Last Blog

This is my last blog of the semester, and the subject we're studying right now has been one of the most interesting to me. However, pretty much everything that we have studied has been of some interest to me - that's why I signed up for a 20th century European history class. Not because I knew everything about the subject, but because I was really interested in learning more about it.

I especially enjoyed learning about the history of France and Germany. The sheer magnitude of information contained in the history of Nazi Germany amazed me - before studying it, I had no idea there could possibly be that many perspectives on a single event in history. I think that's one of the things that has been most interesting to me this semester - viewing history as what it is, a story. This was my first history class at UGA, and I didn't really know what to expect. I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I have learned, not just about European history but history in general.

For my last post, I guess I will comment on the topic of the past couple weeks that has been most interesting to me - the uprising of Polish workers. Throughout history, at least what I have studied, the successful revolts are almost always aided by some sort of intellectual or "enlightened" class. To read about what happened in Poland was really interesting and was something I had known nothing about prior to this class. Even though the original movements of solidarity were not "successful", they eventually led to the overthrow of the Soviets. It serves as a nice reminder that anything can be possible, no matter how unrealistic it seems.

I have enjoyed this class, and blogging bi-weekly has been a nice way to interact with my classmates regarding the material covered.

Vichy France: Did it serve a purpose?

Last week, we discussed the topic of France before and after the war. The state of Vichy was created during the war to give France some sense of independence from the Nazis. While it may have succeeded superficially, Paxton argues that in actuality, Vichy was the same or worse than any other occupied nation. I agree with him - I think that Vichy was more of a negative than a positive for France and its citizens.

When looking at Vichy compared to other European nations during the years of WWII, it is hard to find many positives. Inflation here was some of the worst in all of Europe - Germany effectively ruined its economy, and took away resources and labor. While there may have been lower rates of forced laborers, it was only because there were closer places to look for this. There was more hunger here than most of Europe, another fact that shows Vichy's ineffectiveness. Vichy's Jews were treated as badly as any other nation's, and the government facilitated the transfer into Nazi hands. The fact that a nation such as Denmark was able to get most of its Jews out shows how little effort was put into their protection in France.

So, as a whole, did Vichy "save France?' I think that answer to this is definitely no. The people of Vichy experienced the same problems as the rest of occupied Europe. Germany never intended to exterminate all of France - another reason it is unfair to say that Vichy "saved" France. There was nothing to save. The parts of France that went under Nazi control were able to return to relative normalcy after the war, and it wasn't because of Vichy's existence. Vichy pretended to strive to protect the "traditionalist" aspects of French culture, but in reality, they promoted the opposite. It kept the elites in control of society, something that had to be changed by de Gaulle in order for France to be successful again in the 1960s. Basically, it did not really protect anything. Vichy helped the Nazis get what they wanted. The only things that Vichy kept alive were the things that France had to change in order to remain relevant years after the war was over.

Reflection on Night

For this blog, I will reflect on the book Night - obviously, it is still fresh in my mind. In class today, we discussed a lot of the different things that happen to the narrator and author, Elie Wiesel. His experience in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald was nothing short of terrifying. Reading his firsthand account of these places made them even more concrete to me than before. It is hard to fathom the sheer horror of what went on in these places, but reading about what someone actually saw with his own eyes - in my lifetime, no less - made it very real.

One thing that kept coming up in class, and seems to in all discussions of the Holocaust, is the question "How did this happen?" How did millions of people, an entire ethnicity scattered throughout Europe, get murdered? How, in 1944, did an entire town in Hungary such as Sighet, where Wiesel was from, not realize the seriousness of what was happening? Why did they stay in their homes when their rights slowly got encroached? Why did they keep making up excuses for what was happening, even up to the gates of Auschwitz?

Many people in class gave different responses for these questions, and they are all correct. Nobody, including the Jews, could believe that someone would have the will and sheer craziness of Hitler to wipe out an entire people. Not in the twentieth century, and not somewhere like Europe, where Jews made up some of the most prominent people in Germany and beyond. Besides the sheer disbelief that something of this magnitude could actually occur, there was the simple fact that these people were settled here; they were citizens just like their neighbors. Why would someone give up their home, livelihood, friends, etc. just because they had heard rumors of awful things happening around Europe? When you are settled somewhere, it is hard to make up a reason to leave. Persecution had happened before, war had happened before - it was easy to reason that it would all blow over, especially with the imminent defeat of Germany.

