a violent century — world history since 1914

Fall Evening 2013 History 1F95

— A Violent Century —

World History since 1914 Instructor: Rachelle Longtin Office hours: Monday 21:00-21:30 in AS203 (right after the lecture; or by appointment) E-mail: [email protected] Lectures: Monday 19:00-21:00 in AS203 This course provides a sweeping survey of the principal political, social, and economic developments that shaped the twentieth century. It examines the origins of major upheavals as well as attempts to reduce, contain, or prevent violence. The first term covers the years from the “Belle Époque,” the twilight of European primacy and peace at the turn of the century, to the beginning of the Cold War. We concentrate primarily on Europe in this term, examining imperialism, the world wars, the Depression, and the rise of totalitarian ideologies such as fascism and communism. The second term moves beyond Europe to explore major historical themes that defined the second half of the twentieth century: the Cold War, Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis, conflict in the Middle East, cultural and social change, and the collapse of communism. The course will also provide an introduction to basic historical skills, including library research, evaluating sources and writing research essays. Some background in world history would be helpful, but it is not mandatory. Required Texts Available from the Brock University Bookstore:

• Richard Goff et al., The Twentieth Century and Beyond: A Brief Global History, 7th edition (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2008)

• Walter Moss et al., The Twentieth Century: Readings in Global History (Boston: McGraw Hill College, 1999)

• Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (New York: Anchor Books, 1994)

2 / Fall Evening 2013

• Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Bantam Books, 1960) • Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing History, 5th edition (Boston, Bedford/St

Martin’s, 2007) (recommended) Course Requirements, Assignments & Grading Seminars (20%) Each student will participate in seminar discussions, meeting weekly throughout the course. Attendance is mandatory. You will be expected to do the required readings before your seminar meeting and to participate in the discussions. Reading assignment (5%) A brief paper (no more than 2 pages) analyzing two interpretations of an historical event. Due at the start of your seminar in the week of September 23. Primary source assignment (5%) A brief paper (no more than 2 pages) analyzing two primary sources. Due at the start of your seminar in the week of October 21. Book review (10%) A 5-7 page review of a book relevant to this course. The title must be cleared with our TA ahead of time. Due at the start of your seminar in the week of November 25. Prospectus (5%) A one-page statement of intent for the paper to be written during the Winter term. Must include proper bibliographical citations of at least 5 sources you plan to use. To earn the grade, you must also meet with your TA to discuss your prospectus. Details TBA. Essay (15%) A 6-8 page research paper on a topic relevant to the course to be written during the winter term. Due date TBA. Papers must be double-spaced, with generous margins for instructors’ comments. Poor use of punctuation, spelling, and grammar can reduce your grade substantially. Fall exam (20%) A 2-hour exam at the end of the Fall term based on the lectures and the textbook. Winter exam (20%) A 3-hour exam at the end of the Winter term. The exam will focus primarily, but not exclusively, on Winter term topics. Housekeeping • Extensions will be considered for medical or personal emergencies, but they must be substantiated

by a doctor’s note or other documentation and will be granted entirely at the instructor’s discretion. Please note the university’s official medical exemption policy:

Brock University / History 1F95 / 3

o The University requires that a student be medically examined in Health Services, or by an off-campus physician prior to an absence due to medical reasons from an exam, lab, test, seminar, assignment, etc. Student Health Services will provide medical documentation only if:

o Medically warranted (i.e. a simple cold is not medically warranted) o The student presents themselves to Health Services before the exam. o The student is seen in Health Services the day of the exam, seminar, etc.

If your medical condition requires special consideration for academic activity (e.g. missed seminars, assignment extensions or examination/test rescheduling) and is on a day or at a time when Health Services is not open, then you must go to another medical facility to obtain the necessary written medical documentation, which is the completion of Brock University’s Medical Certificate.

• Work handed in late without the instructor’s permission will be penalized by 20% of that assignment’s grade for every 24 hours after the time it is due. For both terms, no assignments will be accepted after the day of the exam. No exceptions.

• Instructors will provide more details about the assignments during seminars. • Plagiarism is a serious offence that can result in a grade of zero for the assignment, failure in the

course, or even more severe penalties. You should acquaint yourself with the university’s definition of plagiarism, at http://www.brocku.ca/library/plagiarism.htm

• Written work must be screened by Turnitin.com. • To pass the course, you must get a passing average grade and complete all assigned work, including

both exams. • Two or more unexcused absences from seminars will jeopardize your changes for a passing grade. • Students will maintain proper decorum during lectures and seminars. This means refraining from

conversations or any other behaviour that may distract others. • Electronic devices such as cell phones, iPods, iPads, etc. must always be turned off during lectures

and seminars. • Email to your instructors must be written like proper letters. Please use appropriate salutations. We

do read our emails, but it can take up to three days to receive an answer. Lecture & Seminar Schedule

September 9: Lecture topics:

Course organization Themes and backgrounds (Read: Goff, Chaps. 1, 2)

No seminar today.



