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UNA ARMADA CREPUSCULAR: LA MARINA IMPERIAL ALEMANA (1872 – 1919 )

Héctor López Aréstegui

“….Los caminos de hierro nos conducirán solamente con mayor rapidez al abismo”

- François – Rene de Chateaubriand (1768 – 1848)

La guerra se nutre de equívocos y, acaso, el mayor de ellos resulte ser el concepto que la historia le escriben los vencedores. Y es que vencedor y vencido no son categorías absolutas, y que “todos somos vencedores y vencidos al mismo tiempo al describir en nuestros éxitos, pues también exponemos el arduo problema de no olvidar el alcance de nuestras fuerzas[i]”· Creemos que esta frase, tomada del prefacio de las memorias de guerra del almirante alemán Reinhard Scheer (1863 – 1928), describe con justicia el carácter de la guerra naval durante la Gran Guerra y, en particular, la existencia crepuscular de la Marina Imperial Alemana (1872 – 1919), cuya historia merece ser mejor conocida y trascender el alcance de la cita churchilliana que constituye su lapida ante el tribunal de la Historia, “la flota alemana es un lujo, no una necesidad nacional”.

1. ¿Qué es Alemania?

¡Alemania! ¿Qué es Alemania? El gran poeta Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) pensaba que era una entelequia en tanto los alemanes no superaran su sempiterna tradición de rivalidad y fragmentación[ii], basculando – desde el siglo XVIII – ora bajo la égida de Prusia, ora a la de Austria. A partir del efecto de las Revolución de 1848[iii], que barrió el orden europeo creado por el Congreso de Viena de 1814 – 1815, Alemania fue tomando forma, a golpes del cincel del nacionalismo, constituyendo la fase final del proceso las guerras de unificación contra Dinamarca, Austria y Francia (1864 – 1871). La victoria sobre Francia en la guerra Franco – Prusiana (1870 – 1871), fue el hecho político – militar que transformó la Confederación de Estados Alemanes surgida de la derrota austriaca de 1866 en el Segundo Reich[iv] alemán, constituyéndose Prusia en su estado director. El 18 de enero de 1871 en Versalles, Francia, iniciábase el proceso de convertir “un mosaico de curiosidades políticas y la idea medieval del Imperio resucitado[v]” en un estado a la par de los paradigmas de la época, Francia e Inglaterra.

El Reich era una idea medieval, difícil de definir y mucho más de traducir al lenguaje político de la época. Bajo su sombra coexistían – desigualmente – principios absolutistas de la monarquía prusiana y los democráticos de la Revolución de 1848. El nuevo Estado era una monarquía federal, “una reunión de Estados, bajo la legal y efectiva hegemonía de un Estado director, que es Prusia. Prusia, al crear con su esfuerzo el gran Imperio alemán, recibió el encargo de dirigirlo, obteniendo con ello ciertos privilegios sobre los demás, principalmente en todo lo relacionado con la política militar y comercial de la Confederación[vi]”. El Bundsrat (Consejo de la Corona) era la cima de su estructura del poder constituido, con competencia exclusiva en materia de defensa, legislación civil y penal, comercio y orden económico; los gobiernos estaduales lo eran para los demás asuntos dentro de sus límites territoriales. La administración imperial recaía en la Cancillería del Reich, que la ejercía el Ministro Presidente de Prusia. Descolgada de esta jerarquía, el Reichstag (Dieta Imperial), de elección popular, servía – en la práctica – de órgano consultivo para los asuntos de competencia del gobierno imperial[vii]. Este esquema de gobierno era el resultado de las maniobras políticas del canciller – ministro presidente de Prusia Otto von Bismarck, para quien la monarquía prusiana tenía el derecho y el deber de dominar el proceso de unidad alemana, lo cual excluía toda forma de gobierno parlamentario que controlara la acción del monarca. Así, pues, el artículo 4 de la Constitución de 1871 establecía que el soberano tenía el derecho “de convocar, abrir, prorrogar y cerrar el Reichstag y el Bundsrat[viii]”.

2. El llamado del mar

La nación alemana estaba obsesionada con sus fronteras, históricamente precarias y expuestas a la presión de sus vecinos. El geógrafo y politólogo sueco Johan Rudolf Kjellén[ix] (1864 – 1922), afirmaba que éstas podían calificarse de malas y eran la fuente de la inseguridad y vacilación de su política exterior e interior. Las postrimerías del siglo XIX añadieron al problema una nueva dimensión: la marítima. En su obra “Las Grandes Potencias de la Actualidad�� (1911) Kjellen describía la situación: “Si se tiene en cuenta los grandes intereses marítimos de Alemania, lo que el Rin ha llegado a representar en el interior del país como vía de comunicación comercial y la riqueza que se levanta sobre sus riberas, se comprenderá cuán penoso ha de resultar para Alemania el no poseer la desembocadura del Rin. En Oriente le pasa a Alemania con el Vístula lo que a los Países Bajos con el Rin: no posee nada más que su curso medio. Con el Rin es Holanda la que le roba a Alemania su natural con el mar; en el Vístula, Alemania es quien le roba la suya a Rusia. Lo mismo sucede algo más con el Este con el Memel; también con este río es Alemania la favorecida, con perjuicio de Rusia[x] ”.

Sin embargo Prusia estaba anclada en el brillo de la gloria de las guerras de unificación[xi]. La guerra era, según la definición uno de los intelectuales más reconocidos de la época, el historiador Heinrich von Treitschke (1834 – 1896), “el medio de grabar en la mente del individuo el binomio patria – nación, a fin de que trascienda de sí mismo y liberte a la nación del destino que había tenido hasta las guerras napoleónicas, ser el campo de batalla de casi todos los conflictos bélicos de Europa”. El almirante Reinhard Scheer (1863 – 1928), que creció en aquel ambiente de exaltado nacionalismo, dejó testimonio de ello en la introducción de sus memorias de guerra: “Del lado opuesto Prusia – Alemania. Toda su historia marcada por la lucha y la angustia, porque las guerras europeas tuvieron lugar preferentemente en su territorio. Era la nación del Imperativo Categórico, presta a las privaciones y al sacrificio, siempre levantándose una y otra vez, hasta que finalmente pareció haber alcanzado el éxito a través de la unificación del Imperio y ser capaz de cosechar los frutos duramente ganados de una posición de poder. La victoria sobre las adversidades solo pudo lograrse gracias a su idealismo y probada lealtad a la Patria bajo la opresión del gobierno extranjero. La fuerza de nuestro potencial defensivo descansaba sobre todas las cosas en nuestra conciencia e integridad adquiridas por la estricta disciplina[xii]”.

Así, al iniciar su andadura como estado unificado, en Alemania no se tenía en consideración la célebre máxima romana “Navegar es necesario, vivir no lo es[xiii]”. Prusia no era consciente de esta verdad porque había vivido casi toda su historia de espalda al mar. Por ser la más pequeña y la más joven de las potencias europeas surgidas de las guerras de religión de los siglos XVI y XVII, sus recursos financieros siempre habían sido escasos y, por ello, sus formaciones navales efímeras. Además, su vecindad con grandes potencias marítimas (Dinamarca, Holanda, Suecia, Francia e Inglaterra) abonaba a favor de la idea de invertir en un poderoso ejército en lugar de una débil armada. El único chispazo de tradición marítima alemana era el recuerdo de la Liga Hanseática (1358 – 1630), una federación comercial y defensiva de ciudades del norte de Alemania y de las comunidades de comerciantes alemanes en el mar Báltico, los Países Bajos, Suecia, Polonia y Rusia. El Margraviato de Brandeburgo – el antecedente medieval de Prusia – apenas participó en esta alianza. Así, mientras el Rey – sargento Federico Guillermo I de Hohenzollern (1688 – 1740) y su sucesor Federico II (1712 – 1786) creaban el ejército modelo del mundo europeo de la Edad Moderna, el dominio del mar se convertía en el elemento clave en la diferenciación entre los estados. No bastaba con proteger las costas de la flota enemiga sino ser capaz de explorar los mares allende de las mismas. La fuente de riqueza de las naciones era el comercio marítimo. Prusia – y posteriormente el binomio Prusia – Alemania a fines del siglo XIX – aún no habían dado ese paso, el cual que elevó – en su momento – a Portugal, España, Francia e Inglaterra como potencias mundiales.

Alemania hubo de esperar a que surgiese una figura que encarnase el llamado del mar. Este personaje fue el príncipe Adalberto de Prusia (1811 – 1873), fundador de la efímera flota de la Confederación de Estados del Norte de Alemania, la Reichsflotte[xiv] (1848 – 1852) y de la Marina Prusiana (1850 – 1867). No es fácil definir la personalidad del príncipe Adalberto, acaso lo más preciso es decir que fue para su patria en una sola persona lo que para Portugal significó el príncipe Enrique el Navegante (1394 – 1460) y para Inglaterra Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703), el organizador de la Royal Navy. La voz del príncipe era la vocera de muchas otras que recordaban las razones por las que se debía contar con una armada que protegiera permanentemente las costas de invasores, bloqueara los puertos del enemigo en caso de guerra y salvaguardara el comercio exterior en aguas allende del norte de Europa. Convergían con su opinión las ideas de personajes como el economista Freidrich List (1789 – 1846), creador del Sistema de Innovación Nacional – léase, en términos contemporáneos, la Teoría del Desarrollo Económico –, quien señalaba que una flota permanente debía existir por y para un bien común, la defensa y la proyección de la identidad nacional alemana[xv].

La mano creadora de la Marina Imperial Alemana (Kaiserliche Marine) fue la del general Albretch von Stosch (1818 – 1896), quién imprimió en sus acciones un norte claro: una institución de unidad nacional, defensora de soberanía marítima y del comercio exterior. El desafío era inmenso. Corrían tiempos de cambio tecnológico y de la naturaleza jurídica de la guerra en el mar. Los mayores obstáculos eran, como ya lo hemos señalado anteriormente, la posición geográfica de Alemania y la falta de una tradición naval. A su favor Von Stosch contaba con el apoyo político del canciller Bismarck y de un generoso presupuesto para un programa naval de diez años según el cual se construirían ocho fragatas blindadas, seis corbetas blindadas, veinticuatro corbetas ligeras, siete monitores, dos baterías flotantes, seis avisos dieciocho cañoneras y veintiocho torpederos, parcialmente financiado con los pagos que hubo de hacer Francia al Reich como compensación de los gasto de la guerra de 1870 – 1871. En una década (1872 – 1882) Von Stosch creó una armada de la nada, formó a sus oficiales y tripulantes y dotó a Alemania de una industria naval propia. Lo hizo con pragmatismo, consciente de la incertidumbre reinante sobre el futuro del poder marítimo[xvi]. Así, el SMS Hansa (1872) y el SMS Preussen (1873) fueron dos buques exponentes de lo que significaba para Alemania el poder naval: respeto de su soberanía y una garantía para su comercio. El SMS Hansa fue el primer blindado construido en astilleros germanos y pasó la mayor parte de su vida útil en el exterior, protegiendo el comercio alemán. El SMS Preussen fue el primer buque de guerra teutón construido por un astillero privado – el astillero AGVulcan, en Sttetin[xvii] – , patrulló el Mediterráneo oriental durante la guerra ruso – turca (1877 – 1878) y participó en la ceremonia de transferencia del archipiélago de Heligoland al Imperio en 1890. La obra formativa de Von Stosch (1872 – 1882) y su sucesor, el general Leo von Caprivi (1883 – 1888) fue sumamente exitosa y, a fines de 1880, Alemania era la tercera potencia naval de Europa, solo superada en número de unidades por Rusia y la Gran Bretaña[xviii].

Además de crear de una armada, Alemania emprendió la tarea de dotarse de una continuidad litoral entre el Mar Báltico y del Mar del Norte y una plataforma de proyección sobre el Mar del Norte, el archipiélago de Heligoland[xix]. El primer objetivo se alcanzó con la construcción del Canal de Kiel. Las obras se iniciaron en Holtenau, cerca de Kiel, el 3 junio de 1887 y concluyeron ocho años después, el 20 de junio de 1895. El canal medía 62 metros de ancho en la superficie y 22 en el fondo, 9 de profundidad; en honor al monarca que inició el proyecto – Guillermo I, rey de Prusia y primer emperador de la Alemania unida – se le denominó Káiser Wilhem Kanal. No era la primera vez que se vinculaba el Mar Báltico y el Mar del Norte a través de un canal, pero sus predecesores eran, comparativamente, obras modestas. Así, pues, del Canal de Kiel se dijo que era una muestra “del orgullo alemán, pletórico de facultades de invención e imaginación, de iniciativa y de recursos, una audacia avisada y complaciente a la que se rinde homenaje y se sirve de una potencia industrial de primer orden y de personal altamente calificado[xx]”. Asimismo, la adquisición del archipiélago de las Heligoland (1890) – fruto del cuidado que puso el canciller Bismarck en las relaciones diplomáticas con Gran Bretaña – consolidó el dominio marítimo alemán y le dotó de una proyección al Mar del Norte.

