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11. JUDGING 'PRIVILEGED' JEWS Holocaust Ethics, Representation, and the 'Grey Zone'

Author:
Adam Brown
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
The Nazis’ persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust included the creation of prisoner hierarchies that forced victims to cooperate with their persecutors. Many in the camps and ghettos came to hold so-called “privileged” positions, and their behavior has often been judged as self-serving and harmful to fellow inmates. Such controversial figures constitute an intrinsically important, frequently misunderstood, and often taboo aspect of the Holocaust. Drawing on Primo Levi’s concept of the “grey zone,” this study analyzes the passing of moral judgment on “privileged” Jews as represented by writers, such as Raul Hilberg, and in films, including Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Negotiating the problems and potentialities of “representing the unrepresentable,” this book engages with issues that are fundamental to present-day attempts to understand the Holocaust and deeply relevant to reflections on human nature.
Topic:
Mass Media, Film, Holocaust, World War II, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, California, Germany, and Central Europe

12. The Marshall Plan: Seventy Years Since the Start of a Great Diplomatic Effort

Author:
Thomas E. McNamara
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
We persistently promote each major development assistance plan or nation-building project as “a Marshall Plan for _(fill_in_name)_.” Once a plan is underway supporters and opponents play out their different agendas. Supporters of foreign assistance downplay “Marshall Plan” comparisons because expectations cannot be met. Opponents stress the comparison to highlight shortfalls. This happens because none of the nation-building plans ever measures up to the original, successful, real, Marshall Plan. And they never will. Not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in Ukraine, not in Latin America, not in Africa. They won’t because the original Marshall Plan, contrary to popular myth, had nothing to do with development or nation building. It had everything to do with accelerating the reconstruction of already developed nations in Europe after two massively destructive wars.
Topic:
Development, Diplomacy, History, Foreign Aid, and World War II
Political Geography:
Europe and United States of America

13. “We Found Ourselves Living in the Midst of a Battlefield”: The Experiences of the U.S. Consulate General in Warsaw on the Outbreak of World War II September 1939

Author:
David A. Langbart
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
As a result of the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the U.S. consulate general in Warsaw and its staff faced extraordinary circumstances. The Department of State included a brief overview of those experiences in a background report on wartime hazards faced by the Foreign Service during the period before the United States entered World War II. The extreme nature of what the consulate general’s staff faced are such, however, that it is worth presenting the full report of Consul General John K. Davis. Written from Oslo, Norway, after evacuation to that city, Davis’s despatch provides a detailed and evocative description of the events and occurrences that befell the staff in Warsaw. The ordeal was great. As the Consul General noted, “for all practical purposes we found ourselves living in the midst of a battlefield.”
Topic:
Diplomacy, History, World War II, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Europe, Poland, North America, and United States of America

14. Perspectives for Researching British Appeasement of Nazi Germany in the Inter-War Years Using the Digitized Newspaper Collections of the British Library

Author:
Andrei Vasiliu
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
This paper aims to verify that the methods for researching the British appeasement policy towards Germany in the inter-war years can include the new method of studying the digitized collections of newspapers of the British Library. The policy of appeasement led by Great Britain during the inter-war years still represents a very attractive subject of research. The challenge lies not only in the new data harvested from primary sources such as documents and newspapers but also in the new methods of researching that may be applied, and that may increase the interest of scholars. Today, researching the digitized collections of archives are not even a futuristic resource, but a growing necessity. Accessing the British Library's digitized collections through the British Newspaper Archive website is often easier and more efficient than going to the archives. The site has more than 40 million digitized newspapers, mainly local periodicals, which can be accessed by searching for keywords, establishing filters and saving results to retrieve them later. The electronic resources of the digitized collections provide valuable help in my doctoral research on the Anglo-French appeasement reflected in the newspapers, which proves to be a great challenge, given the fact that the subject was widely covered in many of the central newspapers. But, of course, this method immediately poses multiple questions: is this method of research as rigorous as the traditional research conducted in the archives? Does this method provide the intercoder reliability framework required for such works? These are the research questions that remain at the center of this article. Previous research on the subject of digitized collections and also the analysis of the resources of the British Newspaper Archive in comparison with the traditional British Library resources can provide an answer.
Topic:
History, World War I, and World War II
Political Geography:
Britain, Europe, and Germany

