tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/world-war-ii-1678/articlesWorld War II – La Conversation2024-03-21T12:24:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2254272024-03-21T12:24:46Z2024-03-21T12:24:46ZJames Clavell’s ‘Shōgun’ is reimagined for a new generation of TV viewers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582911/original/file-20240319-30-7y6fii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C3754%2C2510&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Actress Anna Sawai, who plays Mariko in FX's 'Shōgun,' attends the Los Angeles premiere of the series on Feb. 13, 2024.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/anna-sawai-attends-the-los-angeles-premiere-of-fxs-shogun-news-photo/2009310007?adppopup=true">Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1980, when James Clavell’s blockbuster historical novel “<a href="https://www.blackstonepublishing.com/sho-gun-bhdr.html#541=2907599">Shōgun</a>” was turned into <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080274/">a TV miniseries</a>, some 33% of American households with a television <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2024/03/09/tv-streaming/shogun-hiroyuki-sanada-last-samurai/">tuned in</a>. It quickly became one of the most viewed miniseries to date, second only to “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075572/">Roots</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=M4O349MAAAAJ&hl=en">I’m a historian of Japan</a> who specializes in the history of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Tokugawa-period">the Tokugawa</a>, or early modern era – a period from 1603 to 1868, during which the bulk of the action in “Shōgun” takes place. As a first-year graduate student, I sat glued to the television for five nights in September 1980, enthralled that someone cared enough to create a series about the period in Japan’s past that had captured my imagination. </p>
<p>I wasn’t alone. In 1982, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/25/education/adapting-shogun-for-the-classroom.html">historian Henry D. Smith estimated</a> that one-fifth to one-half of students enrolled in university courses about Japan at that time had read the novel and became interested in Japan because of it. </p>
<p>“‘Shōgun,’” he added, “probably conveyed more information about the daily life of Japan to more people than all the combined writings of scholars, journalists, and novelists since the Pacific War.” </p>
<p>Some even credit the series <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240305-shogun-tv-hit-fx-violent-japanese-history">for making sushi trendy in the U.S</a>.</p>
<p>That 1980 miniseries has now been remade as FX’s “Shōgun,” a 10-episode production that is garnering rave reviews – including a <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/shogun_2024/s01">near-100% rating from review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes</a>.</p>
<p>Both miniseries closely hew to Clavell’s 1975 novel, which is a fictionalized retelling of the story of the first Englishman, <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374706234/samuraiwilliam">Will Adams</a> – the character John Blackthorne in the novel – to set foot in Japan.</p>
<p>And yet there are subtle differences in each series that reveal the zeitgeist of each era, along with America’s shifting attitudes toward Japan.</p>
<h2>The ‘Japanese miracle’</h2>
<p>The original 1980 series reflects both the confidence of postwar America and its fascination with its resurgent former enemy.</p>
<p>World War II had left Japan devastated economically and psychologically. But by the 1970s and 1980s, the country had come to dominate global markets for consumer electronic, semiconductors and the auto industry. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12815-0_7">Its gross national product per capita rose spectacularly</a>: from less than US$200 in 1952 to $8,900 in 1980 – the year “Shōgun” appeared on television – to almost $20,000 in 1988, surpassing the United States, West Germany and France. </p>
<p>Many Americans wanted to know the secret to Japan’s head-spinning economic success – the so-called “<a href="https://hbr.org/1998/01/reinterpreting-the-japanese-economic-miracle">Japanese miracle</a>.” Could Japan’s history and culture offer clues?</p>
<p>During the 1970s and 1980s, scholars sought to understand the miracle by analyzing not just the Japanese economy but also the country’s various institutions: schools, social policy, corporate culture and policing. </p>
<p>In his 1979 book, “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/771294">Japan as Number One: Lessons for America</a>,” sociologist Ezra Vogel argued that the U.S. could learn a lot from Japan, whether it was through the country’s long-term economic planning, collaboration between government and industry, investments in education, and quality control of goods and services.</p>
<h2>A window into Japan</h2>
<p>Clavell’s expansive 1,100-page novel was released in the middle of the Japanese miracle. It sold more than <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/shogun-novel-japan">7 million copies in five years</a>; then the series aired, which prompted the sale of another 2.5 million copies.</p>
<p>In it, Clavell tells the story of Blackthorne, who, shipwrecked off the coast of Japan in 1600, finds the country in a peaceful interlude after an era of civil war. But that peace is about to be shattered by competition among the five regents who have been appointed to ensure the succession of a young heir to their former lord’s position as top military leader.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of middle-aged man sitting at a typewriter by the ocean." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582898/original/file-20240319-26-80u5ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582898/original/file-20240319-26-80u5ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582898/original/file-20240319-26-80u5ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582898/original/file-20240319-26-80u5ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582898/original/file-20240319-26-80u5ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582898/original/file-20240319-26-80u5ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582898/original/file-20240319-26-80u5ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Shogun,’ which James Clavell published in 1975, has sold millions of copies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/james-clavell-on-typewriter-by-the-ocean-1977-news-photo/135869841?adppopup=true">Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In the meantime, local leaders don’t know whether to treat Blackthorne and his crew as dangerous pirates or harmless traders. His men end up being imprisoned, but Blackthorne’s knowledge of the world outside of Japan – not to mention his boatload of cannons, muskets and ammunition – save him.</p>
