Week 14: Nonaggression Treaty and the Final Solution

You could answer one of the two questions presented below:

1. The Nonaggression treaty signed between the Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany in August 1939 contained, as you know well, the secret protocol, stipulating the division of spheres of influence between the parties of the treaty "in the event of a territorial or political rearrangement."

Based on that agreement (which went beyond the affirmation of friendly intent), could one count the USSR among the instigators of the war? Justify your response.

2. The growing radicalization of the Nazi regime culminated in the planned destruction of the European Jewry, an act of industrial mass killing decided upon in the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. Without attempting to minimize the scale of that crime, many historians, however, tend to believe that the Final Solution (Endloesung) resulted almost entirely from the exigencies of the war itself; in other words, antisemitic through and through, the Nazies, or Hitler himself, did not envision the physical elimination of the Jews from the start, preferring instead emigration, forced expulsions and the deprivation of civic rights.

What is your stance on that issue? Was Holocaust a product of the "contingency of war" - or was the genocidal logic inscribed in the Nazism itself and the transformations it purported to carry out?



  

Week 14: Road to War

This week's assignment is straightforward:

You are asked to read W.H. Auden's poem "September 1, 1939", chose one stanza and provide an interpretation thereof. Your interpretation, resulting as it may from the general impression of the verses, should draw largely from the historical context in which the poem was written and which it purported to capture.

Below is the text of the poem:

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; 'I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work,' And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the dead, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

Week 13: Rise of Fascism

In his entry to the Italian Encyclopedia, Mussolini prophesied that the XX century will be the century of Fascism. In a certain sense, his prediction bore out - Fascism, as a concrete manifestation of a political program, did squarely belonged to the twentieth century, having sprung up on the European soil, taken over a substantial portion of the continent and then disappeared, at least temporarily, as a momentous political force in the aftermath of the Second World War.

How far back do we need to go in order to unearth fascism's primary causes? Was it somehow rooted in the cultural climate of Europe stretching all the way back to the late nineteenth century? Or, on the other hand, was it mostly a makeshift remedy to heal economic and social ills befalling Europe following the First World War? In other words, how structurally viable was fascism as a political alternative to liberalism, democracy, or socialism even in the absence of crises in the second half of 1920s?

In your answer try to refer to both texts assigned for this week: Eliot's "Hollow Men" as well as the aforementioned article of Mussolini.

Week 11 and 12: Russian Revolution

This blog assignment is due Monday, April 4.

In his famous April Theses, Lenin repudiated any attempt at collaborating with the Provisional Government on the grounds of its disingenious handing of democracy: while promising to call the Constituent Assembly, new Russian government kept on withholding recognition from the Soviets and waging the war which has long lost much of popular support.

Rosa Luxemburg, on the other hand, accused the Bolsheviks of supplanting democracy with dictatorship of a small party clique. Although she saw this in the light of hardships befalling the young Bolshevik Russia, her observation concerning the emerging party state proved nothing short of prophetic.

I want you to reflect over the question which had troubled politicians, historians and ordinary citizens alike ever since the momentous events in 1917: namely, why did the Party, claiming to support unequivocally principles of democratic rule, became the basis of a new dictatorship? Was it, as Rosa Luxemburg asserted, the result of unfortunate circumstances of war and occupation into which the Republic was born? Or was that evolution inscribed into the inner code of the Party itself, as an element of its program or a part of an algorithm pushing it towards dictatorship with an ineluctability of а chrysalis pupating into a butterfly?

Week 10 World War I

You have taken a look at two documents, each of which was designed as the blueprint of the world order to be established in the wake of the First World War. The 14 Points of President Wilson were publicized while the war was still raging, its outcome being far from determined. The Treaty of Versailles, with the articles of which you had a chance to familiarize yourselves, was signed with Germany defeated and its allies (Bulgaria being the exception) fully erased from the European map.

Which of the two blueprints seemed, in your opinion, as embowering an opportunity for achieving a goal it set for itself - presumably, one of the lasting peace? Here you have to distinguish the issue of fairness from that of feasibility - i.e. treatment deemed as fair does not necessarily appear among the available options, as states (just as people) find themselves often moved and motivated by considerations other than justice (vengeance, for instance).

You might decide that none of the documents contained provisions for the lasting peace. In that case you are free to offer your own arrangement which might have indeed worked better than the solutions stemming from the seasoned diplomats.

Week 9 Road to War

The peace which Europe had enjoyed before the outbreak of the First World War was nearly unprecedented in its duration - more than forty years lie between last large-scale conflict and the catastrophe which befell the continent in 1914. Yet, at the same time that very period was pregnant with an extraordinary bellicosity, in the light of which it looked more like a necessary armistice, a temporary respite rather than a conscious decision to avoid resorting to arms in solving international disputes.

Both Mark Twain and General Bernhardi testify to the widespread social acceptance of the war; the former does it by means of sarcastic ridicule and the latter by that of lofty exhortation.

What were, in your opinion, the reasons for adopting warlike attitudes with such a facility if not incredulity? Europe was far from being inexperienced in the art of self-destruction, yet, that experience did not seem to have reduced the allure generated by visions of grand battles. Combining texts you read with the lecture materials, you need to interrogate the roots of the sentiments which, without making it inevitable, rendered the option of war by and large admissible.

Week 8 Imperialism

I offer you to take a closer look at the phenomenon of Imperialism and answer one of the two questions posed below:

1. Kipling described imperialism as the burden that "the white man" needs to carry despite the resistance and "thanklessness" of the natives.

What do you believe were the major motives behind the European and American drive towards the establishment of colonial empires? Was economics primary? How important was the issue of national prestige? How sincere were the talks of "civilizing mission" and the "white man's burden"? Perhaps reasons lie elsewhere - it is for you to discover or uncover them.

2. Together with Orwell, I would like you to consider the effects of Imperialism on Europe. Was it truly a way of depriving the colonial oppressor of his agency, as Orwell suggests? Was the European psyche habituated to violence as the result of that experience - a kind of habituation explaining much of the brutal character of the subsequent world wars?