the two wars of the world

I think David makes an over-simplified claim when saying that World War I and World War II were the same thing. While in some ways, I think that they were a continuation of each other, I think both represented two very different phases of one conflict dealing with, as David pointed out, nationalism. The first World War, however, was about keeping the balance of power in check and not letting one nation get too powerful. Germany was not necessarily to blame for this war, even though they found themselves in a situation in which they were blamed at the end of it, as everyone had strong nationalistic feelings going into this war with tensions that had been stirring for decades upon decades. World War II, from what I have gathered, was more of a war dealing with the product of World War I, thus resulting from but not mimicking World War I. World War II was about fighting fascism, which arose because of the situations countries found themselves in after the devastating first World War and protecting democracy. The top priority was not necessarily maintaining the balance of power, but maintaining the ideology and existence of liberal democracy. It wasn't so much nation vs. nation as the first World War had been but more ideology vs. ideology. In other words, ideology came before the specific state. While the two wars share some similarities in that they involved the same players, the two took on different flavors, as one resulted from the changes the world had experienced due to the other.

i don't think we can ever understand why, which is a good thing

I think part of the reason that I have not posted so much in the past little while is that the topics we are now covering are becoming more and more troubling. Every time I think about Hitler, let alone see a picture of him or a film reel, I feel nauseous. Danielle asks how someone could have been able to perform all of the atrocities that occurred because of Hitler and his Nazis and why. Danielle, I don't think we can answer that question. I don't think anyone can ever understand why Hitler would chose to torture and starve millions and millions of Jews. I don't think anyone can ever understand how one human could ask another to chose between living alone or dying with his or her family. But I think that that shows that we are not like him. If we could understand why, something would be wrong.

I don't have much to say about Hitler. Many of us have tackled the subject in our blogs with interesting results. Some discussed Mein Kempf, others talked about the sheer disgusting-ness of his regime, and some even compared his allure to that of Obama's. I don't want to do the man any justice by saying too much about him. I believe he was a psychopathic coward. I believe he was a bad seed, a man lacking a heart and conscious. I think it would be giving him to much credit to say that at least he thought he was doing the what was best for his nation. There was no reason to exterminate the Jews, and as we pointed out in class, it can be argued that the amount of money he spent in doing so could have been put towards the war effort and made his army stronger, which would have been much better for his nation. His suicide was showed his cowardice, as he rather die than take on responsibility for the mess he created. I don't think there is any intellectual way to approach this man. He was a monster with no layer that anyone could ever sympathize with. He doesn't deserve a second thought.

OUR TOPIC-FINALLY!

After much conversation and much weighing of options, our group (Mia, Laura, and myself) have decided to explore the development of nations which were once occupied or controlled by larger and more powerful nations to that of their own and then given their independence due to many factors. Among the many areas we want to explore are, how did they gain their independence/ why did they want it?, what happened after they gained their independence?, why were they occupied in the first place?, etc. We each plan to take on a different instance in which this happened in history.

I am not sure what Laura and Mia are doing exactly (there was talk of Ireland's independence, Moorish Spain, Spain's occupation of the Netherlands, Poland, etc.), but I am proud to say that I will be exploring Russia, or the USSR's, occupation of the Baltic states in the 20th century. I have a personal affiliation with this topic, being a Latvian, and it is something I have always wanted to learn more about, it being the reason I live in North America/ exist. So, there it is.

on a more personal note

After reading Sam's post, which I believe Nate also responded to, I was reminded of something that happened in my own life. This is a story that has always stuck with me because of the way it made me feel at the time, which was a mixture of angry and confused.

In the 7th grade, I had to chose an elective course to take in the first semester of 8th grade. Among the options was a class that focused solely on the holocaust. Having been strangely interested in this topic since I was a child, having read books such as Number the Stars and The Devil's Arithmetic in elementary school, I decided that I wanted to take this class. Of course, we had to get our parents to sign off on our choices, and when I showed my father my list, asking him to sign, having never faced any difficulty getting my father to sign anything before (I could have gotten him to sign a test I had failed if I had wanted to), he said that he refused to let me take a class on the holocaust. Horrified, I asked him why not. His response was simple. He said that it was unfair of them to devote a whole class on the holocaust when more Russians and Eastern Europeans died under Stalin than had died under Hitler. My father is a very compassionate and also a very relaxed human being. I rarely hear him be so stern about such matters, and he is obviously of the school that considers Hitler to have been a complete monster. My father, however, is also 100% Latvian/Russian (mostly Latvian). He is the son of two people who escaped near death under Stalin's regime and who had family members and friends who were not quite as fortunate as them. He thinks that those deaths deserve as much attention as the deaths that are so much more often thought of with the holocaust. He believes that Stalin was just as much a monster as Hitler, as do many of the people who experienced Stalin's regime or who have close relatives who had. I write about this to tell you, Sam, and all those who wonder why Hitler is always thought of as the worst villain, which i also to believe to be the case (that most people consider Hitler more evil than Stalin), that there are people who do not, but those are mostly people who have a personal connection with it. Stalin treated the Latvians like dogs, as my father would say, just as Hitler treated the Jews as such. I hope one day that those losses are as recognized as the losses that occurred because of Hitler. The scary thing is, is that the losses of "my people" may not be over. As we saw this past summer with the whole Georgia conflict, Russia may not be done with it's desire to expand and control those nations it once had during the reign of the USSR, and people like my grandparents and father, are very concerned about the fate of their home countries if Russia once again decides to reenter them.