15. Command Decision: Leadership Lessons from the Strategic Air War Against Germany

Author:
Lee Lacy
Publication Date:
04-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The history of strategic bombing in World War II is well-documented, but is also found in the unlikeliest of places, in a theatrical production performed in the New York theater—on Broadway— in 1947. The play, Command Decision, by William Wister Haines, is an examination of the decision making process involved with the strategic bombing campaign in the European Theater of Operations. This paper uses Command Decision to examine real events in 1943—notably the raids on industrial targets of Regensburg, Schweinfurt and Stuttgart, where the 8th USAAF sustained punishing losses. Out this terrible episode of the war, when thousands of airmen lost their lives, the lessons of the bombing campaign’s Combined Bomber Offensive are significant. The leaders, events and decisions that influenced this intense and deadly episode of World War II remain relevant. The powerful lessons of leadership and command— mixed with human failing and the suffering of mankind, make a compelling story.
Topic:
Military Strategy, World War II, and Air Force
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and North America

16. Beyond the Central Eurasian Pivot?

Author:
Michael Tierney
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Central Eurasia has long been an area that occupies utmost geostrategic importance inthe international system. Scholars throughout the 20th century identified Central Eurasia as the singlemost pivotal area for powerful states to gain influence and control. Their theories were based upon the fact that the region contained vast natural resources, a large population, high economic potential, and was geographically situated in a location strategically important for all world powers. As aresult, Central Eurasia’s importance in international affairs influenced geostrategic thinking during the inter-war years into WWII, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War era. Yet the shift in power that has occurred globally in recent years has caused scholars to signal the emergence of a new multipolar world. Some scholars have additionally hypothesized that there will be new geostrategic pivot states and regions located outside of Central Eurasia as a result. This study uses both historical and contemporary literature from the field of geopolitics to construct a list of potential pivots in the current international system. It then compares potential new pivot areas to the traditional Central Eurasian region using the variables listed above. The study finds that there are in fact comparable geostrategic pivots located outside of the Central Eurasian region in the contemporary international system. The implications of these findings are then discussed in the context of geostrategy and international security.
Topic:
Cold War, International Affairs, Natural Resources, Geopolitics, and World War II
Political Geography:
Europe, Eurasia, Asia, and Central Eurasia

17. The Train Journey: Transit, Captivity, and Witnessing in the Holocaust

Author:
Simone Gigliotti
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Deportations by train were critical in the Nazis’ genocidal vision of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Historians have estimated that between 1941 and 1944 up to three million Jews were transported to their deaths in concentration and extermination camps. In his writings on the “Final Solution,” Raul Hilberg pondered the role of trains: “How can railways be regarded as anything more than physical equipment that was used, when the time came, to transport the Jews from various cities to shooting grounds and gas chambers in Eastern Europe?” This book explores the question by analyzing the victims’ experiences at each stage of forced relocation: the round-ups and departures from the ghettos, the captivity in trains, and finally, the arrival at the camps. Utilizing a variety of published memoirs and unpublished testimonies, the book argues that victims experienced the train journeys as mobile chambers, comparable in importance to the more studied, fixed locations of persecution, such as ghettos and camps.
Topic:
Genocide, Infrastructure, Holocaust, World War II, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, Poland, and Germany

18. Historical Dialogue on Cham Issues

Author:
The Harriman Institute
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Professor Lambros Baltsiotis (Adjunct Lecturer, Research Centre for Minority Groups - Athens, Panteion University) and Professor Pellumb Xhufi (Professor of History, Albania Institute of History) participated in the second meeting. The organizers requested them to prepare scholarly perspectives of about 1,000 words commenting on the following statement: "Cham-Albanians suffered internment beginning in 1940, killings in 1944-45, and expulsion in 1945. Thousands of Cham-Albanians were killed in 1944 and 1945. These events occurred in a context and cycle of violence. It is alleged that Cham-Albanians were collaborators with the fascist and Nazi governments of Italy and Germany during World War II."
Topic:
Genocide, Human Rights, Violence, and World War II
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, Balkans, Albania, and Italy

19. The War on Terror: Forgotten Lessons from World War II

Author:
Stephen W. Van Evera
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
President Bush recently likened the war oon terror to the struggles American faced in World War II, expkaning that our enemies are “successors to Fascists, to Nazis ... and other totalitar- ians of the 20th century.”1 The analogy to World War II is useful and illuminating. Important lessons from World War II apply to the war on terror. Yet the Bush administration has itself left the lessons of World War II largely unheed- ed. Its conduct of the war on terror departs from the policies that brought the United States victory in World War II and success in the postwar years.2 The administration will have more success against our terrorist enemies if it learns and applies the methods that won the Second World War.
Topic:
Terrorism, War on Terror, World War II, and Propaganda
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, and North America