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Books > History > World history > From 1900
They called themselves Legionnaires of the Waffen SS, the new
European Army. They came from all nations of Europe, and they were
wearing the same uniform to fight for the same cause: fighting the
strong Russian Armed Forces. Almost one million of these young men
fought next to the Wehrmacht during WWII. It was during this era
that the ideal of a united Europe was born. There is no other
period in history that has been documented like the 6 years that
ranged from the invasion of Poland in 1939 to the capitulation in
Berlin in 1945. They left their homes, families, and friends with
their heart full of joy and pride. They had to endure extreme
weather from +40 to -50 while fighting on several fronts. They were
battle hardened because of this. They became good soldiers because
they knew how to survive in any situation. These young men were
prepared to give their lives for Germany and, in their eyes, for a
better Europe.
The publication of this collection of essays on the current crisis
concerning Iraq will not be welcomed by the United States
government. Although the authors - a group of German and American
scholars, who are moral theologicans, policy analysts, political
scientists, and a Middle East historian - write from divergent
backgrounds and perspectives, all finally concur, sometimes for
different reasons, in rejecting the arguments of the Bush
administration in favor of unilateral U.S. military action against
Iraq. These essays are uniformly free of the intemperate language
and careless argumentation that characterizes some of the
opposition to American policy inside and outside the United States,
and is therefore easy to dismiss. Whether the authors address
either the threat Saddam Hussein represents to his reagon and the
world or the prospects for alternative strategies, the reasoning is
generally wellinformed, sensitive to complexity, and attentive to
detail. The book will help to confirm and strengthen the growing
'thoughful opposition' in the United States and abroad to the Bush
policies, and as such deserves to be taken very seriously.
Since the end of the Cold War, China has experienced several
notable interstate crises: the 1999 'embassy bombing' incident, the
2001 EP-3 mid-air collision with a United States aircraft, and the
Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute with Japan. China's response to each
incident, however, has varied considerably. Drawing from a wealth
of primary sources and interviews, this book offers a systematic
analysis of China's crisis behavior in order to identify the
factors which determine when Chinese leaders decide to escalate or
scale down their response to crises. Inspired by prospect theory -
a Nobel Prize-winning behavioral psychology theory - Kai He
proposes a 'political survival prospect' model as a means to
understand the disparities in China's behavior. He argues that
China's response depends on a combination of three factors that
shape leaders' views on the prospects for their 'political survival
status', including the severity of the crisis, leaders' domestic
authority, and international pressure.
The year is 1932. In Rome, the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini
unveils a giant obelisk of white marble, bearing the Latin
inscription MVSSOLINI DVX. Invisible to the cheering crowds, a
metal box lies immured in the obelisk's base. It contains a few
gold coins and, written on a piece of parchment, a Latin text: the
Codex fori Mussolini. What does this text say? Why was it buried
there? And why was it written in Latin? The Codex, composed by the
classical scholar Aurelio Giuseppe Amatucci (1867-1960), presents a
carefully constructed account of the rise of Italian Fascism and
its leader, Benito Mussolini. Though written in the language of
Roman antiquity, the Codex was supposed to reach audiences in the
distant future. Placed under the obelisk with future excavation and
rediscovery in mind, the Latin text was an attempt at directing the
future reception of Italian Fascism. This book renders the Codex
accessible to scholars and students of different disciplines,
offering a thorough and wide-ranging introduction, a clear
translation, and a commentary elucidating the text's rhetorical
strategies, historical background, and specifics of phrasing and
reference. As the first detailed study of a Fascist Latin text, it
also throws new light on the important role of the Latin language
in Italian Fascist culture.
The Gay Girl in Damascus Hoax explores the vulnerability of
educated and politically engaged Westerners to Progressive
Orientalism, a form of Orientalism embedded within otherwise
egalitarian and anti-imperialist Western thought. Early in the Arab
Spring, the Gay Girl in Damascus blog appeared. Its author claimed
to be Amina Arraf, a Syrian American lesbian Muslim woman living in
Damascus. After the blog's went viral in April 2011, Western
journalists electronically interviewed Amina, magnifying the blog's
claim that the Syrian uprising was an ethnically and religiously
pluralist movement anchored in an expansive sense of social
solidarity. However, after a post announced that the secret police
had kidnapped Amina, journalists and activists belatedly realized
that Amina did not exists and Thomas "Tom" MacMaster, a
forty-year-old straight white American man and peace activist
living and studying medieval history in Scotland was the blog's
true author. MacMaster's hoax succeeded by melding his and his
audience's shared political and cultural beliefs into a falsified
version of the Syrian Revolution that validated their views of
themselves as anti-racist and anti-imperialist progressives by
erasing real Syrians.
In May 1944, with American forces closing in on the Japanese
mainland, the Fifth Fleet Amphibious Force was preparing to invade
Saipan. Control of this island would put enemy cities squarely
within range of the B-29 bomber. The navy had assembled a fleet of
landing ship tanks (LSTs) in the West Loch section of Pearl Harbor.
On May 21, an explosion tore through the calm afternoon sky,
spreading fire and chaos through the ordnance-packed vessels. When
the fires had been brought under control, six LSTs had been lost,
many others were badly damaged, and more than 500 military
personnel had been killed or injured. To ensure the success of
those still able to depart for the invasion--miraculously, only one
day late--the navy at once issued a censorship order, which has
kept this disaster from public scrutiny for seventy years.
