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?

Week 6-7

I offer you to to respond to one of the two questions posed below:

1. The Revolutions of 1848-1849 shook Europe, leaving, however, but few marks of change in their wake. No new state had emerged and of the new regimes brought to power as a result of revolutionary turmoil only that in France merits mention. So, how shall one then evaluate 1848? Could one judge it as success from the perspective of the revolutionary participants, or was it, on the contrary, a triumph for the forces of order? Then again, perhaps the categories of failure and success do not capture the event and its spirit? Be that as it may, I would like to hear your opinion on that subject.

2. Both the unification of Italy and the creation of Germany passed within a short period of time and with a relative ease (especially the Italian unification). That might compel one to reflect over the question of why, given that ease, neither of the processes had taken place before. Did both the Italians and the Germans simply ripen for the national sovereignty? Were the geopolitical conditions auspicious for the execution of such designs? Or is one mistaken appraising the said events as swift and easy, being as they were far from accomplished?

Week 5 Birth of Ideologies

The parallel upheavals in the domains of politics, economics and social life running from the last third of the eighteenth century well into the nineteenth left a number of unresolved quandaries in their wake. Having revealed the power of a human being in shaping his own affairs, the Revolutions - both the French and the Industrial - stopped short of elucidating the relationship between the collective and the individual in an unambiguous fashion. That question constitutes one of the central intellectual legacies of Modernity at its birth.

The new ideologies represented then tentative answers to the aforementioned dilemma. I offer you then to take a closer look at the three texts assigned for this week (de Maistre, Hobhouse and Marx) to show where each of the authors - ideologues - locates the crucible of social creativity. In other words, how does each of the authors understand "agency"? What is the mainspring of historical action? In your answer you might proceed by comparing/contrasting visions represented in your texts.

Week 4 Industrial Revolution

The riddle posed by the Industrial Revolution is nearly inscrutable. How could we account for the sudden flourishing of that acquisitive instinct that, long dormant, seized upon novel socio-economic contingencies and fortuitous inventions to transform the landscape of the Continent beyond recognition?

Stemming from obscure origins, the Industrial Revolution left highly dubious fruits - at least in its very immediate wake, before being tempered by the aggrieved public reaction.

My question to you then is to evaluate the immediate consequences of the Industrial Revolution. Looking at the glowing account of mechanization presented by Andrew Ure and the exceedingly grim stories of exploitation and mistreatment offered by the early factory workers, one cannot help wondering about the possibility of ever reconciling these views. To attempt to do justice to both of them is the task for you.

Week 3: Napoleon and Europe

There should be no doubt about it - Napoleon's imposing figure towered over those of his contemporaries, leaving behind the never-dying legend which still stokes the fire of public imagination.

Yet, how "exclusive" was his contribution in the final account? I am repeating the question posed in class - was Napoleon a progenitor of sweeping changes, or a mere instrument of multiple impersonal forces which fed into spread of the Revolution and its tenets beyond the French borders first into Europe and then into the rest of the world? We could turn this issue into a hypothetical quandary - could same, or similar, all-European transformations be brought into effect without Napoleon's involvement?

In your answer, I would like you to engage the primary sources assigned for this week - i.e. Napoleon's speeches to his army and Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation.

Week 2: Terror and Revolution

This week you were asked to read excerpts from the speech of Robespierre and Edmund Burke's seminal text "Reflections on the Revolution in France." The two thinkers, one - direct participant, the other - an observer, found themselves at the opposite poles of the political spectrum stretched into hitherto unknown parts of the public opinion thanks to the workings of the Revolution itself.

In the context of the reading materials assigned, I offer you the possibility of answering ONE of the two questions posed below:

1. How did both of the thinkers understand the meaning of "republic"? What made the "republic" functional in Burke's view - and how did his vision differ from that of Robespierre?

2. Robespierre is using the force of his rhetoric to justify the use of Terror. Burke, on the other hand, writing a few years before the Revolution turned to the terroristic means, laments the destruction resulting, as he puts it, from the "rash and ignorant counsel". What is your position on the issue of radicalism and Terror? Could the Revolution have succeeded without having recourse to violent means, by way of steady and liberal progression towards its goal?

Week 1: Introducing the Blog

The blog is established with a two-fold purpose in mind. First, as formal students for the course on the modern Europe, you will be required to submit an entry every week responding either to the principal question posed by me or to the comment made by one of your peers in reference to a weekly question (i.e. commenting the comment). My hope, however, is that, this blog would evolve into a forum where ideas inspired by class materials and reading assignments would be exchanged without fear and inhibition. Let's try to make this blog into a place of interests not only to ourselves but to the invisible visitors from the outside.