Imperialism (Read: Goff, Chaps. 3, 4, 6) La Belle Époque (Read: Goff, Chap. 2)

Seminar topic: Technology—Blessing or Curse? A.I. Root, Wright Brothers http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wright/reporter.html Henry Goodyear, Photos of the Paris World’s Fair

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/archives/set/54/visual_materials_6.1.014_paris_exposition_photographs (look at 20 or more photos close-up)

Jay Henry Mowbray, “The Sinking of the Titanic” http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/titnintr.htm Questions to think about:

1. What were some of the main scientific and technological breakthroughs at the beginning of the twentieth century?

2. How did “progress” in science and technology affect society, the economy, and culture? 3. Why had Europe achieved global dominance at the turn of the twentieth century? 4. What does the Paris World’s Fair suggest about how Europeans sawa the world in 1900? 5. Why did the sinking of the Titanic come as such a shock?

September 23:

World War I (Read: Goff, Chaps. 7, 8) Treaty of Versailles & the Weimar Republic (Read: Goff, Chaps. 9, 11)

READING ASSIGNMENT DUE AT THE START OF SEMINAR Seminar topic: The scramble for empire

Jules Ferry, “On French Colonial Expansion” http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1884ferry.asp Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/kipling.asp George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/887/

Questions to think about: 1. Why were European powers acquiring colonies at the turn of the twentieth century? 2. What does Kipling mean by the “white man’s burden”? 3. How do the views of Ferry and Kipling resemble and differ from each other? 4. Why is George Orwell bitter about empire?


Using library resources Twentieth-century cultural movements and the Bauhaus “Art of the Western World”


Seminar topic: World War I Gen. Friedrich von Bernardi, “The Next War” http://www.h-net.org/~german/gtext/kaiserreich/bernhardi.html

“It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” (listen to the music as well as read the lyrics) http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/itsalongwaytotipperary.htm

Pte. Donald Frasier, “My Daily Journal” http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1918Fraser.asp Wilfrid Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est” http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html Questions to think about:

1. What triggered World War I? 2. Why did it become a global war? 3. What is “militarism”? 4. How do the music and lyrics of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” portray the mood of soldiers

setting off to war? 5. How does Pte. Frasier describe his experience in the field? 6. How did Wilfrid Owen view the war? 7. Assess the value of song and poetry as historical sources.

October 7: Lecture topics:

The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (Read: Goff, Chap. 3, pp. 38-40) & The Bolshevik Revolution (Read: Goff, Chap. 10)

The 1920s: From mild optimism to the Great Depression (Read: Goff, Chap. 12) Seminar topic: Peace of Versailles

Woodrow Wilson, The Fourteen Points” http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1918wilson.asp The Treaty of Versailles http://firstworldwar.com/source/versailles.htm (read Articles 42, 45, 80, 82, 100-106, 119, 170, 177, 191, 198, 232, 233, 236, 271, 272, 321, 428-431)

Questions to think about: 1. What were the aims of the allied leaders (especially Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson)

at the Paris Peace Conference? 2. What were the obstacles to self-determination among Eastern Europe’s nationalities? 3. What was Wilson’s blueprint for a war-free world? 4. Why did it encounter resistance from the other allies? 5. How and why was the “war guilt” clause imposed on Germany? 6. Did the Treaty of Versailles cause World War II?

October 14: Thanksgiving/Reading Week No classes this week.



Totalitarianism The collapse of the Weimar Republic (Read: Goff, Chap. 11)

& Rise of Nazism excerpt from “Triumph of the Will” (Nazi propaganda, 1934)

PRIMARY SOURSE ASSIGNMENT DUE AT THE START OF SEMINAR Seminar topic: The Russian Revolution

Count von Moltke, “The Coronation of Tsar Alexander II” http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1855moltke-alexander2.asp Lenin, “April Theses” http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm John Reed, “The Coming Storm” http://www.bartleby.com/79/2.html Leon Trotsky, “The Revolution Betrayed”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch11.htm#ch11 Questions to think about:

1. Does Count von Moltke defend the tsar’s autocratic power? 2. Did World War I cause the Revolution or would it have happened anyway? 3. What were Lenin’s tactics for seizing power? 4. What are the core issues addressed by Lenin in his “April Theses”? 5. How does John Reed describe the mood in Petrograd in Autumn 1917? 6. According to Leon Trotsky, how did Josef Stalin “betray” the Revolution?