"The Second Pearl Harbor" is the first book to tell the full story
of what happened on that fateful day. Military historian Gene
Salecker recounts the events and conditions leading up to the
explosion, then re-creates the drama directly afterward: men
swimming through flaming oil, small craft desperately trying to
rescue the injured, and subsequent explosions throwing flaming
debris everywhere. With meticulous attention to detail the author
explains why he and other historians believe that the official
explanation for the cause of the explosion, that a mortar shell was
accidentally detonated, is wrong.
This in-depth account of a little-known incident adds to our
understanding of the dangers during World War II, even far from the
front, and restores a missing chapter to history.
This book provides a holistic overview of the history of
sustainable development in Denmark over the last fifty years,
covering a host of issues central to the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs): ending poverty; ensuring inclusive and equitable
education; reducing inequality; making cities and settlements
inclusive, safe and resilient; and fostering responsible production
and consumption patterns, to name a few. It argues for a new
framework of sustainability history, one that is truly global in
outlook. As such, it explores what truly global sustainable
development would look like. It considers how economic growth has
been the driver for prosperity in the global north, and considers
whether sustainable development and continued economic growth are
irreconcilable, and what the future of sustainable development
initiatives in Denmark might look like.
For nearly a half century, from 1945 to 1991, the United States and
the Soviet Union maneuvered to achieve global hegemony. Each forged
political alliances, doled out foreign aid, mounted cultural
campaigns, and launched covert operations. The Cold War also deeply
affected the domestic politics, cultures, and economic policies of
the two superpowers, their client states, and other nations
throughout the world. Teaching the Cold War is both necessary and
challenging. Understanding and Teaching the Cold War is designed to
help collegiate and high school teachers navigate the complexity of
the topic, integrate up-to-date research and concepts into their
classes, and use strategies and tools that make this important
history meaningful to students. The volume opens with Matthew
Masur's overview of models for approaching the subject, whether in
survey courses or seminars. Two prominent historians, Carole Fink
and Warren Cohen, offer accounts of their experience as long-time
scholars and teachers of the Cold War from European and Asian
perspectives. Sixteen essays dig into themes including the origins
and end of the conflict, nuclear weapons, diplomacy, propaganda,
fear, popular culture, and civil rights, as well as the Cold War in
Eastern Europe, Western Europe, East Asia, Africa, Latin America,
and the nonaligned nations. A final section provides practical
advice for using relevant, accessible primary sources to implement
the teaching ideas suggested in this book.
Robert Knight's book examines how the 60,000 strong Slovene
community in the Austrian borderland province of Carinthia
continued to suffer in the wake of Nazism's fall. It explores how
and why Nazi values continued to be influential in a post-Nazi era
in postwar Central Europe and provides valuable insights into the
Cold War as a point of interaction of local, national and
international politics. Though Austria was re-established in 1945
as Hitler's 'first victim', many Austrians continued to share
principles which had underpinned the Third Reich. Long treated as
both inferior and threatening prior to the rise of Hitler and then
persecuted during his time in power, the Slovenes of Carinthia were
prevented from equality of schooling by local Nazis in the years
that followed World War Two, behavior that was tolerated in Vienna
and largely ignored by the rest of the world. Slavs in Post-Nazi
Austria uses this vital case study to discuss wider issues relating
to the stubborn legacy of Nazism in postwar Europe and to instill a
deeper understanding of the interplay between collective and
individual (liberal) rights in Central Europe. This is a
fascinating study for anyone interested in knowing more about the
disturbing imprint that Nazism left in some parts of Europe in the
postwar years.
First friends, then bitter enemies, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon
shared a rivalry that had a dramatic impact on American history.
One would become the most dashing figure of the post-World War II
era, the other would live into his eighties, haunted and consumed
by the rivalry. In Kennedy and Nixon, Christopher Matthews offers a
surprising look at these two political giants, offering a stunning
portrait that will change the way we think about both of them.
Starting as congressmen in the class of 1946, the two men developed
a friendship and admiration for each other that would last for more
than a decade. But what drove history was the enmity between these
two towering figures whose 1960 presidential contest would set the
nation's bitter course for years to come. Matthews shows how the
early fondness between the two men (Kennedy told a trusted friend
that if he didn't receive the Democratic nomination in 1960, he
would vote for Nixon) degenerated into distrust and paranoia, the
same emotions that, in the early 1970's, ravaged the nation.
Christopher Mattew's revealing book sheds light on this complicated
relationship and the role that it played in shaping America's
history.
On June 22, 1941, Germany launched the greatest land assault in
history on the Soviet Union, an attack that Adolf Hitler deemed
crucial to ensure German economic and political survival. As the
key theater of the war for the Germans, the eastern front consumed
enormous levels of resources and accounted for 75 percent of all
German casualties. Despite the significance of this campaign to
Germany and to the war as a whole, few English-language
publications of the last thirty-five years have addressed these
pivotal events. In Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the
East, Stephen G. Fritz bridges the gap in scholarship by
incorporating historical research from the last several decades
into an accessible, comprehensive, and coherent narrative. His
analysis of the Russo-German War from a German perspective covers
all aspects of the eastern front, demonstrating the interrelation
of military events, economic policy, resource exploitation, and
racial policy that first motivated the invasion. This in-depth
account challenges accepted notions about World War II and promotes
greater understanding of a topic that has been neglected by
historians.
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