N-B)

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War Thesis Statement Examples That Really Inspire
Introduction and thesis statement. Industrialization in the United States society, politics, and the economy was influenced immensely after the Civil War. The way of living of the citizens of the United States changed to a more convenient place to live but during this time, the government dealings were very corrupt.
World War II Research Essay Topics
Explore a wide variety of thesis topics concerning World War II, from culture to economy to warfare, and everything in between. ... The answer to questions like these can become a good starting point for a thesis statement. Culture and People . When the U.S. entered into war, everyday life across the country changed drastically. From civil ...
159 Cold War Essay Topic Ideas & Examples
A good Cold War essay introduction should include some background information about the issue, its causes, and effects. Present a thesis statement in the last sentence of this section. It can look like this: The Cold War still affects the population of North Korea. Discuss all relevant data in the body paragraphs.
205 World War 2 Essay Topics & Examples
From diplomacy and espionage to battlefield events and the fate of nations, World War 2 essay topics are broad in range and require their writer to have an in-depth knowledge of various details. Thus, writing a World War 2 essay may seem daunting due to the weight of the necessary historical analysis.
80 Vietnam War Essay Topics & Examples
Whether you are planning to write an argumentative essay, research paper, or thesis on the Vietnam war, this article will be helpful. Here we've collected top Vietnam war research questions, titles. Essay examples are also added to add to your inspiration. 🔝 Top 10 Vietnam War Essay Topics. Vietnam war: the causes; US involvement in the ...
How to Write War Essay: Step-By-Step Guide
How to Write War Essay with a War Essay Outline. Just like in compare and contrast examples and any other forms of writing, an outline for a war essay assists you in organizing your research and creating a good flow. In general, you keep to the traditional three-part essay style, but you can adapt it as needed based on the length and criteria of your school.
Thesis Statements
A thesis statement: tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion. is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper. directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself.
How to Write a Thesis Statement
Step 2: Write your initial answer. After some initial research, you can formulate a tentative answer to this question. At this stage it can be simple, and it should guide the research process and writing process. The internet has had more of a positive than a negative effect on education.
Developing a Thesis Statement
A thesis statement . . . Makes an argumentative assertion about a topic; it states the conclusions that you have reached about your topic. Makes a promise to the reader about the scope, purpose, and direction of your paper. Is focused and specific enough to be "proven" within the boundaries of your paper. Is generally located near the end ...
Vietnam War Essay • Examples of Hooks, Thesis, Topics
The United States' Role in The Vietnam War. Essay grade: Good. 5 pages / 2648 words. The Vietnam War started in 1954 as a war between the government of South Vietnam and the communist government of North Vietnam. The latter was aided by communist forces in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong.
How to Write an Essay on the Israeli War on Hamas
A good thesis statement tells what you will do and how you will do it. For example: "This essay explores the Israeli War on Hamas by analyzing its historical roots, the role of antisemitism, and the differing perspectives of Israel and Palestine / Hamas, so as to better understand the two sides of this conflict.".
World War 2 Essay: Outline + 100 WW2 Research Topics
In the introduction to this World War 2 essay, present your point of view. In the thesis statement, write the answer to World War II essay questions clearly and coherently. The main body here is for you to include three to five pieces of evidence that may prove you right. If you decide to write an argumentative essay, you might add some ...
Thesis Statement on Vietnam War
One of these conflicts that are still highly debated throughout the United States is the Vietnam War. Officially involving the United States on November 1st, 1955, the conflict managed to escalate fairly quickly from simply having American military advisors assisting RVN military personnel to have U.S. Marines and Army troops conducting ...
165 World War 1 Topics for Essays with Examples
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the starting point of WW1. Naval warfare of World War I. Ottoman Empire in World War 1. The role of technology in World War 1. The use of chemical weapons in WWI. The most cruel war crimes of WW1. Armenian genocide as a part of World War 1.
Writing a Compelling War Essay: Russia Ukraine War
Writing a powerful narrative of the Russia Ukraine War 2022 requires an in-depth understanding of the conflict and its implications. A compelling war essay should include a clear thesis statement and well-structured argument. It should also include evidence to support the argument, as well as an analysis of the sources used.
Interesting 50 Civil War Topics For Research Paper
Here's a list of 10 civil war topics for a research paper worth considering: How the Southern culture of honor contributed to the coming of the civil war. How politics changed after the civil war. Ethnic Polarization and civil war length. The long-term impact of the war on soldiers.
Developing a Thesis Statement
A THESIS "FORMULA". 1. An assertion (thesis) that is a complete idea answering a question at issue. (CLAIM) 2. A because clause that provides the central reason in support of the assertion. (EVIDENCE) 3. The statement must answer a question at issue in the author's social or academic community.
UWSSLEC LibGuides: Civil War: Writing a Thesis Statement
A thesis statement identifies a specific part of your writing topic. The statement declares your unique perspective on the topic. It gives you the necessary focus and direction to develop your essay. As your ideas evolve, you may find it necessary to revise your thesis once or twice. The following informtion will help you write clear, effective ...
102 War on Drugs Essay Topic Ideas & Examples
Drug War Policies and Freiberg & Carson's Models. War on Drugs was a set of policies adopted by the Nixon administration in 1971, following a tremendous growth of the local illegal drug market in the 1960s, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. American Drug War, Its Achievements and Failures.
Cold War Essay Examples [PDF] Thesis, Introduction
The Cold War: an Era of Fear. 5 pages / 2483 words. Truman had just demonstrated the raw power of the nuclear bomb, in order to end World War II, in 1945. The cost of war had immediately changed; the world had seen that whole cites could be obliterated within seconds.
Ten Theses on the War in Ukraine and the Challenge for India
9. India's failure to stake a clear position does not augur well for its own ambitions. The Ukraine crisis has exposed the hollowness of India's diplomacy and its vaunted big power status ...
Is This Israel's Forever War?
"Not a single war has ended because Israel's war aims were achieved," Lustick told me. "They always end when the United States says, 'O.K., now you gotta stop,'—and they do.
Theses on the Spanish Civil War and the revolutionary situation created
Thesis no. 10. A war in defense of a democratic state, for the victory of the latter against a fascist state, could not be a revolutionary civil war; it was a war between two fractions of the bourgeoisie—the fascist and the republican fractions—in which the proletariat had ALREADY been defeated. This was not because the July insurrection ...
149 American Revolution Essay Topics & Examples
American Revolution, also known as Revolutionary War, occurred in the second half of the 18th century. Among its causes was a series of acts established by the Crown. These acts placed taxes on paint, tea, glass, and paper imported to the colonies. As a result of the war, the thirteen American colonies gained independence from the British Crown ...