<p>He ends up offering advice and munitions to one of the regents, Lord Yoshi Toranaga, the fictional version of the real-life Tokugawa Ieyasu. With this edge, <a href="https://www.japan-experience.com/plan-your-trip/to-know/japanese-history/tokugawa-ieyasu">Toranaga rises to become shogun</a>, the country’s top military leader.</p>
<p>Viewers of the 1980 television series witness Blackthorne slowly learning Japanese and coming to appreciate the value of Japanese culture. For example, at first, he’s resistant to bathing. <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-long-history-of-japans-tidying-up">Since cleanliness is deeply rooted in Japanese culture</a>, his Japanese hosts find his refusal irrational. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Bearded man with shoulder length brown hair wearing a kimono and holding a samurai sword." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582905/original/file-20240319-18-q4d2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582905/original/file-20240319-18-q4d2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582905/original/file-20240319-18-q4d2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582905/original/file-20240319-18-q4d2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582905/original/file-20240319-18-q4d2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582905/original/file-20240319-18-q4d2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582905/original/file-20240319-18-q4d2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Actor Richard Chamberlain as John Blackthorne in the 1980 NBC miniseries ‘Shōgun.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/richard-chamberlain-us-actor-wearing-a-kimono-and-holding-a-news-photo/120543334?adppopup=true">Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Blackthorne’s, and the viewers’, gradual acclimatization to Japanese culture is complete when, late in the series, he is reunited with the crew of his Dutch ship who have been held in captivity. Blackthorne is thoroughly repulsed by their filth and demands a bath to cleanse himself from their contagion. </p>
<p>Blackthorne comes to see Japan as far more civilized than the West. Just like his real-life counterpart, Will Adams, he decides to remain in Japan even after being granted his freedom. He marries a Japanese woman, with whom he has two children, and ends his days on foreign soil.</p>
<h2>From fascination to fear</h2>
<p>However, the positive views of Japan that its economic miracle generated, and that “Shogun” reinforced, eroded <a href="https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5880.html#1989">as the U.S. trade deficit with Japan ballooned</a>: from $10 billion in 1981 to $50 billion in 1985. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/29/opinion/bashing-japan-isn-t-the-answer.html">Japan bashing</a>” spread in the U.S., and visceral anger exploded when <a href="https://sourcesforcourses.com/post/136624898100/american-auto-workers-smash-toyota-gm-in-protest">American autoworkers smashed Toyota cars in March 1983</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1987/07/13/boycott-toshiba-computers-but-dont-let-congress-force-you/a6130b8a-7be4-4737-8150-adc74e53443b/">congressmen shattered a Toshiba boombox</a> with sledgehammers on the Capitol lawn in 1987. That same year, the magazine Foreign Affairs warned of “<a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/1987-12-01/coming-us-japan-crisis">The Coming U.S.-Japan Crisis</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582909/original/file-20240319-20-kiek7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Newsweek magazine cover that reads 'Japan Invades Hollywood' and features a graphic of a woman in a kimono posing like the woman in the Columbia Pictures logo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582909/original/file-20240319-20-kiek7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582909/original/file-20240319-20-kiek7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582909/original/file-20240319-20-kiek7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582909/original/file-20240319-20-kiek7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582909/original/file-20240319-20-kiek7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582909/original/file-20240319-20-kiek7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582909/original/file-20240319-20-kiek7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Newsweek’s Oct. 9, 1989, cover describes Sony’s purchase of Columbia Pictures as an invasion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.wolfgangsvault.com/m/xlarge/OMS793331-MZ/newsweek-vintage-magazine-oct-9-1989.webp">Newsweek</a></span>
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<p>This backlash against Japan in the U.S. was also fueled by almost a decade of acquisitions of iconic American companies, such as Firestone, Columbia Pictures and Universal Studios, along with high-profile real estate, such as the iconic <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2017/07/18/ma-flashback-the-takeover-of-rockefeller-center-capped-a-1980s-frenzy-now-a-new-mania-is-afoot/?sh=8f095">Rockefeller Center</a>.</p>
<p>But the notion of Japan as a threat reached a peak in 1989, after which its economy stalled. The 1990s and early 2000s were dubbed Japan’s “<a href="https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,984426,00.html">lost decade</a>.”</p>
