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.