While there are many reasons why the Holocaust happened, the most important one to me is the simple fact that nobody could believe what was happening. Nobody in the outside world really knew what was going on until the first concentration camps were discovered; even then, it was still unbelievable. For the Jews in and around Germany, what was happening in the Holocaust was just that - unbelievable. For us, it is still unbelievable. Like someone said in class, it is human tendency to always think about it happening to them but not us. Reading Elie Wiesel's experiences, it was still hard for me to realize that this actually happened. For this simple reason, it is easy for me to see why people were reluctant to leave, even when the German Army took control of their towns. And this was only one of the things that made the Holocaust happen like it did. If it is hard to believe now, how could one believe it then?

The Rise of the Fascist States

Of all the aspects of interwar Europe we have covered thus far, the one I have found to be the most interesting is the creation and rise of fascism - specifically, how it came to be successful in the nations of Italy and Germany but not in other places, such as France and Britain. We went over the list of things "necessary" to have a successful fascist state and other things that weren't quite necessary but that definitely helped to contribute. Some of these things were more obvious than others, like the necessity of a national crisis (such as the Great Depression), or the incapacity of the established national government to deal with said crisis. However, the thing that I found most fascinating - and what I really didn't know, due to the "typical" images that are given of Mussolini and Hitler - was the amount of blame that can be put on the conservatives in Germany and Italy. Typically, we see thousands of people marching and saluting as these dictators give high-intensity speeches (and we imagine them to be spitting out anti-Semetic slurs as they are). This is the way we imagine them coming to power, and not much is done to combat this belief.
However, reading about the slow, scheming ways that these men came to power shed light onto a subject I thought I knew more about than I really did. Both Hitler and Mussolini vowed early in their careers to NOT use violence - for example, after Hitler tried to take Munich over in 1923. They were very aware of the fact that they were going to have to make calculated moves to exploit the government already in power and that the only way to really get control was to establish a majority. The fragmented political parties of Italy and Germany made it easier to gain this majority, but it does not detract from the inability of the conservatives to acknowledge the dangers lying within these power-crazed men. The lack of a real definition of "fascism" - even when attempted by Mussolini (he really gives more of a list of what it is not then what it is) - shows how desperate the people of these countries really were. It took a very bad situation for fascism to find a foothold, but it took more than this to really take power. For fascism to come to power in both countries, the traditional conservatives (who had come to view power as a given and not as a right ) had to truly fail to take control of their countries and adapt to the times at hand. Mussolini and Hitler did not simply seize power; it was handed over to them slowly.

Post-War France

We recently read two different accounts of post-war France, and I found the comparison to be really interesting. For my book review, I chose The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s by Eugen Weber. I am only a few chapters into the book so far, but the sentiments of the author were obvious after the first chapter. Comparing this to the French people described in Large's piece makes for another interesting question in history - who, of these two authors, is correct? Weber makes France appear to be a nation united by the shear fear of war, a collection of pacifistic survivors of the Great War. Large's account of France is of a more divisive people, a country full of warring factions struggling for power in the wake of the war. Either way, I find the topic of France after the Great War to be extremely interesting. The statistics presented at the beginning of the Weber chapter are mind-boggling. When 10.5% of your male population perishes in the trenches, it is not hard to see the difficulties in attempted recovery. I do believe France was a weary nation after the Great War, but I am not sure I completely agree with Wegner's piece. It is hard to imagine pacifism that widespread in a traditional European power, even France.
Reading about Stavinsky and the scandal that followed his death showed France after the war in a different light. France is plagued by domestic issues, many of which have arisen because of the Great War. France took a serious hit in the war, and no matter how one looks at it, the years that followed were tumultuous, to say the least. No country in Europe was affected as badly as France population-wise, and this is shown in the statistics. The people of France and their survivors were left to cope with the loss of many of their best and brightest men. With the situation France was in, it is not hard to see how Germany defeated them so quickly in WWII. No matter the differences between the two readings, I think that they share the theme of the struggling French society found after 1918. Looking at the details of WWI and the following events that took place - no matter how they are depicted, it is evident that France is struggling to regain its identity after the brutalities of the Great War. In both readings, looking closer into the post-war culture of France gives us a better understanding of why the things happened leading up to 1940.

The Komsomol and its Failings

Reading about the Komsomol, or the Communist Youth Party, gave me an insight into the times of the Russian Revolution and the specific things that made the Communist Party turn into such an awful thing. Throughout history, totalitarian regimes have tried to establish control by turning to those who are most susceptible to radical ideas. In Russia, there was hardly anything standing in the way of the Soviets from doing just this. Most of the youth in Russia were poor, uneducated farmers, and it did not take much to offer them an escape from this. The fact that the Komsomol turned into nothing more than a violent, ignorant, sexually aggressive group of men is not surprising to me, and has been seen time and time again in history.