<p>Yet a curiosity and love for Japanese culture persists, thanks, in part, to manga and anime. More Japanese feature films and television series are also <a href="http://interacnetwork.com/best-japanese-dramas-to-watch">making their way to popular streaming services</a>, including the series “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7256504/">Tokyo Girl</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1882928/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_midnight%2520diner">Midnight Diner</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16970638/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_6_tt_8_nm_0_q_sanctuary">Sanctuary</a>.” In December 2023, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Japan was “<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/japan-content-boom-1235753598/">on the precipice of a content boom</a>.” </p>
<h2>Widening the lens</h2>
<p>As FX’s remake of “Shōgun” demonstrates, American viewers today apparently don’t need to be slowly introduced to Japanese culture by a European guide. </p>
<p>In the new series, Blackthorne is not even the sole protagonist.</p>
<p>Instead, he shares the spotlight with several Japanese characters, such as Lord Yoshi Toranaga, who no longer serves as a one-dimensional sidekick to Blackthorne, as he did in the original miniseries. </p>
<p>This change is facilitated by the fact that Japanese characters now communicate directly with the audience in Japanese, with English subtitles. In the 1980 miniseries, the Japanese dialogue went untranslated. There were English-speaking Japanese characters in the original, such as Blackthorne’s female translator, Mariko. But they spoke in a highly formalized, unrealistic English.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Japanese man wearing glasses and a suit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583251/original/file-20240320-20-fql0t2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583251/original/file-20240320-20-fql0t2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583251/original/file-20240320-20-fql0t2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583251/original/file-20240320-20-fql0t2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583251/original/file-20240320-20-fql0t2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583251/original/file-20240320-20-fql0t2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583251/original/file-20240320-20-fql0t2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actor Hiroyuki Sanada plays Lord Yoshi Toranaga in FX’s ‘Shōgun.’ Though Sanada’s character speaks in Japanese, there are English subtitles for viewers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/LAPremiereofShogun/b73143a975a7403bb99e91e837324d5d/photo?Query=Hiroyuki%20Sanada&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=127&currentItemNo=6">AP Photo/Chris Pizzello</a></span>
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<p>Along with depicting authentic costumes, combat and gestures, the show’s Japanese characters speak using the native language of the early modern era instead of using the contemporary Japanese that made the 1980 series so unpopular among Japanese viewers. (Imagine a film on the American Revolution featuring George Washington speaking like Jimmy Kimmel.) </p>
<p>Of course, authenticity has its limits. The producers of both television series decided to adhere closely to the original novel. In doing so, they’re perhaps unwittingly reproducing certain stereotypes about Japan. </p>
<p>Most strikingly, there’s the fetishization of death, as several characters have a penchant for violence and sadism, while many others commit ritual suicide, <a href="https://theconversation.com/japans-most-famous-writer-committed-suicide-after-a-failed-coup-attempt-now-new-photos-add-more-layers-to-the-haunting-act-151903">or <em>seppuku</em></a>.</p>
<p>Part of this may have been simply a function of author Clavell being a self-professed “<a href="https://www.columbia.edu/%7Ehds2/learning/index.html">storyteller, not an historian</a>.” But this may have also reflected his experiences in World War II, when he spent three years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Still, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/13/magazine/making-of-a-literary-shogun.html">as Clavell noted</a>, he came to deeply admire the Japanese. </p>
<p>His novel, as a whole, beautifully conveys this admiration. The two miniseries have, in my view, successfully followed suit, enthralling audiences in each of their times.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225427/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Constantine Nomikos Vaporis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Compared to its 1980 predecessor, the new FX series presents a more authentic portrayal of early modern Japan.Constantine Nomikos Vaporis, Professor of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2246802024-03-11T13:10:44Z2024-03-11T13:10:44ZHow alternative communities have evolved – from pacifist communes to a solution to the ageing population<p>People have sought solace and strength in communal living for thousands of years. But unlike traditional villages bound by kinship or geography, “intentional communities” are deliberately constructed by people who choose to share not just space, but also a specific set of values, beliefs or goals. Such forging of a collective path is often in response to times of social change. </p>
<p>Here are three instances where people have turned to intentional communities to seek sanctuary, purpose and alternative ways of living. </p>
<h2>Second world war</h2>
<p>As the war raged across Europe, one particular group of people was looking for alternative solutions. Conscientious objectors were people who refused to fight for moral or religious reasons. </p>
<p>It is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwy002">estimated</a> that there were around 60,000 male conscientious objectors in Britain. Some took up non-combatant roles, such as medics, but others sought out less conventional opportunities. With farming identified as an exempt occupation, some conscientious objectors joined pacifist “back to the land” communities. </p>