the lure of fascism

After reading Charlie's blog about fascism and all the consequent responses, such as Danielle's, I have to agree with them that fascism was not meant to give the people control, which is something Declan had trouble coming to terms with. However, this was why, I think, fascism was so appealing. Like Danielle discusses, the world was in shambles after World War I and before World War II, and no place felt more than Germany. It was easy, then, for people to turn to someone who seemed to offer them some sort of stability in a time when nothing was stable.

Think about your own lives for a second. Imagine this. You have just taken three very difficult tests and it isn't even lunch time yet. You are starving, as you forgot to eat breakfast in trying to cram in some last bit of study time before these important tests. You are planning to go off campus with your friends. Someone asks you where you want to go. You don't really care, as long as it means getting you fed and you don't have to think about it too much. For me, I would blindly follow someone who offered a solution or a place to eat. When I am that weary or that hungry, I just want the easy way out, and that is not to argue, but to go along with another's suggestion. That way, I don't have to think, and I will get what I really want,food, sooner. In this situation, I don't want to think anymore. I am too tired. I have thus given up my right to chose so as to reach a relative state of happiness sooner. I have to say, being an indecisive person, I am willing to give up my own desires more willing than not when in a large group. It scares me that if I was in post-war Germany, after having been through a tough war and experiencing serious economic trouble, I would be one of those people who would be happier at letting someone else decide for me if it means that I would eventually get food and stability. At that point, I rather not have to chose but have someone chose for me. When you are that exhausted, that option almost seems better. Not that I am advocating for fascism or anything. I am just saying that I can, on some level, understand why those people were willing to give up their individual rights. I don't think any of us an ever appreciate the whole extent of it, as we have never been through what Germany went through at this time, and I hope none of us ever will ever reach that point.

i too am a democracy girl

After reading Danielle's post about fascism in Italy, I found myself agreeing with a lot of the points she makes. However, I think an important assessment of fascism is missing.

When Danielle says, "I mean i can see why people would like this- especially after how the previous government FAILED at getting what they wanted from the outcome of WWI" when discussing Mussolini's speaking strategies and his regime in general, I have to add another point. Fascism was appealing to Italy, and all nations that have adopted such a regime since because they were/are weak. Fascism has only been successful in countries that were desperately looking for a way out from a terrible situation. Take both Italy and Germany for example. Before the fascist regimes, both experienced inept governments and terrible conditions both economically and socially. When either Mussolini or Hitler showed the least bit of a solution to their respective nations' problems, people blindly followed because of a few reasons: they couldn't think of anything better, fear, and it was a quick and easy option. Fascism, even though glorified (by some) for creating powerful, unified, nationalistic states, was a way out for the weak when one gets down to it. It wasn't about Italy or Germany being powerful, it was about them not being weak and, in this desire to not be weak, they turned to awful dictators. It takes time to build democracy. It's not an easy task. It is, however, easy for someone to brainwash some people, get a moderately sized army, and kill all those who oppose him/ place the blame on certain group so as to unify the nation. Basically, all that fascism is proud of (nationalism, unification, militarism, etc.) were really a weak and temporary way of solving difficult problems.