3. La influencia de Mahan (1890 – 1897)

En 1888, al iniciar su reinado, el Káiser Guillermo II (1859 – 1941) declaraba con seguridad que “Al Imperio Alemán no le es menester nueva gloria militar ni conquistas, ahora que ha ganado el derecho a vivir como nación unida e independiente”. Esta prudencia fue decayendo a partir de 1890, tras la dimisión de Bismarck a la Cancillería del Reich. El voluntarioso emperador cayó bajo el influjo de las ideas de Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840 – 1914), autor del libro que se consideró como el más influyente de la última década del siglo XIX, “La influencia del poder marítimo en la Historia: 1660 – 1788”. La obra era una compilación de las clases dictadas por el marino norteamericano en la Academia de Guerra Naval de los Estados Unidos.

Mahan señalaba que el control de los mares era el factor más importante para la prosperidad nacional a lo largo de los siglos y que los componentes del poder marítimo de una nación eran los factores geográficos, los recursos naturales, el carácter nacional, el espíritu de su gobierno y su política naval y diplomática. Asimismo, deducía varios principios estratégicos relacionados con la concentración de fuerzas, la correcta elección del objetivo y la importancia de las líneas de comunicación. “La influencia del poder marítimo en la Historia: 1660 – 1788” resumía las razones por las qué una nación debía contar con una Armada cuyo principal objetivo fuera el tener la capacidad suficiente para destruir una flota de guerra enemiga. En Alemania “La influencia del poder marítimo en la Historia: 1660 – 1788” tuvo un gran éxito, constituyéndose el káiser Guillermo II (1859 – 1941) en su mayor propagandista, llegando a decir de él que “No estoy leyendo sino devorando el libro de Mahan y trato de aprovecharlo con el corazón y con la mente. Es un trabajo de primera clase y clásico en todos sus puntos. Está a bordo de mis barcos y es constantemente consultado por mis almirantes y oficiales”.

Sin embargo el Segundo Reich no encajaba con la geografía política que proponía el autor norteamericano. Y es que, tal como decía Kllejen, “Alemania era, en la constelación europea, la menos independiente de todas las potencias mundiales[xxi]”. Consciente de ello, Bismarck se había ocupado de mantener un equilibrio estratégico europeo en beneficio de la prosperidad y estabilidad de Prusia – Alemania y de la dinastía Hohenzollern. Así, al oeste contenía a los franceses y mantenía buenas relaciones con los británicos y, al este, era sumamente cuidadoso y hasta cordial con los rusos. Dicha política exterior le había permitido fortalecer la posición del Reich, dotándole de una costa continua y de una salida independiente al Mar del Norte. Conservador de corazón, Bismarck había dado autonomía al general Von Stosch en el desarrollo del primer programa naval (1872 – 1882), sabiendo que pondría énfasis en la construcción de una Armada protectora del comercio germano y no en experimentos para los cuales Alemania no estaba en condiciones de asumir por falta de recursos políticos[xxii] y económicos[xxiii]. Von Stosch eludió estos escollos y apostó por el torpedo como nivelador de las pequeñas y grandes armadas. Esta nueva arma, desarrollada por el ingeniero británico Robert Whitehead (1823 – 1905) con el apoyo de capitales austro – húngaros, respondía a la pregunta sobre cómo una marina modesta podía defenderse de una armada más poderosa.

4. La daga en la garganta de Inglaterra

El programa de torpedos de la Armada Imperial estaba en manos de un oficial quien había sido influenciado hondamente por las ideas de Mahan, Alfred Tirpitz (1849 – 1930). A pesar de haber sido promovido por Von Stosch, Tirpitz cuestionaba la misión que le había impuesto Von Stosch a la Marina Imperial. Para Tirpitz “la bandera debía seguir los pasos del comercio, como otros países habían visto antes de que nosotros nos diéramos cuenta[xxiv]”. Así, al asumir el cargo de Secretario de Estado en el despacho de la Administración Naval Imperial en junio de 1897, Tirpitz dio un golpe de timón presentando al káiser el proyecto de una gran flota de combate cuya realización implicaba graves consideraciones políticas y diplomáticas, porque constituía un peldaño más en la escalada de militarización de la política exterior y de seguridad nacional. Construir una gran flota era entrar en competencia directa – y, eventualmente, en conflicto abierto – con la Gran Bretaña por “el lugar bajo el sol”[xxv] que, según Tirpitz, le negaban los británicos a los alemanes.

Tirpitz pensaba que el flanco estratégico más desprotegido de los británicos era el Mar del Norte. La Marina Real privilegiaba el teatro de operaciones del Mediterráneo y el despliegue de sus unidades como gendarmes de las colonias y el comercio británico. Según Tirpitz, los británicos negociarían con Alemania un acuerdo sobre construcciones navales con el fin de mantener su presencia naval en el Mediterráneo y del resto del mundo. Por ello la Gran Flota Alemana debía ser una fleet in being (escuadra en potencia), es decir, una amenaza constante a la hegemonía naval británica. En medios periodísticos esta estrategia recibió un nombre más amenazante y perturbador, “la daga en la garganta de Inglaterra” que la prensa británica asumió y utilizó para advertir al gobierno y al pueblo del peligro alemán y de la complaciente política de esplendido aislamiento frente a los asuntos europeos.

La estrategia de Tirpitz se fundaba en supuestos erróneos. El Reino Unido no vaciló en responder al reto e inició un programa naval que duplicó en una década la tasa de construcciones navales alemanas y reorganizó su sistema de defensa global gracias al apoyo político y económico de sus dominios, Canadá, Australia, Nueva Zelanda, la India y África del Sur. En vísperas de la Gran Guerra, Inglaterra había triplicado su ventaja en el juego de correlación de fuerzas. En Alemania echaban raíces las dudas sobre la capacidad de la Armada Imperial para enfrentar a la Royal Navy y la validez de la idea de pretender hacer la guerra contra Inglaterra[xxvi]. La guerra ponía en peligro la prosperidad alcanzada por la marina mercante alemana. La divisa de la compañía naviera Hamburg – Amerika – Line – “mi campo es el mundo” – era una realidad de la que se enorgullecían todos los alemanes. Su director Albert Ballin (1857 – 1918) era consejero del káiser y mediador en las sombras en las crisis diplomáticas entre Inglaterra y Alemania gracias a su amistad con el consejero privado del rey Eduardo VII (1841 – 1910), sir Ernst Cassel (1852 – 1921). Siendo el principal armador de Alemania, Ballin temía por la seguridad de la flota mercante alemana y la pérdida de su posición preeminente en el comercio mundial. En 1914 era Inglaterra quien tenía preparada la daga para, cuando estallara la guerra, encajarla en la garganta de Alemania a través de un bloqueo a distancia aprovechando las desventajas geográficas del litoral germano. Asimismo, su presencia naval global borraría del mapa los buques mercantes alemanes[xxvii].

5. Tiempo de pruebas

En vísperas de la Gran Guerra la Flota de Alta Mar Alemana se encontraba en una situación política sumamente complicada. Tras una década del gozar el favor imperial (1897 – 1908), las críticas comenzaron a llegar de todos los sectores políticos, incluso entre los nacionalistas que veían en el almirante Tirpitz encarnados todos los defectos de un estamento político – militar débil, elitista, ciego a las demandas de la nación y reaccionario. Las críticas más feroces venían del grupo que había sido el puntal del programa de Tirpitz, la Deutscher Flottenverein[xxviii] (Liga Naval Alemana) (DFV). Era irónico que esta institución, creada como freno al parlamentarismo y al Partido Social Demócrata (SPD), pasara a ser una feroz opositora de Tirpitz. El nacionalismo que había insuflado y sostenido la construcción de la Armada Imperial se escapaba del control del Reich. El SPD aprovechó la crisis de confianza en Tirpitz para cuestionar la política global del káiser y del nacionalismo y ganar predicamento más allá de su electorado tradicional, la clase trabajadora.

Atrapada entre dos fuegos, el nacionalismo desbocado y la prédica pacifista y antiimperialista del SPD, la Armada Imperial fue señalada por unos de bajar la cabeza ante los británicos y, por otros, de ser la responsable de las tensiones diplomáticas anglo – alemanas. La guerra estalló en plena crisis de credibilidad y ante ella el alto mando naval no tuvo otro camino que el de la improvisación. En este marco, “Alemania vio en el submarino un rayo de esperanza en el acoso mundial a que se encontraba sometida y apeló a él como pudo apelar al rayo de la muerte[xxix] si éste se hubiese inventado. Los aliados disponían de la hegemonía marinera tal y como se entendía hasta entonces, en el concepto clásico de la guerra marítima, de la guerra que hasta entonces era guerra plana. El submarino era la guerra en el espacio, completando el avión esta transformación que no es que origine una guerra nueva, como creen, o fingen creer, unos cuantos futuristas, pero que desde luego introduce otras modalidades como ha acaecido siempre desde que un arma o un adelanto sensacional ha cambiado los puntos básicos del planteamiento del problema[xxx]”.

Asimismo, Alemania se lanzó a una guerra de guerrillas en el mar (Kleinkriegs) utilizando corsarios cuyas hazañas y desventuras constituyen episodios apasionantes del desarrollo de la guerra naval como la del Westburn, en el Archipiélago Canario, en aguas españolas, es decir, en territorio de un estado neutral. Sobre ella, El Comercio informaba el 02 de junio de 1916 lo siguiente: “Acaba de llegar el vapor inglés Westburn, izando la bandera de guerra alemana, bajo el mando del oficial de marina Badewitz, llevando a bordo las tripulaciones de los vapores ingleses “Flamenco”, “Horace”, Edimborough”, “Clan Mactavish” y el belga “Luxemburg”, todos hundidos por el comandante alemán. El “Westburn”, cargado de carbón, fue apresado en su viaje de Inglaterra a Buenos Aires. Las tripulaciones de los cinco vapores serán puestas a disposición de sus respectivos cónsules.

El “Westburn” entró en el puerto de Santa Cruz [de Tenerife], mientras que un crucero inglés se hallaba anclado en la rada. Es de grandísimo interés hacer constar el hecho de que el vapor que acaba de fondear en [Santa Cruz de] Tenerife, tenía 199 prisioneros ingleses, mientras que la tripulación estaba constituida por sólo siete alemanes (…)

Mientras las tripulaciones de los barcos alemanes surtos en el puerto aclamaban a la heroica tripulación del “Westburn”, en cuyo palo mayor había sustituido la bandera británica por el pabellón alemán, abandonó la bahía el crucero inglés HMS “Sutlej”, cuya situación resultaba un poco ridícula. El “Sutlej” quedó vigilando, fuera de la bahía, en espera de que al transcurrir las veinticuatro horas de su entrada, en Tenerife, abandonará el puerto el “Westburn”, para entonces cazarlo o hundirlo a cañonazos (…)

Al cumplirse las veinticuatro horas de su llegada al puerto, el “Westburn”, a cuyo bordo no quedaba ni uno solo de los tripulantes y pasajeros que traía prisioneros, levó anclas y enfiló la salida del puerto. Los muelles y las alturas estaban repletos de curiosos que se disponían con gemelos y anteojos de largo alcance a presenciar qué iba a ocurrir en el mar tan pronto como el crucero “Sutlej” pudiese atacar a los corsarios alemanes.

El “Westburn”, con su corta tripulación germana, y arbolando el pabellón de guerra del imperio, salió valientemente fuera de la bahía. La expectación era extraordinaria, se había tocado zafarrancho de combate. Tan pronto como salió a la mar, el crucero británico se puso en movimiento para darle caza. El oficial alemán, que con sus siete hombres iba a bordo del “Westburn”, no se proponía escapar. Antes, al contrario, puso proa en demanda del enemigo y hacia él dirigió el buque capturado. Se detuvo entonces el crucero y rectificando su rumbo parecía aceptar el reto de los alemanes. Todo el mundo esperaba el primer cañonazo cuando, al costado del “Westburn”, se destacó un bote, en el que iban los marinos alemanes. El crucero inglés avanzó entonces, forzando la máquina pero una violenta y larga explosión a bordo del “Westburn” dio a entender a los marinos ingleses que se habían burlado de ellos nuevamente volado la presa en sus mismas narices. Los valerosos germanos ganaron rápidamente el puerto de Tenerife entre las aclamaciones de todos los que presenciaban la hazaña, Allí afuera quedaban los marinos ingleses devorando su fracaso. Los alemanes desembarcaron en el muelle, y seguidos del público que les felicitaba se presentaron antes las autoridades[xxxi]”.

