Focus! Focus!

For both 466 and 450 people, the events of World War II and the postwar, in which Europe becomes divided after coming together in the defeat of Hitler, can be really confusing--especially since most of us don't get any systematic history instruction in high school. So here is a way to try to make sense of the narrative. This is one of the fundamental questions of the Cold War, and I always ask it on the midterm in one form or another:

A)In the Ken Burns documentary “The War,” viewers learn about the titanic struggle between the US, Great Britain and the USSR on the one hand and Germany, Italy and Japan on the other in World War II. Victory was a team effort, requiring a common strategy, coordination and millions of casualties. How did it happen that this “marriage” ended in divorce, with victorious allies becaming bitter enemies, glowering at each other across barbed-wire borders, just a couple of years after that happy meeting in Berlin? In other words, how did we get a nasty, antagonistic Cold War after the successful conclusion of the Hot War?

In other words, how do we get an acrimonious divorce so soon after this spectacularly successful partnership??

Eurogeo

Here's your first test in History 450...date TBA. You will always have at least two weeks' advance warning of any exam or test. BTW, the image at right is a great feature of central European geography: the Danube as border between Hungary and Slovak republic at Esztergom, northern Hungary. You can walk down the hill from here and over the bridge and be in the Slovak republic...or maybe you can swim it, but I don't recommend that. The Danube isn't blue, it's brown and it stinks in summer. You might not survive an encounter with it.


Here comes the fabled(notorious?!)History 450 geography midterm. You will need to be able to locate and identify the capital of all the countries on the European continent, including Turkey, which isn’t altogether on the continent but which might be in the European Union one day. THEN you will have to answer a certain number of the following fun questions…not all, but you won’t know which ones, so you will need to know all of them.



What European regional capital is known as “Titanic town?”


Match the European country with its homegrown alcoholic beverage:
Calvados:
Ouzo:
Shlivovitz:
Palinka:
Bushmills:
Pilsner:
Dom Perignon:

What central. European country is home to the Lippizaner stud farm?


Where is Dracula's castle? Name the country AND region


Where is the Cotentin peninsula and why is it important to you and me?


Which central European country is famous for gulyas and paprika?


What east European city is the location of the Lenin ship
Yard, famous for its role in the l980s? What country was it in before l945?


What defines the states we know as the “Baltics” and the “Balkans”? Name the three Baltic states, their capitals and at least two Balkan states and THEIR capitals.


What country’s capital has been the head of two major religious empires?


Where is the home base of the Ibizian hound, one of the biggest, skinniest dogs you will find? How about the celebrated hunting dog known as the “Kurzhaar?”


What accounts for both French and German being heard on the streets of the eastern French city of Strasbourg?


What is the Camino de Santiago de Compostela and where does it take place? You will begin to understand about it if you go to this site-- http://mscamino.blogspot.com


Identify the countries to which these Olympic cities belong:
Turin:
Lillehammer:
Athens:
Grenoble:
Sarajevo:
Munich:
Barcelona:
St. Moritz:

Which city is lucky enough to have Schipol as its airport, one of the most user-friendly in the world? Conversely, which is cursed with the world’s worst airport, Sheremetevo I and II?

Cartographic confusion: What are these cities called today, and where are they?
Take one of them and explain how its name got changed.
Koloszvar:
Caporetto:
Breslau:

Which countries are connected by the Oresund bridge?

What is Kaliningrad, what did it used to be known as and why is it an anomaly in today’s Europe?

How could someone be born, educated, married and then die in three or four different European countries and never move away from his hometown?

Great map sites

For 450ers and anyone else who's interested, there is a great map of Europe with interactive features just waiting for you. You can click on many of the larger countries for a more detailed look at major cities, rivers, etc. I've been playing with it for a half hour! Then, go here and bookmark, so that you will have a map to practice with when you get the geoquiz questions. Don't forget that half the midterm will be geographical...

Cold War 466 syllabus...

A second drum riff for the rollout of syllabus 466...and the person you see in the picture, atop the Chrysler mini-van, is me. I'm in exhibit guide mode, talking to Soviet visitors about leisure time in America, during our exhibit's tour in Rostov-on-Don, USSR. That was MY cold war...

History 466
Cold War
History 466/spring 2011/WSUTC/B. Farley


Welcome to 466! First, the essential contact info: Office 207 J West Building 332-7257. Reality-based, up-close and personal office hours: 3:30-4pm Monday and Wednesday; virtual office hours 24/7 by email at brigitf2001@yahoo.com or bfarley@tricity.wsu.edu. I always will try to get back to you as soon as possible—email is my favorite means of communication. For emergencies, my ancestral estate in Pendleton, Oregon may be reached at 541-276-6962.