<p>One such community was <a href="https://www.littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/little-toller/no-matter-how-many-skies-have-fallen-by-ken-worpole/">Frating Hall Farm</a> in Essex. It provided a safe haven for those who did not wish to fight in the war. As well as farming, the community lived, ate and worked together. </p>
<p>Another such community was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/dec/05/conscientious-objectors-lincolnshire-collow-abbey-farm-play-remembrance">Collow Abbey Farm</a> in Lincolnshire. This was a farming cooperative set up by a different set of conscientious objectors. Again, the principles of pacifism, farming and community brought individuals and families together in a time of need. </p>
<p>Many of these communities dissipated after the war ended, having served their purpose as safe havens for pacifists. </p>
<h2>1960s</h2>
<p>Still in the shadow of the second world war, the 1960s blossomed into a more permissive era which allowed for a freer sense of self and expression. This decade heralded a sense of social change with movements such as civil rights and women’s rights emerging. As the decade progressed, so did the different types of intentional communities. </p>
<p>The 1960s commune movement has been described by some experts as a <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203615171-18/sixties-era-communes-timothy-miller">hotbed</a> of free love, drug taking and loose morals. But others <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203790656-7/collective-profile-communes-intentional-communities-yaacov-oved">argue</a> they embodied something much more important and were representative of the social changes under way at the time. </p>
<p>In an attempt to escape “straight” society, many young people sought out spaces that allowed them to experiment with alternative forms of living and identity. These were communities that often embraced the non-nuclear family alongside other “counter cultural” ideas such as veganism and non-gendered childrearing. </p>
<p>One well documented example of this is <a href="https://www.braziers.org.uk/buildings-and-land/main-house/">Braziers Park</a> in Oxfordshire. It was a community that formed in the 1950s but flourished in the 1960s and 70s. Braziers was initially set up as an educational community. </p>
<p>Its alternative nature attracted the likes of Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger, and his then girlfriend <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Faithfull/wLGpJ_8I6WYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">Marianne Faithfull</a>, who had lived there during her early life.
She described it as “otherworldly” in her memoir. Braziers still exists today and now offers courses, workshops and retreats.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/four-reasons-to-consider-co-housing-and-housing-cooperatives-for-alternative-living-99097">Four reasons to consider co-housing and housing cooperatives for alternative living</a>
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<p>Another example was <a href="https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-a-beautiful-way-to-live-1971-online">Crow Hall</a> in Norfolk, which was founded in 1965. Although they denied they were a commune, it had all of the marks of being one, with elements such as shared accommodation and collective child rearing. The community operated an open door policy, inviting others to “come find themselves”. It eventually dispersed in 1997. </p>
<p>Like Braziers, some communities set up during the 1960s are still in place today such as <a href="https://www.postliphall.org.uk/">Postlip Hall</a> near Cheltenham, or the <a href="http://www.ashram.org.uk/">Ashram Community</a> near Sheffield. But many others ended as society moved on. Experts who have <a href="https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/item/911v7/nineteen-sixties-radicalism-and-its-critics-radical-utopians-liberal-realists-and-postmodern-sceptics">reflected</a> on this period describe it as both a time of freedom and, for others, mistakenly liberal.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">New Ground Cohousing in High Barnet, north London.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Today</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://diggersanddreamers.org.uk/#">communities scene</a> continues to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/17/is-the-boom-in-communal-living-really-the-good-life">flourish</a> but this time under new challenges such as an ageing population and climate change. It’s difficult to estimate how many such communities exist in the UK, as nobody keeps official figures. </p>
<p>Arguably, some of the same generation who were “tuning in and dropping out” in the 1960s are now seeking equally alternative solutions for their older age. For some, this is to be found in the phenomenon of <a href="https://cohousing.org.uk/news/how-the-rise-of-cohousing-is-enriching-seniors-lives/">“senior cohousing”</a>. These are intentional communities run by their residents where each household is a self-contained home alongside shared community space and facilities. </p>
<p>One example of senior cohousing is <a href="https://newgroundcohousing.uk">New Ground</a> in north London. This is a community of older women, founded in 1998, who took their housing situation into their own hands. Defying some of the more traditional models of housing for older people, such as sheltered accommodation, New Ground is an intentional community for women over 50. They live by the ethos of “looking out for, rather than looking after each other”.</p>
<p>For others, the solution involves joining an intergenerational community such as <a href="https://www.oldhall.org.uk/old-hall-community/">Old Hall</a> in Suffolk where octogenarians live alongside children and adults under one roof. This is a community of around 50 people who farm the land, share their meals and manage the manor house in which they live.</p>
<p>As society evolves, so too do the forms that intentional communities take.