another day, another terror

After reading Nate's post about whether the Russian terror was justified or not, I decided I have to agree in that it was not justified. However, and correct me if I'm wrong as I am very tired at this moment, I got the sense that Nate was almost saying that it wasn't necessarily justifiable but it is understandable how Stalin thought so. Now, I know I am bias in the situation. Stalin killed a good portion of my grandmother's Russian family and treated the Latvians (I am mostly of Latvian descent), as my Dad would say, "like dogs", causing my grandparents to flee there home in Latvia during World War II. Aside from my personal feelings about the situation in Russia, I think it was really rather idiotic and is always idiotic when a ruler decides to kill millions of his own people no matter what ideology or the outcome. I believe that a government's soul purpose is to protect and govern the people of their states. What good is a state without its people? What good is a government that cannot be trusted? So what if Stalin brought the nation up to speed with industrialization? What good is that if millions of people who once lived in the country are no longer around to experience this boost of Russian status? I can vaguely understand, for ideological purposes, why Stalin would kill people who were very against him and very vocal or subversive in their ways, but he killed a lot more people than just those who were against him. Also, if you continuously believe that people are against you, they eventually will be. Even more so, a proper reaction to discontent amongst your people should be to listen to why so many people are against you in the first place and change yourself and your government instead of simply killing them. Industrialization did not necessarily need a communist regime to increase. As far as I can tell, there can be no connection made between Stalin's ideologies and the increase in industrialization. Thus, the two do not need to go hand in hand. Industrialization and the improvement of Russia as a whole could have occurred without the terror, which makes it completely and utterly not understandable and unjustifiable to me.

the trilogy

So we didn't cover tons of the same material this week (Mia, Laura, and I that is). Mia responded to and agreed with me on my post about the Bolsheviks, while Laura responded to but did not totally agree, or at least that is what I gathered, with me about my blog on how blaming Germany was essentially a not-so-great move on the part of the Great Powers. Since this is all I really have to go off of at the moment, I will respond to Laura's response.

Laura asserts, "When the nations met at the Palace of Versailles in January 1918, they couldn’t afford to not find a scapegoat". I agree that it would have been very difficult for them to have done anything other than place the responsibility on Germany. Italy, France, and Great Britain were in no position to pay back any debts to the United States because they were all suffering mass unemployment when the soldiers returned from the war on top of all other sorts of issues. The US, wanting to solidify its position, refused to pardon the debts but agreed to let Germany take the fall so that they would get there money. In turn, they pumped finance (is that the correct way to phrase it?) into Germany so that they could actually pay the US back, but this made Germany incredibly dependent on the US economy. When the US economy went to hell in the Great Depression, Germany suffered incredibly. Now, no one could have predicted the Great Depression, but the fact that Germany was made to be so dependent on another nation shows a bit of irresponsibility on the US's part. It is possible that the US should have never allowed the Great Powers to place the blame and the debt on a torn-apart, fragile, Germany. Maybe they should have considered that at this point, Germany was very vulnerable to a revolution like the one that had happened in Russia, and, at the sign of an problems, Germany would have been very susceptible to one, which they were. That is why Hitler's regime was able to get so out of control. When the US failed, Germany really failed and thus the weak turned towards the only man who seemed to offer them a way out, much like placing the blame on Germany offered the Great Powers a way out of their debt. Like Laura said, what comes around goes around, and I think the West should have been a bit more savvy to this notion.

allemagne

Charlie discusses the blame placed on Germany at the end of the war, and I agree with his claim that consequences that the country had to face weren't entirely justified. I also agree with Charlie when he says, "Germany was, in some ways, the country primarily responsible for the escalation from one country's internal conflict to a continent-wide war". However, Germany, arguably, suffered the most in terms of casualties and discontent at home, even before the Treaty of Versailles. I couldn't help but notice that in the simulation of the Treaty of Versailles in class on Friday, that everyone, including me, was so quick to place all of the responsibility of the war and all the debts caused by said war on Germany. We all shouted out the numbers of our casualties and tried to make each other see how much we suffered, but no one recognized that Germany would beat us in those complaints and numbers. I understand that they needed to be defeated, and I'm not trying to say that I am pro-German in this case because I'm not in the least, but I do think it is unfair that they were made to assume all of the blame and debt. I also think it was irresponsible for nations to beat Germany down so much, as Germany was in severe danger of being influenced by Russian socialism in its weakened state after the war. Placing more troubles on Germany would only accelerate the rate at which the German people called for a revolution seeing the success such a revolution achieved in Russia. This is exactly what happened. This is exactly what happened. Instead, though, of just communism, Germany became subject to a terrible fascist regime. If the other nations had assumed their own responsibility and agreed to pay their own debts over time instead of taking the easy way out and making Germany pay for everything, Hitler may have never been able to gain the power he did and World War II could have maybe been avoided.

you say you want a revolution...

Jonathan says in his blog that the Bolsheviks were almost like the Mensheviks in that they waited for the opportune moment to cause a revolution as opposed to forcing it. I have to completely disagree with this sentiment. This revolution was completely forced. Lenin needed to actively find followers. Once he found a vulnerable group, he made them see why a revolution should happen but it wasn't as if the country was naturally headed in the direction of the Bolshevik revolution; they needed to be guided.