Now, some non-essential info: By way of introducing myself, I once played “how well do you know your friends” games during the break and answered a short questionnaire from the internet this way(note: some responses have been modified to reflect Cold War themes):

Four schools you have attended: Pendleton High School, Georgetown University, Indiana University, Leningrad University. I studied THE cold war language, the language of the “enemy” at all of these places.

Four Cold War-related jobs you've had in your life: exhibit guide/propagandist, translator, transliterator, subject for “linguistic researchers."

Four Cold War movies you could see over and over: Saving Private Ryan(early Cold War issue), Dr. Strangelove, Goodbye Lenin, The Russians are Coming.

Four Cold War-related places you've lived: Washington, DC, Moscow, Russia, Leningrad, USSR, Kiev, USSR

Four Cold War TV shows you love to watch: MASH(Korean conflict), Twilight Zone(lots of Cold War themes), Outer Limits(lots of would-be alien invaders with Russian accents), All in the Family(a mini-Cold War waged each episode between conservative Archie Bunker and his “meathead” son-in-law, a real classic). None of them very new…

Four places(Cold War or non) you've been on vacation: Maui, Hawaii, Moville, Co. Donegal, Ireland, Solovetskii Islands, Russia, northern France and Belgium

Four of your favorite Cold War foods: Hungarian stuffed cabbages, borshcht, khachapuri(Georgian stuffed cheese bread).

Four favorite Cold War cities: London, Paris, Budapest, Ljubljana


The Lowdown: Welcome to Cold War, a study of the 50-year “cold” conflict between the Soviet Union and its allies and the United States and its allies that began in the closing days of World War II and ended with the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe, which was followed by the implosion of Communism in the USSR in August l991. I should amend that to read, “mostly cold.” There was quite a lot of “hot” action, as the thousands of casualties in the Korean, Vietnamese and Afghan conflicts would tell you, even if these were officially “proxy wars.” I don’t think you are any less dead for being killed in a “proxy” rather than a direct conflict between the superpowers.
We will be trying this term to determine what caused this conflict, beginning way before l945. We want to trace the course of the “hostilities,” exploring how the war shaped domestic events anc culture in the two superpower “belligerents,” that is, US here in America and THEM in the USSR. We won’t get too much farther than l962, because it takes that long to cover the early part of the Cold War, and people tend to have a lot of comments. However, we will do what we can to cover what happened later.
In between, we will try to get acquainted with some of the most interesting people and events from this odd war. Some of you will find them more familiar than others, especially if you are old enough to remember “ducking and covering” to protect against nuclear annihilation. Some of us, including me, are actual Cold Warriors. I spent l987-88 in the soviet Union as a guide for the United States Information Agency’s traveling exhibit, “Information Technology in American Life.” Some people called that position “propagandist.” Anyway, we were there to demonstrate computer technology and how it helps at home and at work AND advertise American life. Some Soviet people invariably took issue with our presentation and engaged us in verbal combat, e.g. “why do Americans want war with the Soviet Union?” “Why do you kill your Presidents?” “Why do you let people own guns,” “How many volts do you give them in the electric chair? After l4 months of that, I really felt like a veteran of the Cold War. Certainly the issues that preoccupied the policymakers also preoccupied the people in the “trenches.”
Readings: Our basic text is Martin Walker’s Cold War: A History. This will help you follow the basic narrative of events, which can get complicated at times. Then, Robert Dallek, JFK: An Unfinished Life. JFK witnessed or participated in all the most crucial episodes in the Cold War, and Dallek’s biography is one of the latest and best. Victor Grossman’s Crossing the River tells the unusual story of an American on the other side of the Cold War, not a perspective you get every day when looking at this period. And Michael d’Antonio’s book on the drama of the late l950s and 60s—the sputnik/space race—is an entertaining look at Nikita Khrushchev’s obsession with being first in space(if nothing else!)…
Class Procedures and Evaluation: 466 is one of those great Tier III courses, which are designed to bring together knowledge and perspectives from several disciplines and which require a thoughtful writing assignment. It also lends itself particularly well to the new WSUTC undergraduate research exposition: the Liberal Arts symposium. Everyone in this class will participate in this end-of-semester extravaganza. You will fulfill this requirement and make your symposium debut(or return, if you did it before) by choosing an individual or phenomenon(animal, vegetable, or mineral?) that played a big part in the Cold War and design a small museum exhibit dedicated to that person, place or thing. One part of the exhibit is the script, an introduction to your subject plus a narrative making clear how he/she/it influenced the course of the cold war. You should not assume much knowledge on the part of your visitors—this would be a big mistake. This part should be between 4-7 pages. Then you will sketch out the exhibit-- choose illustrations/ photographs/ivideos/attractions that make your subject clear, make it come alive, to people v. In part III, you will actually build/establish your exhibit in the designated room for the symposium and greet the people who come to see it.
This assignment will be worth 50% of your grade. You will turn in your script in mid-April, maybe on Tax Day, and then you will present your exhibit at the symposium during finals week, IN LIEU of the final. I will base your grade on quality of script, originality of presentation and attention to detail throughout.
Some of the people/places/things you might consider making the subject for your exhibit: Berlin Wall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry S. Truman, “containment,” theory and practice, Marshall Plan, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, John F. Kennedy, nuclear weapons, Los Alamos, Hanford, Josip Broz Tito/Yugoslavia, Hollywood Blacklist, Joe McCarthy, Ho Chi Minh, Korea in the fifties, US-Cuban relations and Castro, Cold War “nightmare” cinema, e.g. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Cold War and American l950s, etc. etc. You are limited only by your imagination and the parameters of the Cold War.
Besides the Big Assignment, you will have a midterm after Part II(40%).
Caveats: Come to class and listen—you know what Woody Allen says, 90% of life is just showing up—start the Big Assignment right away and keep up on the not-too-labor-intensive readings. If you do all these things, you’ll have a good time in the course and maybe even learn a thing or two as well.