No es nuestra intención ocuparnos del combate de Jutlandia (31 de mayo – 1 de junio de 1916), basta decir que fue un choque inútil: los británicos no aniquilaron a la Flota de Alta Mar Alemana y, ésta, a su vez, no pudo romper el bloqueo británico y justificar su existencia. Un comentarista español contemporáneo, Mariano Rubio y Bellve, concluía que “El problema en el mar queda planteado, después de la batalla, en los mismo términos que antes que ella. Solamente la muerte, con numerosas víctimas de la horrible tragedia de Jutlandia, es la que ha triunfado en toda línea[xxxii]”. Evidentemente Alemania reclamó para sí el resultado del combate como una victoria táctica, pero lo cierto es que no había variado la situación estratégica de Alemania. Un corresponsal del Daily Telegraph la resumía así: “La verdad es que, como isleños, no ignoramos lo que son los mapas de guerra, pero damos más importancia a los mapas sancionados por el tiempo. Olvida Von Bethmann – Hollweg que cerca de tres cuartas partes de la superficie de la Tierra están cubiertas de agua. Cuando se iniciaron las hostilidades, comenzaba una lucha mundial para los alemanes, que habían demostrado actividad en los mares y estaban practicando o preparando operaciones guerreras no sólo en cada de uno de los continentes, sino también en todos los países del globo. Para los germanos esto no es ya actualmente una guerra mundial. Alemania se halla casi tan completamente aislada del mundo exterior, como París en 1870. Aunque Alemania haya gastado 7,250 millones de francos en su Marina, y aunque tenía la primera marina mercante del mundo después de la británica, sin embargo la bandera germana ha desaparecido del mar, resultado singular para una nación marítima.

Durante varios siglos la guerra marítima, en la que se hallaron comprometidas las flotas de España, Holanda y Francia, nunca ocurrió que no mostraran sus banderas en el mar; pero la marina mercante alemana ha desaparecido; la marina de guerra está inactiva, el comercio transatlántico ha cesado y han desaparecido las colonias. Alemania no ha alcanzado victorias como las conseguidas por Napoleón en 1811, pero Trafalgar preparó Waterloo. El canciller alemán debe leer la vida de Napoleón[xxxiii]”.

La Hochseeflotte no tendría una segunda oportunidad de medir fuerzas con la Royal Navy. Sus pérdidas habían sido menores que las británicas, pero eran irremplazables. Ya no podía disputar el dominio del mar. Al respecto escribió Mateo Mille: “Pero Alemania no era una nación naval; la formidable potencia creada por el almirante Von Tirpitz, organizador genial al amparo de una industria colosal, no fue empleada adecuadamente[xxxiv]”.

En el invierno boreal 1916 – 1917 la moral de la flota se fue a pique. Como todos los alemanes, el fracaso de la cosechas hizo más severo el racionamiento alimentario. Las magras raciones potenciaron elementos como la inactividad, las rutinas sin sentido y el desprecio de los oficiales. En junio de 1917 una manifestación contra los privilegios alimentarios de los oficiales se tornó en una plataforma política a favor de una paz negociada. Los líderes del comité de marinos fueron detenidos. Dos de ellos fueron fusilados[xxxv]. En julio un alzamiento armado en las bases navales de la costa de Flandes dejó un saldo de cincuenta oficiales asesinados y la destrucción de las instalaciones de los zeppelines. Su líder, el segundo teniente Rudolf Glatfelder, declaró después, ya a salvo en Suiza, que este hecho probaba la capacidad de los alemanes para rebelarse[xxxvi]. En diciembre el desacato a la orden de reembarque de la dotación de buques de vigilancia que acababan de regresar de una larga y sangrienta patrulla degeneró en motín que fue develado con un saldo de cuarenta y cuatro muertes. Los sobrevivientes fueron condenados a trabajos forzados[xxxvii].

El descontento también cundía en el cuerpo de oficiales. Von Tirpitz hubo de renunciar a la Secretaria de Marina en marzo de 1916, a causa de su postura favorable a la guerra submarina irrestricta[xxxviii]. Pocos meses después se convirtió en co – fundador del Partido de la Patria Alemana (DVP), un movimiento político nacionalista opuesto a una paz negociada. Corría el año 1918 y el poder real – el gobierno que apoyaban Von Tirpitz y sus correligionarios – era el de los caudillos del pueblo alemán, el mariscal de campo Paul von Hindenburg y el general Erich Ludendorff. En mayo de 1918 corrían fuertes rumores sobre la existencia de círculos secretos de oficiales conspirando contra Von Capelle y Scheer, con el fin de sacar de los puertos a la Hochseeflotten y combatir contra los ingleses[xxxix]. A finales de julio el crítico naval del Berliner Tageblatt, capitán de navío (r) Karl Ludwig Lothar Persius (1864 – 1944) declaraba abiertamente el fracaso de la guerra submarina[xl].

El 29 de setiembre de 1918 el alto mando del Ejército alemán reclamó al gobierno imperial el inicio de negociaciones para un armisticio con los aliados. Cuatro días después el nuevo gabinete, con el príncipe Max de Baden a la cabeza[xli], enviaba una nota al gobierno de los Estados Unidos solicitando el armisticio sobre la base de los Catorce Puntos del presidente Woodrow Wilson.

Entretanto el ejército y la marina imperial se ocupaban de los efectos de la derrota. El alto mando militar hábilmente inició una campaña de propaganda entre las tropas del frente. Esta fue el origen del mito de la “puñalada por la espalda”, en el cual se apoyarían los partidos de extrema derecha durante la República de Weimar, en particular los nacionalsocialistas. Entre la oficialidad naval las células nacionalistas clandestinas salieron a la luz y, en contra de la voluntad de paz del gobierno Baden, sus integrantes dictaron las órdenes pertinentes para el alistamiento de la Flota para forzar el combate decisivo contra la Armada británica. El 28 de octubre la marinería de Kiel y Wilhelmshaven se amotinaron, utilizando como pretexto el nivel crítico al que había llegado el racionamiento de las dotaciones. Cinco días después Kiel – la capital de la Armada imperial – era escenario de manifestaciones en las que se exigía, además de la mejora del rancho, la reforma política y la libertad de los encarcelados por los motines de 1917. El temor de que el motín fuese develado a sangre y fuego, al estilo de la sublevación en Flandes, ocurrida el verano pasado, dio motivo a los amotinados para armarse y organizarse en soviets. Así, pues, el pabellón imperial fue arriado e izada la bandera roja. El motín fue controlado por la moderación de las autoridades navales y la intervención del diputado socialista Gustav Noske, hombre de autoridad y sentido práctico. No hubo violencia contra los oficiales y los amotinados fueron licenciados, dispersándose por toda Alemania. Guillermo II seguía los acontecimientos desde el cuartel general del Ejército Imperial en Spa (Bélgica). Conmocionado, declaró que ya no tenía una marina y abdicó. En aquella hora amarga Guillermo II dijo: “Espero que esto será en beneficio de Alemania. No desesperemos por el porvenir”. Una vez más se había repetido un viejo axioma sobre los motines navales: estos se producen en las flotas que permanecen ancladas en puerto, y son mayormente consecuencia de una derrota.

6. Ocaso

El 15 de noviembre de 1918 el almirante alemán Hugo Meurer (1869 – 1960) firmaba con su par británico, Jellicoe, las clausulas del acuerdo de internamiento de la flota imperial. Tres días después el almirante Ludwig von Reuter (1869 – 1943) asumía el mando de la escuadra de buques destinados al internamiento provisional en Escocia. Conformada por diez acorazados, siete cruceros ligeros y cincuenta destructores, su derrota hacia Escocia tuvo un aire que recordaba tiempos convulsos, pues cada buque ondeaba dos enseñas, la imperial a popa y la bandera roja en el palo de proa. El lugar definitivo de internamiento fue Scapa Flow, la base de la Grand Fleet británica, en el archipiélago de las Orcadas. Durante las negociaciones del Tratado de Versalles los buques permanecieron fondeados y severamente custodiados, a tal punto que sus tripulaciones se encontraban incomunicadas y prohibidas de tocar tierra.

En vísperas de la culminación de las negociaciones de paz en París, a fines de junio de 1919, el Times de Londres informaba que los aliados habían acordado exigir a Alemania la entrega de los buques internados a través de un arreglo financiero. En caso que la respuesta germana fuera negativa, correrían tres días de plazo para la denuncia del armisticio del 11 de noviembre de 1918 y, con ello, la reanudación de hostilidades. Con la convicción que el destino de la flota internada era la de trofeo de guerra, el almirante Von Reuter activó el plan de hundirla. Aprovechando un descuido de sus custodios, los alemanes abrieron los grifos de fondo de los buques y arriaron los botes salvavidas. En cinco horas se fueron a pique diez acorazados, cinco cruceros de batalla, cinco cruceros ligeros y cuarenta y cuatro destructores. Un crucero de batalla, cuatro cruceros ligeros y catorce destructores fueron embarrancados por personal británico. Ludwig von Reuter había protegido, in extremis, el honor de la flota[xlii].

La Hochseeflotte pudo haber tenido un final diferente si se hubiera prolongado la guerra. En setiembre de 1917, el almirante David Beatty (1871 – 1936), comandante de la Gran Flota, autorizó un audaz plan según el cual 121 aviones del Real Servicio Aéreo Naval (RNAS) destruirían la Hochseeflotte y sus bases de Kiel y de Wilhemshaven[xliii]. Los torpederos despegarían desde porta aeronaves – – y los hidroplanos – bombarderos desde sus bases del Canal de la Mancha. Este plan de ataque sirvió de modelo para el bombardeo de la flota italiana surta en Tarento, Sicilia, el 11 de noviembre de 1940.

7. A modo de conclusión

En su biografía de juventud “Historia de un alemán. Memorias 1914 – 1933” el periodista alemán Sebastian Haffner (1907 – 1999) escribió: “Esta enfermedad – el nacionalismo – que en otros casos sólo afecta el aspecto externo, en el suyo – los alemanes – les carcome el alma (…) Un alemán que cae víctima del nacionalismo deja de ser alemán, apenas es persona. Y lo que este movimiento genera es un imperio alemán, quizás incluso un gran imperio alemán o un imperio pangermánico y la consiguiente destrucción de Alemania”. Considero que esta reflexión personal de Haffner puede aplicarse a la existencia de la Marina Imperial alemana. Su carácter nacionalista debe comprenderse como una imitación del sentimiento nacional de los ingleses y franceses de su época[xliv]. Al imitar se corre el peligro de tomar los defectos ajenos[xlv]. ¿Necesitaba Alemania una Armada como la concebida por la ambición del almirante von Tirpitz? Creemos que no. Incluso el káiser Guillermo II (1859 – 1941) declaró, en un momento de lucidez, que la seguridad del Imperio no descansaba en nuevas conquistas[xlvi]. En 1871 Alemania había ganado el derecho a vivir como nación unida e independiente. En 1888 contaba con una Armada digna de respeto, garantía de su soberanía e, incluso, con un modesto imperio colonial. En 1918 Alemania perdió todo lo ganado y sus marinos se amotinaron para salvar sus vidas, porque no querían ser sacrificados en un combate inútil[xlvii]. En cuanto a Scapa Flow, este hecho fue una tragedia redentora para una Armada destruida moralmente. El almirante Von Reuter y sus oficiales demostraron que todo se había perdido, menos el honor.

Scapa Flow fue el último acto de un fracaso que se recuerda con una cita churchilliana, “la flota alemana es un lujo, no una necesidad nacional”. Creemos que dicha frase es equívoca. Al dotarse de una Armada poderosa, Alemania demostró su voluntad de ser un pueblo fuerte y con vocación marítima. Equívocamente se creyó que la libertad de los mares sólo podía alcanzarse por medio de la fuerza. Aquel dogma era propio de la época y la derrota alemana probó su falsedad arrastrando en su magnitud a su poderosa adversaria, Inglaterra, a la luz del impacto humanitario que provocó el bloqueo de las costas alemanas. El orgullo y la ambición desmedida fueron la perdición de la Marina Imperial Alemana. Sus virtudes fueron el valor y la pericia de los tripulantes de submarinos, destructores y cruceros auxiliares. Aquellos que servían a bordo de los dreadnoughts y cruceros de batalla no tuvieron la oportunidad de demostrar su calidad. La obra de construir una flota como la Armada Imperial fue extraordinaria. En ella vemos la maestría y las debilidades de sus artesanos, Von Stosch, Von Caprivi y Von Tirpitz.