By offering someone to be a part of a "bigger thing" than themselves, he or she is enticed to the inherent power associated with this. While sometimes this can turn into a collective group of people working to do good, most of the time it is quite the opposite. In the case of the Komsomol, this group quickly turned into a massive, uncontrollable force with no real leadership. It seems crazy that they were able to rape women, destroy property, and sometimes even kill those who opposed them and get away with it, but to me it just an example of the danger mass mind-shaping of the youth can bring about. As humans, we hope to think that the youth is the next step, the progressive force in society. That is apparent in American politics today. Our generation is the one looked to to stop pollution, improve education, and basically bring America back to where it was when we viewed ourselves as the sole superpower of the world. In many ways, I believe that this is true: that much of the youth in this country are aware of the problems that have been created by those before them, and many of us strive to fix them. However, the power of controlling the youth in a negative light, much like the Communists did with the Komsomol, is very evident across the world, specifically the Middle East. Terrorist groups constantly target the youth as their weapons; by telling an innocent mind about the evils of the Western world, over and over again, it is not hard to see how these same people end up being the suicide bombers, the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. I feel sorry for these young men and women, and immediately saw the parallel between these people and those in the early 20th century that were convinced to join the Komsomol.

I think reading about the Komsomol gives great insight into the power of the masses, and how the easiest way to form these masses is by tapping into young minds at a young age. The power of the youth is not something that should be ignored; in fact, it should be cherished and used in a powerful, productive way. I hope to see the American youth of today band together in a productive way, one that will help reverse some of the problems with our society that have been established by those before us. And by reading about the Komsomol and comparing this organization to those such as al Qaeda, it is easy to see the dangers that the youth can bring. Looking back at history, like always, can point us in the right direction by showing us the failures of those before us.

The Horrific Realities of "Trench Warfare"

The topic of European history has always been of great interest to me, but I have never really had the chance to actually read in-depth accounts of the events that shaped Europe to what it is today. I have always been particularly interested in the topic of the first World War, but never really made any effort into studying the subject. In my high school history class we briefly studied the major events of this conflict, and I knew it was considered one of the ugliest and most brutal wars in history, but never really considered just what this entailed. Like any horrific events that have taken place in our planet's history, it is easy to look at the Great War from a distance without ever actually considering the devastating effects it had on the people that experienced it firsthand. However, this class has given me the opportunity to get a better grasp on what exactly transpired during the years of 1914-1918. Millions of people died and those who survived were left with memories that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Reading "Rites of War" by Eksteins made the topic that we have been discussing the first weeks of class very real to me and left many lasting images in my mind.

For my first blog, I thought I would discuss the specific things that left a mark on me from this article and see what others thought about the brutalities that took place, as well as the other interesting aspects of the war, such as the truces brought up in "Live and Let Live" or the abandonment of the army by many French soldiers. The simple fact of just how low morale was for men in the trenches was made even more apparent to me when reading the descriptions of the awful things that made up life in the trenches. Rats and other vermin, bitter cold and rain, unreliable rations, and a lack of communication between the front lines and the rest of the military made life simply miserable for those in the trenches. The gruesome details of the battlefield made it even more understandable why many people in the trenches just wanted to die. A barren wasteland littered with corpses, where everything smelled of death (a smell which permeated the trenches, even into the soldiers' rations). The blasts of artillery would stir up the earth, strewing corpses and body parts everywhere. I was particularly horrified by the story of a Frenchmen who was buried in dirt and dug himself out to see one of his comrade's torsoes sticking out of the ground nearby, only to find that it was a decomposing corpse when he tried to help him out and ripped off his head. The stories like this detailed in "Rites of War" made real to me a conflict that never really was before.

I could go on and on about the details of the Great War that have been made real to me by reading some of the articles we have the last week. I had no idea the number of innocent women and children that were killed by this war. The idea of the "total war" that Germany enacted was completely foreign to me before reading about it in-depth. Schools, churches, and centuries-old libraries were destroyed without any regard to the effects these actions might have. The combination of new technology and old warfare made for a war that saw many phases (this is another fact that I was not aware of). I am interested to see what details of this conflict we have covered so far stick out to people, and how they parallel this war to events transpiring today.