Once the revolution was successful, they did not maintain power in a very natural way, either. Instead of trying to appease those who disagreed and appealing some to them, Lenin just killed them all. Russia may have been ripe for a revolution what with the way the Tsar and then the provisional government dealt with the war and the awful conditions for the working class, but everything that occurred to make that revolution happen was far from natural. In fact, it was almost all forced by Lenin and his minority of followers.

summed up

This week was all about Fred and Freud, and this is most apparent in everyone's blog posts for this week. However, having written two separate blog posts on the subjects this week already, I would like to address an issue brought up in some, but not a whole lot, blogs this week that was not covered or discussed in class, which is the topic of the rise of newspapers and mass publications. Elizabeth casts a sort of negative tone on the rise of newspapers because they allowed writers to twist the original ideas of great thinkers such as Darwin and Freud into what the writer saw fit for either making a point or simply selling a paper. Mia compares the situation of newspapers in the early 20th century to the situation of newspapers today. In both cases, I feel that newspapers and journalism need a little defending and not necessarily for the authors of those posts but for society in general.

The fact that a major city newspaper, such as the Chronicle, may be closed is tragic, at least to me. For years, readers have depended on good writers to unearth stories and dedicate time into writing expository pieces meant to educate the greater public of the "goings-on". Now, however, people can receive their news in a flash. Little to no thought has to be put into an online notice or video compared to the toil Woodward and Bernstein would have put into an article. Because the newspaper is dying out, journalists have less and less opportunity to show their true skills or have their discoveries and thoughts as widely read as before. If this is to be the case, and people eventually only rely on very short video snippets to get the entirety of their news, what will become of journalism? Despite what Elizabeth says on how it was potentially dangerous, journalism has often served a lot of good in society. For example, we learned that Morel was able to discover what was really happening in the Congo during Imperialism and publish his findings of the atrocities. It would have taken time, effort, and a lot of investigation to get to the bottom of that story. If newspapers die out, will there be anymore Morels? Will there be any room for investigative journalism? Will quality articles that take weeks or months to write become irrelevant next to other means of receiving news almost instantaneously over the internet? While journalists may sometimes want to push an agenda or sell papers, I think that the death of the art form would be a major loss to the world and the way we understand it.

freud

At the end of Wednesday's class (the day we learned about Freud), Cas asked, "Do you guys think Freud was a product of his time?". I have to say, yes, I definitely think that he was. At first, I was upset at Freud's assumption that people are "creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness" (from "Civilization an Its Discontents"). However, Freud was writing this after witnessing World War I, one of the worst, most brutal wars the world had ever seen. The atrocities committed during that war were enough to horrify anyone and send anyone concerned with the human condition searching for explanations as to how humans could be so awful to one another. Freud thus decided that it was human nature to act in this way.

Likewise, Freud was working with people in a time when anxieties in the mind would have been on a sharp up-rise due to the new problems posed by modernization. The majority of people no longer lived quaint, farm lives and hadn't for a while. But as time went on, cities expanded, class struggles showed themselves with union problems and the like, and political atmospheres changed. Europe was becoming a completely different place at the turn on the century, and this new era brought with it, what seemed to be, mostly struggle. Thus, Freud dealt with and explained these anxieties as they were happening around him, making him a product of the time he lived in.

fred

I do believe that it was Nietzsche who said "God is dead". He also believed that Christianity was "Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life". This was due to another of his beliefs that Christianity serves as an ultimate example of the slave valuation as it promotes suffering and guilt and thus, devalues a person's life on Earth so that life after death may be inexperienced in an eternal paradise. Our "will to power", which is essentially our will to live, is suppressed and so we, and civilization, are ultimately hurt by organized religion.
However, Nietzsche also admitted that Christianity served a purpose. He claimed that it provided humanity with a meaning so as to make suffering endurable, but I think he is missing another purpose Christianity serves, which is a purpose most people tend to forget even today. I feel like Nietzsche and a lot of the critics of Christianity today hold this idea that the religion consists of only bible-hugging, born-again, fundamentalists. There are, most noticeably in the United States, tons of those people whose severe dedication to the words of "God" and the Bible have put Christianity, on the whole, in a bad light, which, at least to me, is understandable. However, I do believe that the morals that Christianity teaches, aside from how they are sometimes carried out and mutilated, are not ones to denounce. There are many people who are not fundamentalist Christians but who still believe that the basic teachings between right and wrong and how to be a better person even when it is most difficult to do so, should not be discounted. These teachings aren't about feeling guilt or necessarily enduring suffering in this life so that the next may be better. In fact, the point of these teachings is to make it so that one does not suffer as much and finds happiness in this life. I'm not sure if Nietzsche ever addressed this, but if he had asserted that Christianity's tendency to teach people how to be better, kinder human beings was part of the "nausea and disgust with life" that he accused Christianity of exerting, he would have been a much bolder and a much different figure than I originally thought he was.