REFERENCIAS

[i] “But we are victors and vanquished at one and at the same time, and in depicting our success the difficult problem confronts us of not forgetting that our strength did not last out to the end”

[ii] Desde los tiempos de Julio César Germania – Alemania fue considerada más que un pueblo, una vasta comunidad que habitaba en un territorio pobre y peligroso.

[iii] Serie de motines, sublevaciones e insurrecciones que estallaron en toda Europa, en las que se mezclaron motivos políticos, sociales y nacionales que puso fin al predominio del absolutismo en el continente europeo desde el Congreso de Viena de 1814 – 1815. Se inició el 12 de enero de 1848 en Reino de las Dos Sicilias y llegó a Prusia dos meses después, extendiéndose por toda Alemania a partir del mes de mayo, con la constitución del Parlamento Federal de los Estados Alemanes. La asamblea se dividió entre los representantes partidarios de la Gran Alemania (con Austria) y los de la Pequeña Alemania (sin Austria). Si bien la Asamblea se desintegró el 28 de abril de 1849, a causa de la negativa del rey de Prusia, Guillermo IV, de aceptar la corona imperial de una asamblea revolucionaria, dejó claramente planteada la cuestión de la unidad alemana bajo la hegemonía prusiana o austriaca.

[iv] El término Reich procede de una fusión ecléctica del Rix celta y el Rex latino, razón por la que se tradujo como imperio.

[v] FYFFE, Charles Alan (1845 – 1892), Historiador y periodista británico, corresponsal del Daily News durante la guerra franco – prusiana.

[vi] DOMINGUEZ RODIÑO, Enrique (1918, 13 de marzo), “Las Grandes Potencias: Alemania V”, La Vanguardia, Barcelona, p. 12

[vii] TENBROCK, Robert Hermann, “Historia de Alemania”, Paderborn: Hueber – Schöning, 1968, 344p, p. 218

[viii] PARK, Evan (2015), “The Nationalist Fleet: Radical Nationalism and The Imperial German Navy from Unification to 1914”, Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, Volume 16, issue2, p. 125 – 159, p. 136

[ix] KLLEJEN, Johan Rudolf ((1864 – 1922), Geógrafo, politólogo y político sueco. Fue catedrático de ciencias políticas y estadística de las universidades de Gotemburgo y de Upsala. En 1899 acuñó el término “Geopolítica”.

[x] DOMINGUEZ RODIÑO, Enrique, (1918, 6 de febrero), “Las Grandes Potencias: Alemania II”, La Vanguardia, sección “La Guerra Europea”, p. 9

[xi] “Sólo en la Guerra se forja una nación. Sólo las grandes acciones comunes en nombre de la patria unen a la Nación. El individualismo cede y el individuo se difumina y se convierte en parte de un todo” – Heinrich von Treistchke

[xii] Online edition of Admiral Reinhard Scheer’s WW1 memoirs, published in 1920 http:// www.richthofen.com/scheer

[xiii] Esta frase, según el filosofo e historiador romano Plutarco (46/50 DC – 120 DC), había sido pronunciada por el caudillo Pompeyo (106 AC – 48 AC) arengando a sus marineros a embarcarse a pesar del amenazador estado de la mar, recordándoles que el deber está por encima de cualquier miedo o de cualquier circunstancia.

[xiv] La Reichsflotte (Flota Imperial) fue la primera marina unificada alemana. Fue creada el 14 de enero de 1848 por la Asamblea Nacional Alemana de Fráncfort, con el fin de contar con una fuerza naval en la Primera Guerra de Schleswig (1850 – 1852) contra Dinamarca. La fecha de su creación se considera, simbólicamente, como el inicio de la Armada alemana moderna. Ver: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsflotte

[xv] PARK, Evan (2015), “The Nationalist Fleet: Radical Nationalism and The Imperial German Navy from Unification to 1914”, Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, Volume 16, issue 2, p. 125 – 159, p. 131 – 132

[xvi] “Necesitamos buques que sean apropiados para proteger a la marina mercante ofensivamente y escuadrones que estacionemos para fines de policía en lugares distantes. Considero que los acorazados son un error; son superfluos para nuestras condiciones porque no podemos combatir en un combate de largo aliento” – Albert von Stosch

[xvii] Actualmente Szczecin, Polonia

[xviii] El artículo 53 de la Constitución Imperial de 1871 decía que la Marina del Imperio se encontraba al mando del Emperador, correspondiéndole ocuparse de su organización y composición.

[xix] RUBIO Y BELLVE, Mariano (1916, 22 de octubre), “El Canal de Kiel”, La Vanguardia, Sección “La Guerra Europea”,

[xx] « Des facultés d’invention et d’imagination, un esprit d’initiative et de ressources une hardiesse avisée et souple auxquels il faut rendre hommage, servis admirablement par une puissance industrielle de premier ordre (…) et le dévouement passionné d’un personnel d’élite » GRANDHOMME, Jean – Noel, « Du pompon à la plume: l’amiral, commentateur de la guerre et de la paix d’inquiétude, 1914 – 1919 », Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 2007/3 Nº227, p.43 – 64 DOI :10.3917/gmcc.227.0043, p. 53

[xxi] DOMINGUEZ RODIÑO, Enrique, (1918, 6 de febrero), “Las Grandes Potencias: Alemania II”, La Vanguardia, sección “La Guerra Europea”, p. 9

[xxii] La ventaja de contar con el favor imperial constituyó, a la larga, al problema para la consolidación de la cadena de comando de la Armada.

[xxiii] A diferencia de Inglaterra, la Alemania imperial nunca tuvo un apoyo tributario que le permitiera con una fuente de financiación estable y permanente de su Armada. La Royal Navy disfrutaba de los ingresos producidos por una serie de impuestos y tasas al comercio colonial .

[xxiv] SCHEER, Reinhard (1920), “Germany’s High Seas Fleet in the World War”, Cassell & Co,, p. 176

[xxv] Esta frase es el elemento central del discurso del ministro de relaciones Exteriores, Bernhard von Bülow, del 6 de diciembre de 1897, en el cual anunció el golpe de timón de la política exterior alemana, de la política europea de Bismarck (europapolitik) a la global del káiser Guillermo II (Weltpolitik), es decir, del balance de poderes en Europa a la expansión mundial del poderío alemán.

[xxvi] En sus memorias Tirpitz niega que su intención fuera ir a la guerra contra Inglaterra. Por lo contrario, señala que la Armada Imperial tenía un carácter defensivo contra las intenciones bélicas de los británicos, amén de darles unas cuantas lecciones en política internacional.

[xxvii] La Vanguardia (29 de noviembre de 1914), página 16, segunda columna: “Londres, 28 – La Oficina de Trabajo ha publicado a los efectos de la guerra sobre las marinas mercantes inglesa y alemana. De dicho informe se desprende que el 97 por cien de los buques ingleses siguen prestando servicios mientras el 89 por cien de los alemanes han dejado de prestarlo, y que la mayoría de los que navegan son pequeños buques de cabotaje”

[xxviii] Fundada en 1898, la DFV – se definía “como una muestra de concordia entre el trabajador y el príncipe, la izquierda y la derecha, el norte y el sur, un movimiento popular fundado en el amor a la patria, sin distinción de ideas políticas y religiosas ni barrera social alguna”.

[xxix] El rayo de la muerte o rayo de tesla es un arma que permite disparar un haz de partículas microscópicas hacia seres vivos u objetos para destruirlos. Supuestamente fue inventado entre la década de 1920 y 1930 de manera independiente por Nikola Tesla, Edwin R. Scott y Harry Grindell Matthews, entre otros. El aparato nunca fue desarrollado, pero ha alimentado la imaginación de muchos autores de ciencia ficción y ha inspirado la creación de conceptos como la pistola de rayos láser, utilizada por héroes de ficción como Flash Gordon. Ver: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayo_de_la_muerte

[xxx] MILLE, Mateo, “Historia Naval de la Gran Guerra 1914 – 1918”, Barcelona: Inédita Editores, SL, 2010, 548 p., p. 123

[xxxi] El Comercio (02 de junio de 1916), edición de la mañana, página 4, tercera y cuarta columnas

[xxxii] RUBIO Y BELLVE, Mariano (1916, 11 de junio), “En el mar”, La Vanguardia, sección “La Guerra Europea”, p. 14, 1 – 4 Col.

[xxxiii] La Vanguardia, (29 de mayo de 1916), página 6, tercera columna

[xxxiv] MILLE, Mateo, “Historia Naval de la Gran Guerra 1914 – 1918”, Barcelona: Inédita Editores, SL, 2010, 548 p., p. 11

[xxxv] PATERSON, Tony, (2014, 17 de junio), “A History of the First World War in 100 moments: My dear parents, I have been sentenced to death…”, The Independent

[xxxvi] La Vanguardia (20 de octubre de 1917), página 13, primera columna

[xxxvii] La Vanguardia (26 de enero de 1918), página 9, tercera columna

[xxxviii] El Comercio, (23 de marzo de 1916), edición de la mañana, página 1, tercera y cuarta columnas

[xxxix] La Vanguardia, (18 de mayo de 1918), página 9, cuarta columna

[xl] La Vanguardia (28 de julio de 1918), página 13, primera columna

[xli] El 03 de octubre de 1918 marca el inicio de una de serie de gobiernos concebidos entre cábalas y motines. La política alemana no se estabilizó hasta el año 1922, tras el asesinato del ministro de relaciones exteriores, el industrial Walter Rathenau (1867 – 1922). Su muerte unió, brevemente, a la mayoría silenciosa contra los radicalismos políticos.

[xlii] Fue testigo de estos hechos Claude Stanley Choules (1901 – 2011), el último de los últimos veteranos británicos de la Primera Guerra Mundial

[xliii] WILKINS, Tony (2015, 03 de agosto), “World War I’s abandoned Pearl Harbour Attack”, Ver: http://defence of the realm.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/world-war-Is-abandoned-pearl-harbour-attack/

[xliv] “Repróchese a los alemanes el que imiten unas veces a los ingleses y otras a los franceses, pues es lo mejor que pueden hacer. Reducidos a sus propios medios nada sensato podrían ofrecernos”.

[xlv] “¡Bienaventurados nuestros imitadores, porque de ellos serán nuestros defectos!” – Jacinto Benavente, dramaturgo español (1866 – 1954)

[xlvi] Al Imperio Alemán no le es menester nueva gloria militar ni conquistas, ahora que ha ganado el derecho de vivir como nación unida e independiente” – Guillermo II (1888)

[xlvii] “Alemania en sí no es nada, pero cada alemán es mucho por sí mismo” – Goethe (1808)

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blackkudos · 8 years ago

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W. E. B. DuBois

William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois (pronounced /duːˈbɔɪz/ doo-BOYZ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Du Bois rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta compromise, an agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington which provided that Southern blacks would work and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic educational and economic opportunities. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African-American intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the Talented Tenth and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership.

Racism was the main target of Du Bois's polemics, and he strongly protested against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. His cause included people of color everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in colonies. He was a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to fight for independence of African colonies from European powers. Du Bois made several trips to Europe, Africa and Asia. After World War I, he surveyed the experiences of American black soldiers in France and documented widespread bigotry in the United States military.

Du Bois was a prolific author. His collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, was a seminal work in African-American literature; and his 1935 magnum opus Black Reconstruction in America challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction Era. He wrote one of the first scientific treatises in the field of American sociology, and he published three autobiographies, each of which contains insightful essays on sociology, politics and history. In his role as editor of the NAACP's journal The Crisis, he published many influential pieces. Du Bois believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism, and he was generally sympathetic to socialist causes throughout his life. He was an ardent peace activist and advocated nuclear disarmament. The United States' Civil Rights Act, embodying many of the reforms for which Du Bois had campaigned his entire life, was enacted a year after his death.