Challenges to peace (Read: Goff, Chaps. 16, 17) Stalin & Stalinism (Read: Goff, Chap. 10, pp. 146-end; Chap. 16, pp. 234-237) excerpt from “Ninotchka” (1939)

Seminar topic: Fascism and Nazism

Benito Mussolini, “What Is Fascism?” http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.asp

Adolf Hitler, Speech of 12 April 1921, excerpt from Mein Kampf http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111hit1.html

Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race http://mtsu.edu/~baustin/nurmlaw2.html Questions to think about:

1. What did Nazis and Italian fascists have in common? How did they differ? 2. What was the social basis of Hitler’s support? 3. What was the basis and character of Nazi racism? 4. Why did Hitler single out Jews?


November 4: Lecture topics: The Spanish Civil War (Read: Goff, Chap. 17, pp. 237-238)

Appeasement (Read: Goff, Chap. 17) Seminar topic: Stalinism

Lenin’s Testament (1922) http://www.historyguide.org/europe/testament.html Read the lyrics to the Soviet National Anthem (1944 version): http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/sounds/lyrics/anthem.htm Watch the video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cMlu7tUshg Stalin, “Industrialization of the Country” http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1928stalin.asp Stalin’s Purges http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1936purges.asp

Questions to think about: 1. What were Lenin’s objections to Stalin? 2. Why did the Communist Party ignore Lenin’s warnings? 3. Why did Stalin order a new national anthem in 1944? 4. How do the Soviet anthem’s lyrics and the Youtube collage portray Stalin’s Soviet Union? 5. Why did Stalin see the need to industrialize the Soviet Union? 6. Who were the victims of the Great Terror? 7. What were the “legal proceedings” against them? 8. How did Stalin’s Soviet Union justify the purges?

November 11: Lecture topics:

World War II: Europe (Read: Goff, Chap. 18) Occupation, resistance, and the homefront

Seminar topic: Appeasement Munich Pact http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/munich1.asp Debate in Parliament http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/munich.htm Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1939pact.asp Questions to think about:

1. Why did Munich become the basis for appeasement? 2. How did Neville Chamberlain try to justify the Munich Agreement? Did other British

politicians agree? 3. Is it possible to defend appeasement? 4. What is the “Munich syndrome”? 5. What does the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact reveal about Hitler’s intentions?


November 18: Lecture topics:

Antisemitism & the Holocaust (Read: Goff, Chap. 18, pp. 247-250) World War II: The Eastern Front “Red Star”

Seminar Topic: World War II—On the Homefront Winston Churchill, “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” (speech from 13 May 1940) http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/churchill-blood.asp Winston Churchill, Speech from 4 June 1940

http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111chur.html Franklin D. Roosevelt, “A Call for Sacrifice”

http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1942roosevelt-sacrifice.asp Popular songs during World War II

http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/ww2-music-uk.asp Questions to think about:

1. What does Churchill’s language say about Britain’s position in 1940? 2. What is Roosevelt’s plan for fighting the war on the homefront? How does he aim to

encourage the American people? 3. What are some of the major differences in Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s approach to

encourage the public? 4. How are these leaders’ aims reflected in popular song? What are the overriding themes? How

do you explain the popularity of “Lili Marlene” for both British and German soldiers?

November 25:

US foreign policy from the New Deal to Pearl Harbor World War II: the Pacific (Read: Goff, Chap. 18, pp. 260-261) Animated US propaganda

BOOK REVIEW DUE AT THE START OF SEMINAR Seminar topic: The Holocaust

Elie Wiesel, Night

Discussion will focus on Elie Wiesel’s personal account of his experience of the Holocaust and its value as a primary document.


December 2: Lecture topics : World War II: the Aftermath (Read: Goff, Chap. 19, 20) Review Seminar topic: The Bomb

“Why Did Japan Surrender?” http://articles.boston.com/2011-08- 07/bostonglobe/29861790_1_hiroshima-tsuyoshi-hasegawa-japan-surrender “Estimate of the Enemy Situation”

http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/28.pdf Notes by Harry Truman on the Potsdam Conference, page 5

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?pagenumber=5&documentdate=1945-07-17&documentid=63&studycollectionid=abomb Admiral Tagaki’s diary entry for 8 August 1945

http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/55.pdf “Hiroshima Memorandum” on the Emperor’s “Sacred Decision”

http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/69.pdf Admiral Tagaki’s diary entry for 12 August 1945

http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/69.pdf Questions to think about:

1. Were there alternatives to dropping an atomic bomb to force Japan’s surrender? 2. Was racism a factor in using the bomb against Japan? 3. Was dropping the bomb on Hiroshima the first diplomatic act of the Cold War?