While the specific challenges may change, the human desire for connection and a sense of belonging remains constant.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224680/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kirsten Stevens-Wood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From conscientious objectors to hippies and seniors, intentional communities offer refuge and purpose for people seeking a different way of life.Kirsten Stevens-Wood, Senior Lecturer, Cardiff Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225912024-03-08T13:35:55Z2024-03-08T13:35:55ZDespite its big night at the Oscars, ‘Oppenheimer’ is a disappointment and a lost opportunity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580022/original/file-20240305-24-oirj08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C6%2C4085%2C2150&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The U.S. detonates an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in Micronesia in the first underwater test of the device.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/united-states-detonating-an-atomic-bomb-at-bikini-atoll-in-news-photo/113493339?adppopup=true">Universal History Archive/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With 13 Oscars nominations <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/oscars-2024-live-winners-list-academy-awards-oppenheimer-jimmy-kimmel-210004276.html">and seven wins</a> – including best picture – “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk">Oppenheimer</a>” was the star of the 96th Academy Awards.</p>
<p>Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster, which told the story of the making of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, added to its awards season haul that includes <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/07/movies/golden-globes-takeaways.html">five Golden Globes</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/britain-bafta-film-awards-oppenheimer-220af1ec73e47e6222abe2b0934cddc8">seven BAFTA awards</a>.</p>
<p>But as a historian <a href="https://academic.oup.com/whq/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/whq/whae016/7610040?redirectedFrom=fulltext">whose research has revolved around the survivors of the bombings</a>, I cannot help but be disappointed that, yet again, the dominant narrative of the bombs chugs along. </p>
<p>This narrative has long informed how Hollywood and the U.S. media have addressed nuclear weapons. It paints the bombs’ creation as a morally fraught but necessary project – an extraordinary invention by exceptional minds, a national project that was a matter of life or death for a country mired in a global conflict. To use the bombs was a difficult decision at a challenging time. Yet it’s important to remember that, above all, the bombs saved democracy.</p>
<p>There is something that strikes me as so inward-looking to this narrative – it is so focused on the stress over losing an arms race, on fears of making a mistake, on anxiety over what would happen if bombs were to one day be dropped on the U.S. – that it drowns out what actually did happen after the bombs were detonated. </p>
<h2>A barren cultural landscape</h2>
<p>When Nolan was pressed over why he chose not to show any images of Hiroshima, Nagasaki or the victims, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/11/movies/robert-downey-jr-christopher-nolan-oppenheimer.html?searchResultPosition=2">he said</a>, “less can be more” – that the subtext of what’s not shown is even more powerful, since it forces audiences to use their imaginations.</p>
<p>But what images from popular culture do audiences even have to pull from?</p>
<p>From the 1950s to the 1980s, many Hollywood films explored the fear of a nuclear apocalypse. Only a few depicted mass deaths on the ground – “<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-time-for-a-21st-century-version-of-the-day-after-90270">The Day After</a>” comes to mind – but virtually none showed survivors who looked or sounded like real survivors.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Middle-aged man in a tuxedo and an awards ceremony." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580026/original/file-20240305-26-v8bt61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580026/original/file-20240305-26-v8bt61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580026/original/file-20240305-26-v8bt61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580026/original/file-20240305-26-v8bt61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580026/original/file-20240305-26-v8bt61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580026/original/file-20240305-26-v8bt61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580026/original/file-20240305-26-v8bt61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Oppenheimer’ director Christopher Nolan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/british-film-producer-and-director-christopher-nolan-poses-news-photo/2013546999?adppopup=true">Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Instead, films such as “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/">Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb</a>” simply showed mushroom clouds and bird’s-eye views of the bombs from above. When cameras did zoom in on the ground in films such as “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056331/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_panic%2520in%2520year">Panic in Year Zero!</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086429/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_testament">Testament</a>,” they revealed Americans bracing for or panicking about the bomb being dropped on them. </p>