Schedule

Part I: Beginnings

America and Russia, l9l7

Soviet Russia: a short intro

The first skirmish

Two visions of the ideal world, l9l9

Self-determination or world socialist revolution?

America: the view from the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union: the view from America

Dictators’ rendezvous: the Nazi-Soviet pact, l939

The big doublecross and the new team, l941: USA, USSR, Great Britain

The marriage of convenience

Wartime conferences

Endgame: the race to Berlin

Readings: Walker, Cold War, pp. 1-27. Dallek JFK: An Unfinished Life, pp. 3-135 Grossman
Featured film: Mission to Moscow(l943)…very controversial in its day.
Recommended readings: Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution. This will tell you all about the revolution and establishment of Russian Communism,. Also, Louis Auchincloss, Woodrow Wilson. That’s the best short bio of Woodrow Wilson, our own drum major for democracy

Part II: Cold War follows hot, l945-53

Outlines of a divided Europe

The United States and the Bomb

Outlines of a Cold War

Dueling speeches

Containment and Marshall Plan

The “Iron Curtain” in eastern Europe and the state that escaped

The Berlin Crisis, round I

Stalin gets the bomb

Cold War turns hot and goes global: the “police action” in Korea and revolution in China

The Cold War and the home front: US and USSR

Readings: Walker, pp. 27-82; Dallek, pp. 134-266; continue with Grossman; start D’Antonio
Recommended readings: Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin. This is a great insiders’ view of what Stalin was REALLY like, behind the all-knowing, all-wise Uncle Joe façade. It wasn’t pretty. Also, David McCullough, Truman. McCullough is an eminently readable biographer and he brings Harry S. to life very effectively.

Midterm exam after this section, or perhaps partway through part III—TBA.



Part III: Hope, Confusion and (Near)Apocalypse: The Khrushchev years, l953-64

The death of “Uncle Joe” and the rise of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev

Korean armistice

Khrushchev’s bombshell

Revolution in Poland and Hungary

Khrushchev woos the developing world

The ascent of John F. Kennedy: “bearing any burden”

Bad beginning: Castro’s revolution and the Bay of Pigs

K2: Kennedy and Khrushchev .

The Berlin Crisis, round II: The Wall

Missles in October

Looking down the abyss: confronting nukes off the American mainland

“The other fellow blinked:” the end of the crisis

Nuclear non-proliferation

The end of an era: the end of Kennedy and Khrushchev and the course of the Cold War

Readings: Walker, pp. 82-182; finish Dallek; finish Grossman; d’Antonio, Ball, Dog, Monkey.
Recommended readings: William Taubman, Khrushchev: A biography. This is chapter and verse on Nikita Khrushchev, a great book, also a demanding one. If you can get Roy Medvedev, Khrushchev, that one is shorter and written from a Russian perspective. On Kennedy, the classic study is Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. A Thousand Days. Schlesinger was the “court historian” of the JFK administration.


LIBERAL ARTS SYMPOSIUM PRESENTATION takes the place of your final.