Supplementary Readings (on reserve at the Gibson Library) The scramble for empire: W.G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) Henri Brunschwig, French Colonialism (London: Pall Mall Press, 1966) Lewis Gann, Burden of Empire (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1967) Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Empire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987) J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961) A. Iriye, Pacific Estrangement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972) W.L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1960) V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1947) W.J. Mommsen, Imperialism and After (London: German Historical Institute, 1986) R. Robinson et al., Africa and the Victorians (London: Macmillan, 1963) Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978) D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001) R.W. Winks, ed., The Age of Imperialism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969)

Term 1 exam: Date/time TBA, 2 hours


World War I: Horace Buckshaw, The Diaries of Private Horace Buckshaw, ed. Martin Middlebrook (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1980) Modris Ecksteins, Rites of Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983) Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (London: Basic Books, 1999) Marc Ferro, The Great War, 1914-1918 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973) Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986) Joe Kirchberger, The First World War: An Eyewitness History (New York: Facts on File, 1992) D.H. Lee, Outbreak of the First World War (Lexington: Heath, 1975) B.H. Liddell-Hart, History of the First World War (London: Faber & Faber, 1934) Steven E. Miller, ed., Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985) Erich Maria Remarque, trans., All Quiet on the Western Front (London: Putnam, 1960) Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (London: Faber & Faber, 1966) A.J.P. Taylor, War by Timetable: How the First World War Began (London: Macdonald, 1969) Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Macmillan, 1964) Claire Tylee, The Great War and Women’s Consciousness (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990) John Ellis, Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989) The Treaty of Versailles: A. De Jonge, The Weimar Chronicle (New York: New American Library, 1978) Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943) Richard Hunt, The Creation of the Weimar Republic: Still-Born Democracy? (Lexington: Heath, 1969) J.M. Keynes, Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Macmillan, 1920) Walter Lacqueur, Weimar: A Cultural History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974) Ivo Lederer, ed., The Versailles Settlement (Boston: Heath, 1960) Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2002) Arno J. Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968) Harold Nicholson, Peacemaking 1919 (London: Methuen, 1964) The Russian Revolution: Andrei Bely, Petersburg (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978) E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1960-1963) Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) Elisabeth Heresch, Blood on the Snow: Eyewitness Accounts of the Russian Revolution (New York: Paragon House, 1990) Alexander Kerensky, The Kerensky Memoirs: Russia and History’s Turning Point (London: Cassell, 1963) V.I. Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1975) Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955) Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra (New York: Atheneum, 1967) Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1991) John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World (New York: Vintage Books, 1960) Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution (London: Gollancz, 1965) Fascism and Nazism: Armando Borghi, Mussolini Red and Black, trans. Dorothy Daudley (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1974) Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: Harper & Row, 1964) F.L. Carsten, The Rise of Fascism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) Galeazzo conte Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 1939-1943, ed. Hugh Gibson (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1946) Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943) Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories (New York: Laughlin, 1954) Werned Maser, ed., Hitler’s Letters and Notes, trans. Arnold Pomerans (New York: Harper & Row, 1974) J. Noakes & G. Pridham, eds., Nazism, 1919-194 (New York: Schocken Books, 1990) Dennis Mack Smith, Mussolini (New York: Knopf, 1982) J.P. Stern, Hitler: The Führer and the People (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)


Stalinism: Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1986) Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (New York: Macmillan, 1968) Robert Daniels, The Stalin Revolution (Lexington: Heath, 1972) Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961) Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, trans. Daphne Hardy (London: J. Cape, 1965) Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope against Hope: A Memoir (New York: Atheneum, 1974) Riy Medvedev, Let History Judge (New York: Knopf, 1971) Alexander Solzhenitzyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (New York: Bantam Books, 1981) Appeasement: Martin Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966) D. Lee, Munich: Blunder, Plot or Tragic Necessity? (Lexington: Heath, 1970) F.L. Loewenheim, Peace or Appeasement (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965) William R. Rock, British Appeasement in the 1930s (London: Edward Arnold, 1977) A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (London: Hamilton, 1961) J. Weeler-Bennett, Munich: Prologue to Tragedy (London: Macmillan, 1963) The Bomb: John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Knopf, 1965) Gar Alperowitz, The Decision to Use the Bomb (New York: Knopf, 1995) Herbert Feis, Japan Subdued (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961) Richard B. Frank, Ketsu-Go (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007) Robert J. Maddox, Weapons for Victory (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004) Hasegaaw Tsuyoshi, Racing the Enemy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005) Robert P. Newman, Enola Gay and the Court of History (New York: P. Lang, 2004) The Holocaust: L. Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1981) Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952) Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, part one trans. Ilse Lasch (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984) Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners (New York: Vintage Books, 1997) Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961) Berel Lang, Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990) R.G. Lewin, Witnesses to the Holocaust: An Oral History (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990) P. Levi, If This Is a Man, trans. Stuart Woolf (London: The Bodley Head, 1966) Michael Marrus, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981) Bernd.Naumann, Auschwitzt (New York: Praeger, 1966) Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands (New York: Basic Books, 1990) S G. Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began (New York: Praeger, 1990) Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1990)

a violent century — world history since 1914

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