Early life

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to Alfred and Mary Silvina (née Burghardt) Du Bois. Mary Silvina Burghardt's family was part of the very small free black population of Great Barrington and had long owned land in the state. She was descended from Dutch, African and English ancestors. William Du Bois's maternal great-great-grandfather was Tom Burghardt, a slave (born in West Africa around 1730), who was held by the Dutch colonist Conraed Burghardt. Tom briefly served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, which may have been how he gained his freedom during the 18th century. His son Jack Burghardt was the father of Othello Burghardt, who was the father of Mary Silvina Burghardt.

William Du Bois's paternal great-grandfather was James Du Bois of Poughkeepsie, New York, an ethnic French-American who fathered several children with slave mistresses. One of James' mixed-race sons was Alexander. He traveled and worked in Haiti, where he fathered a son, Alfred, with a mistress. Alexander returned to Connecticut, leaving Alfred in Haiti with his mother.

Sometime before 1860, Alfred Du Bois emigrated to the United States, settling in Massachusetts. He married Mary Silvina Burghardt on February 5, 1867, in Housatonic. Alfred left Mary in 1870, two years after their son William was born. Mary Burghardt Du Bois moved with her son back to her parents' house in Great Barrington until he was five. She worked to support her family (receiving some assistance from her brother and neighbors), until she suffered a stroke in the early 1880s. She died in 1885.

Great Barrington had a majority European American community, who treated Du Bois generally well. He attended the local integrated public school and played with white schoolmates. As an adult, he wrote about racism which he felt as a fatherless child and the experience of being a minority in the town. But, teachers recognized his ability and encouraged his intellectual pursuits, and his rewarding experience with academic studies led him to believe that he could use his knowledge to empower African Americans. Du Bois graduated from the town's Searles High School. When Du Bois decided to attend college, the congregation of his childhood church, the First Congregational Church of Great Barrington, raised the money for his tuition.

University education

Relying on money donated by neighbors, Du Bois attended Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1885 to 1888. His travel to and residency in the South was Du Bois's first experience with Southern racism, which at the time encompassed Jim Crow laws, bigotry, suppression of black voting, and lynchings; the lattermost reached a peak in the next decade. After receiving a bachelor's degree from Fisk, he attended Harvard College (which did not accept course credits from Fisk) from 1888 to 1890, where he was strongly influenced by his professor William James, prominent in American philosophy. Du Bois paid his way through three years at Harvard with money from summer jobs, an inheritance, scholarships, and loans from friends. In 1890, Harvard awarded Du Bois his second bachelor's degree, cum laude, in history. In 1891, Du Bois received a scholarship to attend the sociology graduate school at Harvard.

In 1892, Du Bois received a fellowship from the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen to attend the University of Berlin for graduate work. While a student in Berlin, he traveled extensively throughout Europe. He came of age intellectually in the German capital, while studying with some of that nation's most prominent social scientists, including Gustav von Schmoller, Adolph Wagner, and Heinrich von Treitschke. After returning from Europe, Du Bois completed his graduate studies; in 1895 he was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Wilberforce and Philadelphia

In the summer of 1894, Du Bois received several job offers, including one from the prestigious Tuskegee Institute; he accepted a teaching job at Wilberforce University in Ohio. At Wilberforce, Du Bois was strongly influenced by Alexander Crummell, who believed that ideas and morals are necessary tools to effect social change. While at Wilberforce, Du Bois married Nina Gomer, one of his students, on May 12, 1896.

After two years at Wilberforce, Du Bois accepted a one-year research job from the University of Pennsylvania as an "assistant in sociology" in the summer of 1896. He performed sociological field research in Philadelphia's African-American neighborhoods, which formed the foundation for his landmark study, The Philadelphia Negro, published in 1899 while he was teaching at Atlanta University. It was the first case study of a black community in the United States. By the 1890s, Philadelphia's black neighborhoods had a negative reputation in terms of crime, poverty, and mortality. Du Bois's book undermined the stereotypes with experimental evidence, and shaped his approach to segregation and its negative impact on black lives and reputations. The results led Du Bois to realize that racial integration was the key to democratic equality in American cities.

While taking part in the American Negro Academy (ANA) in 1897, Du Bois presented a paper in which he rejected Frederick Douglass's plea for black Americans to integrate into white society. He wrote: "we are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its African fatherland". In the August 1897 issue of Atlantic Monthly, Du Bois published "Strivings of the Negro People", his first work aimed at the general public, in which he enlarged upon his thesis that African Americans should embrace their African heritage while contributing to American society.

Atlanta University

In July 1897, Du Bois left Philadelphia and took a professorship in history and economics at the historically black Atlanta University in Georgia. His first major academic work was his book The Philadelphia Negro (1899), a detailed and comprehensive sociological study of the African-American people of Philadelphia, based on the field work he did in 1896–1897. The work was a breakthrough in scholarship, because it was the first scientific study of African Americans and a major contribution to early scientific sociology in the U.S. In the study, Du Bois coined the phrase "the submerged tenth" to describe the black underclass. Later in 1903 he popularized the term, the "Talented Tenth", applied to society's elite class. Du Bois's terminology reflected his opinion that the elite of a nation, both black and white, was critical to achievements in culture and progress. Du Bois wrote in this period in a dismissive way of the underclass, describing them as "lazy" or "unreliable", but he – in contrast to other scholars – he attributed many of their societal problems to the ravages of slavery.

Du Bois's output at Atlanta University was prodigious, in spite of a limited budget: He produced numerous social science papers and annually hosted the Atlanta Conference of Negro Problems. Du Bois also received grants from the U.S. government to prepare reports about African-American workforce and culture. His students considered him to be a brilliant, but aloof and strict, teacher.

First Pan-African Conference

In 1900 Du Bois attended the First Pan-African Conference, held in London from July 23 to 25. (This was just prior to the Paris Exhibition of 1900 "in order to allow tourists of African descent to attend both events.") It was organized by men from the Caribbean: Haitians Anténor Firmin and Bénito Sylvain and Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester Williams. Du Bois played a leading role, drafting a letter ("Address to the Nations of the World") to European leaders appealing to them to struggle against racism, to grant colonies in Africa and the West Indies the right to self-government and to demand political and other rights for African Americans. By this time, southern states were passing new laws and constitutions to disfranchise most African Americans, an exclusion from the political system that lasted into the 1960s.

At the conclusion of the conference, delegates unanimously adopted the "Address to the Nations of the World", and sent it to various heads of state where people of African descent were living and suffering oppression. The address implored the United States and the imperial European nations to "acknowledge and protect the rights of people of African descent" and to respect the integrity and independence of "the free Negro States of Abyssinia, Liberia, Haiti, etc." It was signed by Bishop Alexander Walters (President of the Pan-African Association), the Canadian Rev. Henry B. Brown (Vice-President), Williams (General Secretary) and Du Bois (Chairman of the Committee on the Address). The address included Du Bois's observation, "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colour-line." He used this again three years later in the "Forethought" of his book, The Souls of Black Folk (1903).

Booker T. Washington and the Atlanta Compromise

In the first decade of the new century, Du Bois emerged as a spokesperson for his race, second only to Booker T. Washington. Washington was the director of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and wielded tremendous influence within the African-American and white communities. Washington was the architect of the Atlanta Compromise, an unwritten deal he struck in 1895 with Southern white leaders who dominated state governments after Reconstruction. Essentially the agreement provided that Southern blacks, who lived overwhelmingly in rural communities, would submit to the current discrimination, segregation, disenfranchisement, and non-unionized employment; that Southern whites would permit blacks to receive a basic education, some economic opportunities, and justice within the legal system; and that Northern whites would invest in Southern enterprises and fund black educational charities.

Despite initially sending congratulations to Washington for his Atlanta Exposition Speech, Du Bois later came to oppose Washington's plan, along with many other African Americans, including Archibald H. Grimke, Kelly Miller, James Weldon Johnson and Paul Laurence Dunbar – representatives of the class of educated blacks that Du Bois would later call the "talented tenth". Du Bois felt that African Americans should fight for equal rights and higher opportunities, rather than passively submit to the segregation and discrimination of Washington's Atlanta Compromise.

Du Bois was inspired to greater activism by the lynching of Sam Hose, which occurred near Atlanta in 1899. Hose was tortured, burned and hung by a mob of two thousand whites. When walking through Atlanta to discuss the lynching with newspaper editor Joel Chandler Harris, Du Bois encountered Hose's burned knuckles in a storefront display. The episode stunned Du Bois, and he resolved that "one could not be a calm cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved." Du Bois realized that "the cure wasn't simply telling people the truth, it was inducing them to act on the truth."

In 1901, Du Bois wrote a review critical of Washington's autobiography Up from Slavery, which he later expanded and published to a wider audience as the essay "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" in The Souls of Black Folk. Later in life, Du Bois regretted having been critical of Washington in those essays. One of the contrasts between the two leaders was their approach to education: Washington felt that African-American schools should focus primarily on industrial education topics such as agricultural and mechanical skills, to prepare southern blacks for the opportunities in the rural areas where most lived. Du Bois felt that black schools should focus more on liberal arts and academic curriculum (including the classics, arts, and humanities), because liberal arts were required to develop a leadership elite. However, as sociologist E. Franklin Frazier and economists Gunnar Myrdal and Thomas Sowell have argued, such disagreement over education was a minor point of difference between Washington and Du Bois; both men acknowledged the importance of the form of education that the other emphasized. Sowell has also argued that, despite genuine disagreements between the two leaders, the supposed animosity between Washington and Du Bois actually formed among their followers, not between Washington and Du Bois themselves. Du Bois himself also made this observation in an interview published in the The Atlantic Monthly in November 1965.

Niagara Movement

In 1905, Du Bois and several other African-American civil rights activists – including Fredrick L. McGhee, Jesse Max Barber and William Monroe Trotter – met in Canada, near Niagara Falls. There they wrote a declaration of principles opposing the Atlanta Compromise, and incorporated as the Niagara Movement in 1906. Du Bois and the other "Niagarites" wanted to publicize their ideals to other African Americans, but most black periodicals were owned by publishers sympathetic to Washington. Du Bois bought a printing press and started publishing Moon Illustrated Weekly in December 1905. It was the first African-American illustrated weekly, and Du Bois used it to attack Washington's positions, but the magazine lasted only for about eight months. Du Bois soon founded and edited another vehicle for his polemics, The Horizon: A Journal of the Color Line, which debuted in 1907. Freeman H. M. Murray and Lafayette M. Hershaw served as The Horizon's co-editors.

The Niagarites held a second conference in August 1906, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown's birth, at the West Virginia site of Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. Reverdy C. Ransom spoke and addressed the fact that Washington's primary goal was to prepare blacks for employment in their current society: "Today, two classes of Negroes, [...] are standing at the parting of the ways. The one counsels patient submission to our present humiliations and degradations; [...] The other class believe that it should not submit to being humiliated, degraded, and remanded to an inferior place [...] it does not believe in bartering its manhood for the sake of gain."

The Souls of Black Folk

In an effort to portray the genius and humanity of the black race, Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a collection of 14 essays. James Weldon Johnson said the book's effect on African Americans was comparable to that of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The introduction famously proclaimed that "[...] the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." Each chapter begins with two epigraphs – one from a white poet, and one from a black spiritual – to demonstrate intellectual and cultural parity between black and white cultures. A major theme of the work was the double consciousness faced by African Americans: Being both American and black. This was a unique identity which, according to Du Bois, had been a handicap in the past, but could be a strength in the future: "Henceforth, the destiny of the race could be conceived as leading neither to assimilation nor separatism but to proud, enduring hyphenation."

Jonathon S. Kahn in Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of Du Bois shows how Du Bois in his The Souls of Black Folk, represents an exemplary text of pragmatic religious naturalism. On page 12 Kahn writes: "Du Bois needs to be understood as an African American pragmatic religious naturalist. By this I mean that, like Du Bois the American traditional pragmatic religious naturalism, which runs through William James, George Santayana and John Dewey, seeks religion without metaphysical foundations." Kahn's interpretation of religious naturalism is very broad but he relates it to specific thinkers. Du Bois's anti-metaphysical viewpoint places him in the sphere of religious naturalism as typified by William James and others.

Racial violence

Two calamities in the autumn of 1906 shocked African Americans, and contributed to strengthening support for Du Bois's struggle for civil rights to prevail over Booker T. Washington's accommodationism. First, President Teddy Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 black soldiers because they were accused of crimes as a result of the Brownsville Affair. Many of the discharged soldiers had served for 20 years and were near retirement. Second, in September, riots broke out in Atlanta, precipitated by unfounded allegations of black men assaulting white women. This was a catalyst for racial tensions based on a job shortage and employers playing black workers against white workers. Ten thousand whites rampaged through Atlanta, beating every black person they could find, resulting in over 25 deaths. In the aftermath of the 1906 violence, Du Bois urged blacks to withdraw their support from the Republican Party, because Republicans Roosevelt and William Howard Taft did not sufficiently support blacks. Most African Americans had been loyal to the Republican Party since the time of Abraham Lincoln.