History 450 syllabus

To imaginary drumroll accompaniment, the syllabus for Europe since l945:




History 450—Europe since ‘45
Spring ‘11
WSU/Tri-Cities
B. Farley

Contact Info: 207j West Building/372-7357(office), 541-276-6962(home). Face-to-face office hours: Monday-Wednesday,3:30-4 pm and by appointment, Virtual office hours 24/7 via email, bfarley@tricity.wsu.edu or brigitf2001@yahoo.com. Email was made for me—I don’t like talking on the phone and I always try to answer any communiqué I get that same day. Please feel free to get in touch anytime.

If you are here, you’ve already found it, but in any case, make it a point to visit the class blog—brigitsbulletinboard.blogspot.com for updates, syllabi, test questions and miscellaneous information and opinion. If you’ve forgotten or lost something, you can find it here, and you are always welcome to leave comments, using your real name or a pseudonym…

The Lowdown

I always have to think hard about what to do with this class, because the time period is so difficult. In l9th century Europe, it’s Napoleon, nationalism, revolution, socialism, imperialism and the Great War. The Great War is, well, the Great War…you can go year by year and watch the “horrors creep across the floor.” Europe l9l9-39 is basically a long, depressing, between-the-wars armistice that climaxes in the outbreak of World War II. Then, you reach l945, and suddenly there is not a lot of coherence any more. Europe is allegedly united, but divided into more and less “established” camps of states. It supposedly saw the light and renounced war and violence after the horror of the Holocaust, yet was wracked by some of the worst genocide and ethnic cleansing of the century in the territories of the former Yugoslavia in the l990s. It touts itself as modern, tolerant and accepting, yet has ongoing problems with Islam, language issues, church/state separation and immigration. There is no grand national narrative, no unifying theme, that we can lean on in studying the contemporary history of this region. Therefore, unless we want to recite a cross-continental chronology, we have to opt for the big-picture approach, taking a promising theme for each decade. This time, we will look first at Germany’s struggle to dig out of the rubble of the war, de-Nazify its leadership and then adapt to its status as the front line of the Cold War. Then we shift focus west to France, where its struggle to re-establish itself as a great power leads to several disastrous wars with former colonies Algeria, Tunisia and Indochina. The ferment within the Soviet Union’s east European satellite states, especially Czechoslovakia, comes next as we move into the l960s. The development of a vicious, prolonged conflict between Protestants and Catholics in northern Ireland begins in l969 and takes us well into the l980s. We will finish with the story behind the reunification of Europe in l989, the year that everything seemed to become possible.
Since we will be concentrating on four or five key episodes in European history, it seems reasonable to work in some crucial films highlighting some singular aspect of each. The first will be “Judgment at Nuremberg,” Hollywood’s take on the Nazi War Crimes tribunals. 1956’s “Battle of Algiers” is a great companion piece to France’s depressing campaign to impose its will on colonies it should have let go. Next comes “Oratorio for Prague,” a film that began to chronicle the miraculous “Prague Spring” of l968 before something went terribly wrong.
“Bloody Sunday,” a re-creation of the worst day of the northern Irish conflict, will be the third offering. Closing out the term will be “Goodbye, Lenin,” an hilarious comment on the end of Communist Europe and maybe the funniest movie I’ve seen.


Readings


As for readings, we have one of the best books of modern times in Tony Judt’s Postwar. It is a triumph of narrative and interpretation, a very tough thing to achieve, especially with a continent and period as vast as postwar Europe. A lifelong student of France, Ted Morgan has an unusually personal perspective on the l950s and the colonial wars in that country. He shares it My Battle of Algiers. Heda Kovaly’s memoir, Under a Cruel Star, demonstrates how cruel and unforgiving the Communist regimes were, and how dreadful it was to get Communism as soon as the Nazis were vanquished. It is very useful background to the events of l968 in Czechoslovakia. With respect to the Irish conflict, people tend to forget that one of the most tragic events of the postwar period in Europe took place in Londonderry, northern Ireland, on January 30, l972—the civil rights march that turned into a massacre known to history as “Bloody Sunday.” I’ve always been intrigued with the 14 people who died so tragically on that day, so I included a book concentrating on their lives, called Before Sunday. I will carry the ball on the last topic, the end of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe, the signature event of the l980s.

