14 - The war of the villages

Summary

The Second World War was fought in an agrarian world. To construct a frame to encompass the variegated but interconnected agrarian history of the Second World War, four dimensions suggest themselves. First, the agrarian world was the source of the food, raw materials, human and animal labour power for all of the combatant countries and their populations, whether civilian or military. Second, given its essential role both as a productive resource and as the foundation of rural life, land was a key target of conquest. Third, the countryside was the stage on which much of the war was fought out. One should take the notion of the battlefield more literally than he/she sometimes does. Fourth, in many theatres the peasants who populated this battlefield, were not passive objects of conquest, nor were they merely bystanders or victims of collateral damage; in several major arenas in Europe and Asia, the peasants, as peasants, were strategic actors in the war.