Du Bois wrote the essay, "A Litany at Atlanta", which asserted that the riot demonstrated that the Atlanta Compromise was a failure. Despite upholding their end of the bargain, blacks had failed to receive legal justice in the South. Historian David Lewis has written that the Compromise no longer held because white patrician planters, who took a paternalistic role, had been replaced by aggressive businessmen who were willing to pit blacks against whites. These two calamities were watershed events for the African-American community, marking the ascendancy of Du Bois's vision of equal rights.

Academic work

In addition to writing editorials, Du Bois continued to produce scholarly work at Atlanta University. In 1909, after five years of effort, he published a biography of abolitionist John Brown. It contained many insights, but also contained some factual errors. The work was strongly criticized by The Nation, which was owned by Oswald Villard, who was writing his own, competing biography of John Brown. Du Bois's work was largely ignored by white scholars. After publishing a piece in Collier's magazine warning of the end of "white supremacy", Du Bois had difficulty getting pieces accepted by major periodicals. But he did continue to publish columns regularly in The Horizon magazine.

Du Bois was the first African American invited by the American Historical Association (AHA) to present a paper at their annual conference. He read his paper, Reconstruction and Its Benefits, to an astounded audience at the AHA's December 1909 conference. The paper went against the mainstream historical view, promoted by the Dunning School of scholars at Columbia University, that Reconstruction was a disaster, caused by the ineptitude and sloth of blacks. To the contrary, Du Bois asserted that the brief period of African-American leadership in the South accomplished three important goals : democracy, free public schools, and new social welfare legislation. He asserted that it was the federal government's failure to manage the Freedmen's Bureau, to distribute land, and to establish an educational system, that doomed African-American prospects in the South. When Du Bois submitted the paper for publication a few months later in the American Historical Review, he asked that the word Negro be capitalized. The editor, J. Franklin Jameson, refused, and published the paper without the capitalization. The paper was mostly ignored by white historians. Du Bois later developed his paper as his ground-breaking 1935 book, Black Reconstruction, which marshaled extensive facts to support his assertions. The AHA did not invite another African-American speaker until 1940.

NAACP era

In May 1909, Du Bois attended the National Negro Conference in New York. The meeting led to the creation of the National Negro Committee, chaired by Oswald Villard, and dedicated to campaigning for civil rights, equal voting rights, and equal educational opportunities. The following spring, in 1910, at the second National Negro Conference, the attendees created the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). At Du Bois's suggestion, the word "colored", rather than "black", was used to include "dark skinned people everywhere." Dozens of civil rights supporters, black and white, participated in the founding, but most executive officers were white, including Mary Ovington, Charles Edward Russell, William English Walling, and its first president Moorfield Storey.

The Crisis

NAACP leaders offered Du Bois the position of Director of Publicity and Research. He accepted the job in the summer of 1910, and moved to New York after resigning from Atlanta University. His primary duty was editing the NAACP's monthly magazine, which he named The Crisis. The first issue appeared in November 1910, and Du Bois pronounced that its aim was to set out "those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people." The journal was phenomenally successful, and its circulation would reach 100,000 in 1920. Typical articles in the early editions included one that inveighed against the dishonesty and parochialism of black churches, and one that discussed the Afrocentric origins of Egyptian civilization.

An important Du Bois editorial from 1911 helped initiate a nationwide push to induce the Federal government to outlaw lynching. Du Bois, employing the sarcasm he frequently used, commented on a lynching in Pennsylvania: "The point is he was black. Blackness must be punished. Blackness is the crime of crimes [...] It is therefore necessary, as every white scoundrel in the nation knows, to let slip no opportunity of punishing this crime of crimes. Of course if possible, the pretext should be great and overwhelming – some awful stunning crime, made even more horrible by the reporters' imagination. Failing this, mere murder, arson, barn burning or impudence may do."

The Crisis carried editorials by Du Bois that supported the ideals of unionized labor but excoriated the racism demonstrated by its leaders, who systematically excluded blacks from membership. Du Bois also supported the principles of the Socialist Party (he was briefly a member of the party from 1910 to 1912), but he denounced the racism demonstrated by some socialist leaders. Frustrated by Republican president Taft's failure to address widespread lynching, Du Bois endorsed Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential race, in exchange for Wilson's promise to support black causes.

Throughout his writings, Du Bois supported women's rights, but he found it difficult to publicly endorse the women's right-to-vote movement because leaders of the suffragism movement refused to support his fight against racial injustice. A Crisis editorial from 1913 broached the taboo subject of interracial marriage: Although Du Bois generally expected persons to marry within their race, he viewed the problem as a women's rights issue, because laws prohibited white men from marrying black women. Du Bois wrote "[anti-miscegenation] laws leave the colored girls absolutely helpless for the lust of white men. It reduces colored women in the eyes of the law to the position of dogs. As low as the white girl falls, she can compel her seducer to marry her [...] We must kill [anti-miscegenation laws] not because we are anxious to marry the white men's sisters, but because we are determined that white men will leave our sisters alone."

During the years 1915 and 1916, some leaders of the NAACP – disturbed by financial losses at The Crisis, and worried about the inflammatory rhetoric of some of its essays – attempted to oust Du Bois from his editorial position. Du Bois and his supporters prevailed, and he continued in his role as editor. In a 1919 column titled "The True Brownies", he announced the creation of The Brownies' Book, the first magazine published for African-American children and youth, which he founded with Augustus Granville Dill and Jessie Redmon Fauset.

Historian and author

The 1910s were a productive time for Du Bois. In 1911 he attended the First Universal Races Congress in London and he published his first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece. Two years later, Du Bois wrote, produced, and directed a pageant for the stage, The Star of Ethiopia. In 1915, Du Bois published The Negro, a general history of black Africans, and the first of its kind in English. The book rebutted claims of African inferiority, and would come to serve as the basis of much Afrocentric historiography in the 20th century. The Negro predicted unity and solidarity for colored people around the world, and it influenced many who supported the Pan-African movement.

In 1915, Atlantic Monthly carried an essay by Du Bois, "The African Roots of the War", which consolidated Du Bois's ideas on capitalism and race. In it, he argued that the scramble for Africa was at the root of World War I. He also anticipated later Communist doctrine, by suggesting that wealthy capitalists had pacified white workers by giving them just enough wealth to prevent them from revolting, and by threatening them with competition by the lower-cost labor of colored workers.

Combating racism

Du Bois used his influential role in the NAACP to oppose a variety of racist incidents. When the silent film The Birth of a Nation premiered in 1915, Du Bois and the NAACP led the fight to ban the movie, because of its racist portrayal of blacks as brutish and lustful. The fight was not successful, and possibly contributed to the film's fame, but the publicity drew many new supporters to the NAACP.

The private sector was not the only source of racism: under President Wilson, the plight of African Americans in government jobs suffered. Many federal agencies adopted whites-only employment practices, the Army excluded blacks from officer ranks, and the immigration service prohibited the immigration of persons of African ancestry. Du Bois wrote an editorial in 1914 deploring the dismissal of blacks from federal posts, and he supported William Monroe Trotter when Trotter brusquely confronted Wilson about Wilson's failure to fulfill his campaign promise of justice for blacks.

The Crisis continued to wage a campaign against lynching. In 1915, it published an article with a year-by-year tabulation of 2,732 lynchings from 1884 to 1914. The April 1916 edition covered the group lynching of six African Americans in Lee County, Georgia. Later in 1916, the "Waco Horror" article covered the lynching of Jesse Washington, a mentally impaired 17-year-old African American. The article broke new ground by utilizing undercover reporting to expose the conduct of local whites in Waco, Texas.

The early 20th century was the era of the Great Migration of blacks from the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest and West. Du Bois wrote an editorial supporting the Great Migration, because he felt it would help blacks escape Southern racism, find economic opportunities, and assimilate into American society.

Also in the 1910s the American eugenics movement was in its infancy, and many leading eugenicists were openly racist, defining Blacks as "a lower race". Du Bois opposed this view as an unscientific aberration, but still maintained the basic principle of eugenics: That different persons have different inborn characteristics that make them more or less suited for specific kinds of employment, and that by encouraging the most talented members of all races to procreate would better the "stocks" of humanity.

World War I

As the United States prepared to enter World War I in 1917, Du Bois's colleague in the NAACP, Joel Spingarn, established a camp to train African Americans to serve as officers in the United States military. The camp was controversial, because some whites felt that blacks were not qualified to be officers, and some blacks felt that African Americans should not participate in what they considered a white man's war. Du Bois supported Spingarn's training camp, but was disappointed when the Army forcibly retired one of its few black officers, Charles Young, on a pretense of ill health. The Army agreed to create 1,000 officer positions for blacks, but insisted that 250 come from enlisted men, conditioned to taking orders from whites, rather than from independent-minded blacks that came from the camp. Over 700,000 blacks enlisted on the first day of the draft, but were subject to discriminatory conditions which prompted vocal protests from Du Bois.

After the East St. Louis Riot occurred in the summer of 1917, Du Bois traveled to St. Louis to report on the riots. Between 40 and 250 African Americans were massacred by whites, primarily due to resentment caused by St. Louis industry hiring blacks to replace striking white workers. Du Bois's reporting resulted in an article "The Massacre of East St. Louis", published in the September issue of The Crisis, which contained photographs and interviews detailing the violence. Historian David Levering Lewis concluded that Du Bois distorted some of the facts in order to increase the propaganda value of the article. To publicly demonstrate the black community's outrage over the St Louis riot, Du Bois organized the Silent Parade, a march of around 9,000 African Americans down New York's Fifth avenue, the first parade of its kind in New York, and the second instance of blacks publicly demonstrating for civil rights.

The Houston riot of 1917 disturbed Du Bois and was a major setback to efforts to permit African Americans to become military officers. The riot began after Houston police arrested and beat two black soldiers; in response, over 100 black soldiers took to the streets of Houston and killed 16 whites. A military court martial was held, and 19 of the soldiers were hung, and 67 others were imprisoned. In spite of the Houston riot, Du Bois and others successfully pressed the Army to accept the officers trained at Spingarn's camp, resulting in over 600 black officers joining the Army in October 1917.

Federal officials, concerned about subversive viewpoints expressed by NAACP leaders, attempted to frighten the NAACP by threatening it with investigations. Du Bois was not intimidated, and in 1918 he predicted that World War I would lead to an overthrow of the European colonial system and to the "liberation" of colored people worldwide – in China, in India, and especially in America. NAACP chairman Joel Spingarn was enthusiastic about the war, and he persuaded Du Bois to consider an officer's commission in the Army, contingent on Du Bois writing an editorial repudiating his anti-war stance. Du Bois accepted this bargain and wrote the pro-war "Close Ranks" editorial in June 1918 and soon thereafter he received a commission in the Army. Many black leaders, who wanted to leverage the war to gain civil rights for African Americans, criticized Du Bois for his sudden reversal. Southern officers in Du Bois's unit objected to his presence, and his commission was withdrawn.

After the war

When the war ended, Du Bois traveled to Europe in 1919 to attend the first Pan-African Congress and to interview African-American soldiers for a planned book on their experiences in World War I. He was trailed by U.S. agents who were searching for evidence of treasonous activities. Du Bois discovered that the vast majority of black American soldiers were relegated to menial labor as stevedores and laborers. Some units were armed, and one in particular, the 92nd Division (the Buffalo soldiers), engaged in combat. Du Bois discovered widespread racism in the Army, and concluded that the Army command discouraged African Americans from joining the Army, discredited the accomplishments of black soldiers, and promoted bigotry.

After returning from Europe, Du Bois was more determined than ever to gain equal rights for African Americans. Black soldiers returning from overseas felt a new sense of power and worth, and were representative of an emerging attitude referred to as the New Negro. In the editorial "Returning Soldiers" he wrote: "But, by the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if, now that the war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land." Many blacks moved to northern cities in search of work, and some northern white workers resented the competition. This labor strife was one of the causes of the Red Summer of 1919, a horrific series of race riots across America, in which over 300 African Americans were killed in over 30 cities. Du Bois documented the atrocities in the pages of The Crisis, culminating in the December publication of a gruesome photograph of a lynching that occurred during the Omaha, Nebraska race riot.