Assignments

History 450 is an M class, meaning writing across the curriculum. It is impractical for everyone to write a term paper, so we will resort to an old warhorse: the semester-long reading and writing assignment(40%). We will take a thematic approach in the class, meaning that many European countries will not make the “cut” into the class narrative. What you will do is to choose a country in this category— Spain, Portugal, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Poland, any of the Baltic states, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium—and do some reading from online or offline publications over about l2 weeks, 2-3 articles per week. You can select articles that reflect a sort of general acquaintance, or narrow your focus to something specific, like the economy, tourism, political challenges, minority rights issues, etc. You will summarize each article in a paragraph or two, then store the summaries in a folder. About two weeks before the end of the semester, you will write a 3-5 page paper summarizing your findings for a business that is seeking to establish itself there. Both your summaries AND your final paper will form the basis for your grade on this part of the course, since this is a “writing across the curriculum” offering.
The writing exercise will be worth 40% of the final grade. Other than that, we’ll have a midterm with geography component(!)(40%) and a final, really a second midterm(20%).

Students with Disabilities: Accommodations are available for students with a documented disability. See Cherish Tijerna, Disability Resources Coordinator, as soon as possible to seek information or to qualify for accommodations. To make an appointment, please call 372-7352. Translation from Officialspeak: If you have a learning disability, you can find people and resources to help you.

Schedule

Part I, Introduction, then postwar Germany: out of the ashes

Background to May 9, l945, victory in Europe.

The “big three” and planning for the postwar: two Europes or one?

Europe and the Marshall Plan: Recovery, retribution, reconquest

Europe divided

Score-settling in Germany and elsewhere.

Berlin in crisis, part I: l948

Berlin, Germany and Europe divided.

Readings: Judt, Postwar, 1-196.
Recommended readings: Norman Naimark, Russians in Germany, l945-49; Anthony Beevor, Paris after the Liberation, l945-49.
Featured film: “Judgment at Nuremberg.”

Midterm part I after this section: GEOGRAPHY!!. Yes, you will finally have to learn the map of Europe, with all those brand-new countries in it, like Slovenia…or is it SLOVAKIA?!

Part II, The l950s: Reaction/revolt

The east in crisis: Berlin(part II), Warsaw, Budapest

The west in crisis: France, the struggle to remain a “great” power and the colonial wars: Indochina, Algeria, Tunisia

Featured film: “The Battle of Algiers(l956).”

Readings: Judt, l96-324, Morgan, My Battle of Algiers, all.
Recommended readings: Roy Medvedev, Khrushchev: a Biography. Bernard Fall, Street without Joy, Hell in a Very Small Place; Robert Dallek, JFK: An Unfinished Life(new bio of President Kennedy).
Recommended film: “Indochine,” starring Catherine De Neuve

Midterm Part II, garden variety midterm, after this section…

Part III: Europe in the l960s

Detour to the USA: ferment, war, crisis

The French l968

The Czechoslovak l960s and the Prague Spring, January-August l968

Featured film: “Oratorio for Prague(l968).”

Readings: Judt, 324-453; Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star, all.
Recommended readings: William Shawcross, Dubcek; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., RFK: His Life and Times; James Simon Kunen, The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary; David Maraniss, They Marched into Sunlight

Part IV: Sixties to Seventies: the “Troubles” in Ireland

Prelude to a crisis: Catholics and Protestants in northern Ireland to l967

Catholics and the “Civil Rights movement,” l968-69

“Battle of the Bogside” and the coming of the British Army

Playing hardball with the British: Bobby Sands and the Irish hunger strikers

The road to Good Friday

Featured film: “Bloody Sunday(2003).”

Readings: Faus, Before Sunday, all.
Recommended readings: David Beresford, Ten Men Dead; John Conroy, Belfast Diary; Tim Pat Coogan, On the Blanket.

Part V: Europe re-uniting, l985-89

Ferment in the east: Gorbachev, Reagan and nuclear Europe

Gorbachev and the “satellites”

The “Sinatra doctrine.”

The end of the Berlin wall and the “German problem.”

Featured film: “Goodbye, Lenin(2003)!”

Readings: Finish Judt, others TBA.
Recommended readings: : David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: the Last Days of the Soviet Empire; Slavenka Drakulic, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed.

Final exam-- second midterm, actually-- at the scheduled time


About the instructor: I believe the photograph accompanying this syllabus tells you all you need to know: it's me communing with gargoyles at Notre Dame cathedral, Paris, this past December.

Welcome!

Whether you're a new or returning history student, welcome! This is the place to come for syllabi, class announcements, copies of exam questions, random musings from me, links of interest, anything that will help you make the most of class. I wish I had some grand, sweeping statement to make about this term, but just now I am fresh out of soaring rhetoric, so I will leave that for later...anyway, WELCOME!!

The image at left is the Arch of Triumph, which anchors the Champs-Elysees. the grandest of the grand boulevards in Paris. It was built to commemorate Napoleon's victories, but now is the final resting place of the French unknown soldier from World War I, and doleful tributes to those who fell in succeeding wars, which were uniformly disastrous.