I’ve begun my next course, this one on World War I. Only five discussion posts in this class, but a longer research agenda is coming soon. ==== Of the countries participating in World War I, perhaps no country was undergoing quite as extensive a shift in national identity at the time as the Ottoman Empire. …
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Austrian Coup of 1934
Conventional wisdom has tended to see the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938 as inevitable, given the strong historical, cultural, and political ties between Germany and Austria. Indeed, the Anschluss was welcomed by many Austrians, who had desired union with Germany since the end of World War I and who shared the …
The Dissolution of Yugoslavia
In 1989, Yugoslavia was a federation of six republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro. Today, the process of Yugoslavia’s breakup is still not complete. Although all six former constituent republics are now independent sovereign states, it was not without serious conflict that Yugoslavia was broken up. In addition, a seventh republic, Kosovo, has …
Immigration to Europe
Immigration has played and continues to play an enormous role in European history since the end of World War II. In response to several factors, including decolonization of Africa and Africa, decimated populations as a result of the war and subsequent zero (or even negative) population growth, and later the Schengen Agreement all contributed to …
The Cold War in Europe and the Developing World
While the Cold War has been largely understood as a non-shooting war between the United States and the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1991, the effects on the nations of Europe and the developing world cannot be overestimated. In both Europe and the developing world, sides were created by the U.S. and USSR and proxy …
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Effects of the Holocaust
For this week’s assignment, I chose to write about a topic with which I’m very familiar, the Holocust. For years, I’ve conducted independent research on the topic and have published a fair amount of material. I think it’s therefore safe to say that the Holocaust had extensive politics effects on Europe and the rest of …
How Dictatorships Mobilize Support
The ability of extremist political movements of the interwar period might have maintained their power on the basis of coercion, but there was nevertheless a core group of people at the center of these movements — not to mention a not insignificant number of the rank and file — that supported them. In Germany, National …
Source Analysis: Women in Interwar Radical Politics
On the surface, the ideologies of the Soviet and Nazi regimes were diametrically opposed. On the one hand, the Soviets were on the far left and sought (at least in theory) to create a society in which everyone was equal; on the other hand, the Nazis were on the far right and sought to impose …
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Four Writers on Interwar Europe
Between World War I and World War II, European culture underwent a remarkable transformation as a result of both the continuation of philosophical traditions that had begun in the previous century and the massive loss of life that the war caused. On the one hand, writers and thinkers like Sigmund Freud saw during the interwar …
Isaac Rosenberg on Trench Warfare
Trench warfare was comparatively horrific when contrasted with earlier forms of warfare, primarily because of the very instruments listed by the textbook authors in discussing combat during World War I: “the hand grenade, the spade, and the machine gun.”[1] In their own ways, each tool is emblematic of how warfare had changes from earlier generations. …
Inevitable Historicity 