Book Description
The concept of generation as a historical category has never been used more effectively than in Lost Comrades. The socialists of the Front Generation,young men in 1914, were driven into politicalactivity and ideological exploration by the experience of the First World War. Their efforts torenew socialism, to carry it beyond Marxism andbeyond the working class, were profound andoriginal, yet ultimately they failed. Lost Comrades follows the Front Generationsocialists from their questioning of Marxistorthodoxies in the 1920s into their confrontationswith the twin challenges of fascism and worlddepression in the early 1930s. Responding to thesedangers, they devised—with little success—counterpropaganda against the fascists and planningblueprints for the economy. Eventually, some ofthe most prominent—Sir Oswald Mosley inBritain, Hendrik de Man in Belgium, Marcel Déatin France—shifted their hopes to fascism or, dur-ing the Second World War, to collaborationism inHitler's Europe. Others, however, like CarloMierendorff and Theodor Haubach in Germany,ended as martyrs in the anti-Nazi resistance. Yeteven these divergent paths showed parallelsreflecting their common starting point. In tracing these unfulfilled careers, Whitebrings a new clarity to the hopes and limitationsof European socialism between the two worldwars.