The most egregious episode during the Red Summer was a vicious attack on blacks in Elaine, Arkansas, in which nearly 200 blacks were murdered. Reports coming out of the South blamed the blacks, alleging that they were conspiring to take over the government. Infuriated with the distortions, Du Bois published a letter in the New York World, claiming that the only crime the black sharecroppers had committed was daring to challenge their white landlords by hiring an attorney to investigate contractual irregularities. Over 60 of the surviving blacks were arrested and tried for conspiracy, in the case known as Moore v. Dempsey. Du Bois rallied blacks across America to raise funds for the legal defense, which, six years later, resulted in a Supreme Court victory authored by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Although the victory had little immediate impact on justice for blacks in the South, it marked the first time the Federal government used the 14th amendment guarantee of due process to prevent states from shielding mob violence.

In 1920, Du Bois published Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil, the first of three autobiographies he would write. The "veil" was that which covered colored people around the world. In the book, he hoped to lift the veil and show white readers what life was like behind the veil, and how it distorted the viewpoints of those looking through it – in both directions. The book contained Du Bois's feminist essay, "The Damnation of Women", which was a tribute to the dignity and worth of women, particularly black women.

Concerned that textbooks used by African-American children ignored black history and culture, Du Bois created a monthly children's magazine, The Brownies' Book. Initially published in 1920, it was aimed at black children, who Du Bois called "the children of the sun."

Pan-Africanism and Marcus Garvey

Du Bois traveled to Europe in 1921 to attend the second Pan-African Congress. The assembled black leaders from around the world issued the London Resolutions and established a Pan-African Association headquarters in Paris. Under Du Bois's guidance, the resolutions insisted on racial equality, and that Africa be ruled by Africans (not, as in the 1919 congress, with the consent of Africans). Du Bois restated the resolutions of the congress in his Manifesto To the League of Nations, which implored the newly formed League of Nations to address labor issues and to appoint Africans to key posts. The League took little action on the requests.

Another important African American leader of the 1920s was Marcus Garvey, promoter of the Back-to-Africa movement and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Garvey denounced Du Bois's efforts to achieve equality through integration, and instead endorsed racial separatism. Du Bois initially supported the concept of Garvey's Black Star Line, a shipping company that was intended to facilitate commerce within the African diaspora. But Du Bois later became concerned that Garvey was threatening the NAACP's efforts, leading Du Bois to describe him as fraudulent and reckless. Responding to Garvey's slogan "Africa for the Africans" slogan, Du Bois said that he supported that concept, but denounced Garvey's intention that Africa be ruled by African Americans.

Du Bois wrote a series of articles in The Crisis between 1922 and 1924, attacking Garvey's movement, calling him the "most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and the world." Du Bois and Garvey never made a serious attempt to collaborate, and their dispute was partly rooted in the desire of their respective organizations (NAACP and UNIA) to capture a larger portion of the available philanthropic funding.

Harvard's decision to ban blacks from its dormitories in 1921 was decried by Du Bois as an instance of a broad effort in the U.S. to renew "the Anglo-Saxon cult; the worship of the Nordic totem, the disfranchisement of Negro, Jew, Irishman, Italian, Hungarian, Asiatic and South Sea Islander – the world rule of Nordic white through brute force." When Du Bois sailed for Europe in 1923 for the third Pan-African Congress, the circulation of The Crisis had declined to 60,000 from its World War I high of 100,000, but it remained the preeminent periodical of the civil rights movement. President Coolidge designated Du Bois an "Envoy Extraordinary" to Liberia and – after the third congress concluded – Du Bois rode a German freighter from the Canary Islands to Africa, visiting Liberia, Sierra Leone and Senegal.

Harlem Renaissance

Du Bois frequently promoted African-American artistic creativity in his writings, and when the Harlem Renaissance emerged in the mid-1920s, his article "A Negro Art Renaissance" celebrated the end of the long hiatus of blacks from creative endeavors. His enthusiasm for the Harlem Renaissance waned as he came to believe that many whites visited Harlem for voyeurism, not for genuine appreciation of black art. Du Bois insisted that artists recognize their moral responsibilities, writing that "a black artist is first of all a black artist." He was also concerned that black artists were not using their art to promote black causes, saying "I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda." By the end of 1926, he stopped employing The Crisis to support the arts.

Socialism

When Du Bois became editor of the Crisis magazine in 1911, he joined the Socialist Party of America on the advice of NAACP founders Mary Ovington, William English Walling and Charles Edward Russell. However, he supported the Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential campaign, a breach of the rules, and was forced to resign from the Socialist Party. Du Bois remained: "convinced that socialism was an excellent way of life, but I thought it might be reached by various methods."

Nine years after the 1917 Russian Revolution, Du Bois extended a trip to Europe to include a visit to the Soviet Union. Du Bois was struck by the poverty and disorganization he encountered in the Soviet Union, yet was impressed by the intense labors of the officials and by the recognition given to workers. Although Du Bois was not yet familiar with the communist theories of Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin, he concluded that socialism may be a better path towards racial equality than capitalism.

Although Du Bois generally endorsed socialist principles, his politics were strictly pragmatic: In 1929, Du Bois endorsed Democrat Jimmy Walker for mayor of New York, rather than the socialist Norman Thomas, believing that Walker could do more immediate good for blacks, even though Thomas' platform was more consistent with Du Bois's views. Throughout the 1920s, Du Bois and the NAACP shifted support back and forth between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, induced by promises from the candidates to fight lynchings, improve working conditions, or support voting rights in the South; invariably, the candidates failed to deliver on their promises.

A rivalry emerged in 1931 between the NAACP and the Communist Party, when the Communists responded quickly and effectively to support the Scottsboro Boys, nine African-American youth arrested in 1931 in Alabama for rape. Du Bois and the NAACP felt that the case would not be beneficial to their cause, so they chose to let the Communist Party organize the defense efforts. Du Bois was impressed with the vast amount of publicity and funds the Communists devoted to the partially successful defense effort, and he came to suspect that the Communists were attempting to present their party to African Americans as a better solution than the NAACP. Responding to criticisms of the NAACP from the Communist Party, Du Bois wrote articles condemning the party, claiming that it unfairly attacked the NAACP, and that it failed to fully appreciate racism in the United States. The Communist leaders, in turn, accused Du Bois of being a "class enemy", and claimed that the NAACP leadership was an isolated elite, disconnected from the working-class blacks they ostensibly fought for.

Return to Atlanta

Du Bois did not have a good working relationship with Walter Francis White, president of the NAACP since 1931. That conflict, combined with the financial stresses of the Great Depression, precipitated a power struggle over The Crisis. Du Bois, concerned that his position as editor would be eliminated, resigned his job at The Crisis and accepted an academic position at Atlanta University in early 1933. The rift with the NAACP grew larger in 1934 when Du Bois reversed his stance on segregation, stating that "separate but equal" was an acceptable goal for African Americans. The NAACP leadership was stunned, and asked Du Bois to retract his statement, but he refused, and the dispute led to Du Bois's resignation from the NAACP.

After arriving at his new professorship in Atlanta, Du Bois wrote a series of articles generally supportive of Marxism. He was not a strong proponent of labor unions or the Communist Party, but he felt that Marx's scientific explanation of society and the economy were useful for explaining the situation of African Americans in the United States. Marx's atheism also struck a chord with Du Bois, who routinely criticized black churches for dulling blacks' sensitivity to racism. In his 1933 writings, Du Bois embraced socialism, but asserted that "[c]olored labor has no common ground with white labor", a controversial position that was rooted in Du Bois's dislike of American labor unions, which had systematically excluded blacks for decades. Du Bois did not support the Communist Party in the U.S. and did not vote for their candidate in the 1932 presidential election, in spite of an African American on their ticket.

Black Reconstruction in America

Back in the world of academia, Du Bois was able to resume his study of Reconstruction, the topic of the 1910 paper that he presented to the American Historical Association. In 1935, he published his magnum opus, Black Reconstruction in America. The book presented the thesis, in the words of the historian David Levering Lewis, that "black people, suddenly admitted to citizenship in an environment of feral hostility, displayed admirable volition and intelligence as well as the indolence and ignorance inherent in three centuries of bondage." Du Bois documented how black people were central figures in the American Civil War and Reconstruction, and also showed how they made alliances with white politicians. He provided evidence that the coalition governments established public education in the South, and many needed social service programs. The book also demonstrated the ways in which black emancipation – the crux of Reconstruction – promoted a radical restructuring of United States society, as well as how and why the country failed to continue support for civil rights for blacks in the aftermath of Reconstruction.

The book's thesis ran counter to the orthodox interpretation of Reconstruction maintained by white historians, and the book was virtually ignored by mainstream historians until the 1960s. Thereafter, however, it ignited a "revisionist" trend in the historiography of Reconstruction, which emphasized black people's search for freedom and the era's radical policy changes. By the 21st century, Black Reconstruction was widely perceived as "the foundational text of revisionist African American historiography."

In the final chapter of the book, "XIV. The Propaganda of History", Du Bois evokes his efforts at writing an article for the Encyclopædia Britannica on the "history of the American Negro". After the editors had cut all reference to Reconstruction, he insisted that the following note appear in the entry: "White historians have ascribed the faults and failures of Reconstruction to Negro ignorance and corruption. But the Negro insists that it was Negro loyalty and the Negro vote alone that restored the South to the Union; established the new democracy, both for white and black, and instituted the public schools." The editors refused and, so, Du Bois withdrew his article.

Projected encyclopedia

In 1932, Du Bois was selected by several philanthropies – including the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the Carnegie Corporation, and the General Education Board – to be the managing editor for a proposed Encyclopedia of the Negro, a work Du Bois had been contemplating for 30 years. After several years of planning and organizing, the philanthropies cancelled the project in 1938, because some board members believed that Du Bois was too biased to produce an objective encyclopedia.

Trip around the world

Du Bois took a trip around the world in 1936, which included visits to Nazi Germany, China and Japan. While in Germany, Du Bois remarked that he was treated with warmth and respect. After his return to the United States, he expressed his ambivalence about the Nazi regime. He admired how the Nazis had improved the German economy, but he was horrified by their treatment of the Jewish people, which he described as "an attack on civilization, comparable only to such horrors as the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade."

Following the 1905 Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War, Du Bois became impressed by the growing strength of Imperial Japan. He considered the victory of Japan over Tsarist Russia as an example of colored peoples defeating white peoples. A representative of Japan's "Negro Propaganda Operations" traveled to the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, meeting with Du Bois and giving him a positive impression of Imperial Japan's racial policies. In 1936, the Japanese ambassador arranged a trip to Japan for Du Bois and a small group of academics.

World War II

Du Bois opposed the U.S. intervention in World War II, particularly in the Pacific, because he believed that China and Japan were emerging from the clutches of white imperialists. He felt that the European Allies waging war against Japan was an opportunity for whites to reestablish their influence in Asia. He was deeply disappointed by the US government's plan for African Americans in the armed forces: Blacks were limited to 5.8% of the force, and there were to be no African-American combat units – virtually the same restrictions as in World War I. With blacks threatening to shift their support to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Republican opponent in the 1940 election, Roosevelt appointed a few blacks to leadership posts in the military. Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois's second autobiography, was published in 1940. The title refers to Du Bois's hope that African Americans were passing out of the darkness of racism into an era of greater equality. The work is part autobiography, part history, and part sociological treatise. Du Bois described the book as "the autobiography of a concept of race [...] elucidated and magnified and doubtless distorted in the thoughts and deeds which were mine [...] Thus for all time my life is significant for all lives of men."

In 1943, at the age of 76, Du Bois was abruptly fired from his position at Atlanta University by college president Rufus Clement. Many scholars expressed outrage, prompting Atlanta University to provide Du Bois with a lifelong pension and the title of professor emeritus. Arthur Spingarn remarked that Du Bois spent his time in Atlanta "battering his life out against ignorance, bigotry, intolerance and slothfulness, projecting ideas nobody but he understands, and raising hopes for change which may be comprehended in a hundred years."

Turning down job offers from Fisk and Howard, Du Bois re-joined the NAACP as director of the Department of Special Research. Surprising many NAACP leaders, Du Bois jumped into the job with vigor and determination. During the 10 years while Du Bois was away from the NAACP, its income had increased fourfold, and its membership had soared to 325,000 members.