War Thesis Statements Samples For Students

Good Thesis Statement On War And Terrorism

Marriage Vs. Military Member Thesis Statement Sample

Good Thesis Statement About Three Major Aspects Of Industrialization Between 1865 And 1920 That Impacted The Communities, Economy, And Politics Of The United States.

Essay Outline

Free The Three Major Aspects Of Industrialization Between 1865 And 1920 Included: Thesis Statement Sample

Free Thesis Statement On History:

World War II Research Essay Topics

Culture and People

Economy and Workforce

Military, Government, and War

Technology and Transportation

How to Write War Essay: Russia Ukraine War

Understanding the Purpose and Scope of a War Essay

How to Write War Essay with a War Essay Outline

Introduction

Body Paragraphs

Begin With a Relevant Hook

Follow Your Outline

How to Discuss Tragedy, Loss, and Sentiment

Summing Up Your Writing

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What is a thesis statement?

Identify a topic

Consider what your assignment asks you to do

Sample assignment 1

Sample assignment 2

Developing a Thesis Statement–Additional information

Derive a main point from topic

Look for patterns in your evidence

Purpose statement

Derive purpose statement from topic

Compose a draft thesis statement

Question-to-Assertion

What to keep in mind as you draft an initial thesis statement

Refine and polish the thesis statement

Sample Assignment

Complete the final thesis statement

Writing Process and Structure

Getting Started with Your Paper

Creating an Argument

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World War 2 Essay: Outline + 100 WW2 Research Topics

🔗 References

🎓 WW2 Essay Topics for Student

🎖️ WW2: Argumentative Essay Topics

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“In Your World War Ii Essay, Try to Answer the Question “When Did Hitler Lose the War?”