Later life

United Nations

Du Bois was a member of the three-person delegation from the NAACP that attended the 1945 conference in San Francisco at which the United Nations was established. The NAACP delegation wanted the United Nations to endorse racial equality and to bring an end to the colonial era. To push the United Nations in that direction, Du Bois drafted a proposal that pronounced "[t]he colonial system of government [...] is undemocratic, socially dangerous and a main cause of wars". The NAACP proposal received support from China, Russia and India, but it was virtually ignored by the other major powers, and the NAACP proposals were not included in the United Nations charter.

After the United Nations conference, Du Bois published Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace, a book that attacked colonial empires and, in the words of one reviewer, "contains enough dynamite to blow up the whole vicious system whereby we have comforted our white souls and lined the pockets of generations of free-booting capitalists."

In late 1945, Du Bois attended the fifth, and final, Pan-African Congress, in Manchester, England. The congress was the most productive of the five congresses, and there Du Bois met Kwame Nkrumah, the future first president of Ghana who would later invite Du Bois to Africa.

Du Bois helped to submit petitions to the UN concerning discrimination against African Americans. These culminated in the report and petition called "We Charge Genocide", submitted in 1951 with the Civil Rights Congress. "We Charge Genocide" accuses the US of systematically sanctioning murders and inflicting harm against African Americans and therefore committing genocide.

Cold War

When the Cold War commenced in the mid-1940s, the NAACP distanced itself from Communists, lest its funding or reputation suffer. The NAACP redoubled their efforts in 1947 after Life magazine published a piece by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. claiming that the NAACP was heavily influenced by Communists. Ignoring the NAACP's desires, Du Bois continued to fraternize with communist sympathizers such as Paul Robeson, Howard Fast and Shirley Graham (his future second wife). Du Bois wrote "I am not a communist [...] On the other hand, I [...] believe [...] that Karl Marx [...] put his finger squarely upon our difficulties [...]". In 1946, Du Bois wrote articles giving his assessment of the Soviet Union; he did not embrace communism and he criticized its dictatorship. However, he felt that capitalism was responsible for poverty and racism, and felt that socialism was an alternative that might ameliorate those problems. The soviets explicitly rejected racial distinctions and class distinctions, leading Du Bois to conclude that the USSR was the "most hopeful country on earth." Du Bois's association with prominent communists made him a liability for the NAACP, especially since the FBI was starting to aggressively investigate communist sympathizers; so – by mutual agreement – he resigned from the NAACP for the second time in late 1948. After departing the NAACP, Du Bois started writing regularly for the leftist weekly newspaper the National Guardian, a relationship that would endure until 1961.

Peace activism

Du Bois was a lifelong anti-war activist, but his efforts became more pronounced after World War II. In 1949, Du Bois spoke at the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace in New York: "I tell you, people of America, the dark world is on the move! It wants and will have Freedom, Autonomy and Equality. It will not be diverted in these fundamental rights by dialectical splitting of political hairs [...] Whites may, if they will, arm themselves for suicide. But the vast majority of the world's peoples will march on over them to freedom!"

In the spring of 1949, he spoke at World Congress of the Partisans of Peace in Paris, saying to the large crowd: "Leading this new colonial imperialism comes my own native land built by my father's toil and blood, the United States. The United States is a great nation; rich by grace of God and prosperous by the hard work of its humblest citizens [...] Drunk with power we are leading the world to hell in a new colonialism with the same old human slavery which once ruined us; and to a third World War which will ruin the world." Du Bois affiliated himself with a leftist organization, the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions, and he traveled to Moscow as its representative to speak at the All-Soviet Peace Conference in late 1949.

McCarthyism and Trial

During the 1950s, the U.S. government's anti-communist McCarthyism campaign targeted Du Bois because of his socialist leanings. Historian Manning Marable characterizes the government's treatment of Du Bois as "ruthless repression" and a "political assassination".

The FBI began to compile a file on Du Bois in 1942, but the most aggressive government attack against Du Bois occurred in the early 1950s, as a consequence of Du Bois's opposition to nuclear weapons. In 1950 Du Bois became chairman of the newly created Peace Information Center (PIC), which worked to publicize the Stockholm Peace Appeal in the United States. The primary purpose of the appeal was to gather signatures on a petition, asking governments around the world to ban all nuclear weapons.

The U.S. Justice department alleged that the PIC was acting as an agent of a foreign state, and thus required the PIC to register with the federal government. Du Bois and other PIC leaders refused, and they were indicted for failure to register. After the indictment, some of Du Bois's associates distanced themselves from him, and the NAACP refused to issue a statement of support; but many labor figures and leftists – including Langston Hughes – supported Du Bois.

He was finally tried in 1951 represented by civil rights attorney Vito Marcantonio. The case was dismissed before the jury rendered a verdict as soon as the defense attorney told the judge that "Dr. Albert Einstein has offered to appear as character witness for Dr. Du Bois". Du Bois's memoir of the trial is In Battle for Peace. Even though Du Bois was not convicted, the government confiscated Du Bois's passport and withheld it for eight years.

Communism

Du Bois was bitterly disappointed that many of his colleagues – particularly the NAACP – did not support him during his 1951 PIC trial, whereas working class whites and blacks supported him enthusiastically. After the trial, Du Bois lived in Manhattan, writing and speaking, and continuing to associate primarily with leftist acquaintances. His primary concern was world peace, and he railed against military actions, such as the Korean War, which he viewed as efforts by imperialist whites to maintain colored people in a submissive state.

In 1950, at the age of 82, Du Bois ran for U.S. Senator from New York on the American Labor Party ticket and received about 200,000 votes, or 4% of the statewide total. Du Bois continued to believe that capitalism was the primary culprit responsible for the subjugation of colored people around the world, and therefore – although he recognized the faults of the Soviet Union – he continued to uphold communism as a possible solution to racial problems. In the words of biographer David Lewis, Du Bois did not endorse communism for its own sake, but did so because "the enemies of his enemies were his friends". The same ambiguity characterized Du Bois's opinions of Joseph Stalin: in 1940 he wrote disdainfully of the "Tyrant Stalin", but when Stalin died in 1953, Du Bois wrote a eulogy characterizing Stalin as "simple, calm, and courageous", and lauding him for being the "first [to] set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their individuality".

The U.S. government prevented Du Bois from attending the 1955 Bandung conference in Indonesia. The conference was the culmination of 40 years of Du Bois's dreams – a meeting of 29 nations from Africa and Asia, many recently independent, representing most of the world's colored peoples. The conference celebrated their independence, as the nations began to assert their power as non-aligned nations during the cold war. In 1958, Du Bois regained his passport, and with his second wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, he traveled around the world, visiting Russia and China. In both countries he was celebrated and given guided tours of the best aspects of communism. Du Bois later wrote approvingly of the conditions in both countries. He was 90 years old.

Du Bois became incensed in 1961 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 1950 McCarran Act, a key piece of McCarthyism legislation which required communists to register with the government. To demonstrate his outrage, he joined the Communist Party in October 1961, at the age of 93. Around that time, he wrote: "I believe in communism. I mean by communism, a planned way of life in the production of wealth and work designed for building a state whose object is the highest welfare of its people and not merely the profit of a part."

Death in Africa

Ghana invited Du Bois to Africa to participate in their independence celebration in 1957, but he was unable to attend because the U.S. government had confiscated his passport in 1951. By 1960 – the "Year of Africa" – Du Bois had recovered his passport, and was able to cross the Atlantic and celebrate the creation of the Republic of Ghana. Du Bois returned to Africa in late 1960 to attend the inauguration of Nnamdi Azikiwe as the first African governor of Nigeria.

While visiting Ghana in 1960, Du Bois spoke with its president about the creation of a new encyclopedia of the African diaspora, the Encyclopedia Africana. In early 1961, Ghana notified Du Bois that they had appropriated funds to support the encyclopedia project, and they invited Du Bois to come to Ghana and manage the project there. In October 1961, at the age of 93, Du Bois and his wife traveled to Ghana to take up residence and commence work on the encyclopedia. In early 1963, the United States refused to renew his passport, so he made the symbolic gesture of becoming a citizen of Ghana. While it is sometimes stated that he renounced his U.S. citizenship at that time, and he did state his intention to do so, Du Bois never actually did. His health declined during the two years he was in Ghana, and he died on August 27, 1963, in the capital of Accra at the age of 95. Du Bois was buried in Accra near his home, which is now the Du Bois Memorial Centre. A day after his death, at the March on Washington, speaker Roy Wilkins asked the hundreds of thousands of marchers to honor Du Bois with a moment of silence. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, embodying many of the reforms Du Bois had campaigned for his entire life, was enacted a year after his death.

Personal life

Du Bois was organized and disciplined: His lifelong regimen was to rise at 7:15, work until 5, eat dinner and read a newspaper until 7, then read or socialize until he was in bed, invariably before 10. He was a meticulous planner, and frequently mapped out his schedules and goals on large pieces of graph paper. Many acquaintances found him to be distant and aloof, and he insisted on being addressed as "Dr. Du Bois". Although he was not gregarious, he formed several close friendships with associates such as Charles Young, Paul Laurence Dunbar, John Hope and Mary White Ovington. His closest friend was Joel Spingarn – a white man – but Du Bois never accepted Spingarn's offer to be on a first name basis. Du Bois was something of a dandy – he dressed formally, carried a walking stick, and walked with an air of confidence and dignity. He was relatively short 5 feet 5.5 inches (166 cm) and always maintained a well-groomed mustache and goatee. He was a good singer and enjoyed playing tennis.

Du Bois was married twice, first to Nina Gomer (m. 1896, d. 1950), with whom he had two children, a son Burghardt (who died as an infant) and a daughter Yolande, who married Countee Cullen. As a widower, he married Shirley Graham (m. 1951, d. 1977), an author, playwright, composer and activist. She brought her son David Graham to the marriage. David grew close to Du Bois and took his stepfather's name; he also worked for African-American causes. The historian David Levering Lewis wrote that Du Bois engaged in several extramarital relationships. But the historian Raymond Wolters cast doubt on this, based on the lack of corroboration from Du Bois's alleged lovers.

Religion

Although Du Bois attended a New England Congregational church as a child, he abandoned organized religion while at Fisk College. As an adult, Du Bois described himself as agnostic or a freethinker, but at least one biographer concluded that Du Bois was virtually an atheist. However, another analyst of Du Bois's writings concluded that he had a religious voice, albeit radically different from other African-American religious voices of his era, and inaugurated a 20th-century spirituality to which Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Baldwin also belong.

When asked to lead public prayers, Du Bois would refuse. In his autobiography, Du Bois wrote: "When I became head of a department at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because again I balked at leading in prayer [...] I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. [...] I think the greatest gift of the Soviet Union to modern civilization was the dethronement of the clergy and the refusal to let religion be taught in the public schools." Du Bois accused American churches of being the most discriminatory of all institutions. He also provocatively linked African-American Christianity to indigenous African religions. Du Bois occasionally acknowledged the beneficial role religion played in African-American life – as the "basic rock" which served as an anchor for African-American communities – but in general disparaged African-American churches and clergy because he felt they did not support the goals of racial equality and hindered activists' efforts.

Although Du Bois was not personally religious, he infused his writings with religious symbology, and many contemporaries viewed him as a prophet. His 1904 prose poem, "Credo", was written in the style of a religious creed and widely read by the African-American community. Moreover, Du Bois, both in his own fiction and in stories published in The Crisis, often analogized lynchings of African Americans to Christ's crucifixion. Between 1920 and 1940, Du Bois shifted from overt black messiah symbolism to more subtle messianic language.

Honors

The NAACP awarded the Spingarn Medal to Du Bois in 1920.

Du Bois was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize by the USSR in 1959.

The site of the house where Du Bois grew up in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.

In 1992 the United States Postal Service honored Du Bois with his portrait on a postage stamp. A second stamp of face value 32¢ was issued on February 3, 1998 as part of the Celebrate the Century stamp sheet series.

In 1994, the main library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst was named after Du Bois.

The Du Bois center at Northern Arizona University is named in his honor.

A dormitory was named after Du Bois at the University of Pennsylvania, where he conducted field research for his sociological study "The Philadelphia Negro".

A dormitory is named after Du Bois at Hampton University.

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience was inspired by and dedicated to Du Bois by its editors Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Humboldt University in Berlin hosts a series of lectures named in Du Bois's honor.

Scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Du Bois in his 2002 list of the 100 Greatest African Americans.

In 2005, Du Bois was honored with a medallion in The Extra Mile, Washington DC's memorial to important American volunteers.

The liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church remembers Du Bois annually on August 3.

Du Bois was appointed Honorary Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012.

Wikipedia

#W. E. B. DuBois

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