<p>Watching these films, it’s easy to believe that if a nuclear attack had ever occurred, it must have been in a U.S. city. </p>
<p>This genealogy of films also includes collective biopics of a sort, in which a nuclear drama unfolds among scientists, military officials and politicians.</p>
<p>In the 2024 book “<a href="https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295752341/resisting-the-nuclear/">Resisting the Nuclear: Art and Activism across the Pacific</a>,” one chapter describes how Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein reenacted the Trinity test in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038312/">Atomic Power</a>,” a 1946 film that celebrates the role of science in U.S. military might. They note that in the film’s outtakes, Einstein seemed unfocused while Oppenheimer appeared stilted. </p>
<p>Clearly, the two scientists were uncomfortable with their newly assigned role as promoters of a mesmerizing, dangerous technology. If “Oppenheimer” expands on this personal discomfort, the film keeps firmly in place the disconnect between the bombs’ creators and the destruction they wrought.</p>
<h2>The bombs didn’t discriminate</h2>
<p>In the end, films like “Oppenheimer” offer few, if any, new insights about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their repercussions. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-08-04/oppenheimer-movie-christopher-nolan-atomic-bomb-hiroshima-nagasaki-critics">More than 200,000 people perished</a>, and the lives lost included not only Japanese civilians but also Koreans who had been in Japan as forced laborers or military conscripts. </p>
<p>In fact, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27017727#:%7E:text=It%20has%20been%20estimated%20that,stayed%20in%20Japan%20%5B2%5D.">1 in every 10 people who survived the bomb were Koreans</a>, but the U.S. government has never recognized them as survivors of U.S. military attacks. To this day they struggle to get access to medical treatment for their long-term radiation illness. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Elderly Korean women cry, shout and hold photos of lost loved ones during a protest march." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580241/original/file-20240306-18-2jgn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580241/original/file-20240306-18-2jgn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580241/original/file-20240306-18-2jgn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580241/original/file-20240306-18-2jgn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580241/original/file-20240306-18-2jgn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580241/original/file-20240306-18-2jgn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580241/original/file-20240306-18-2jgn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Relatives of conscripted Koreans killed in the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki protest at the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/korean-conscripted-victims-family-hold-victim-portrait-with-news-photo/1229624814?adppopup=true">Seung-il Ryu/NurPhoto via Getty Image</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Moreover, about 3,000 to 4,000 of those affected by the bombs were Americans of Japanese ancestry, as I have shown in my <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/american-survivors-trans-pacific-memories-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-naoko-wake/15472870?ean=9781108835275">book about Asian American survivors of the bombings</a>. Most of them were children who were staying with their families, or students who had enrolled in schools in Japan prior to the war because U.S. schools had become increasingly discriminatory to Asian American students.</p>
<p>These non-Japanese survivors – including many U.S.-born citizens – have been known to scholars and activists since at least the 1990s. So it feels surreal to watch a film that depicts the bombs’ effects purely in the context of the U.S. at war against its enemy, Japan. As my work shows, the bombs didn’t discriminate between friend and foe. </p>
<p>It is not that Christopher Nolan ignores the bombs’ power to destroy.</p>
<p>He gestures toward it when he depicts J. Robert Oppenheimer, the nuclear physicist played by Cillian Murphy, <a href="https://collider.com/oppenheimer-cillian-murphy-gymnasium-scene/">imagining a nuclear holocaust</a> when giving a celebratory speech to his colleagues after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.</p>
<p>But what Oppenheimer sees in this hallucination is the face of a young white woman peeling off – played by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6898446/">Nolan’s daughter, Flora</a> – not those of the Japanese, Korean and Asian American people who actually experienced the bombs. Later in the film, Oppenheimer looks away from the images of Hiroshima’s ground zero when they’re shown to him and his Manhattan Project colleagues. </p>
<p>I wondered, as I watched this scene, whether this decision encourages the audience to look away, too.</p>
<h2>Global reverberations</h2>
<p>Even if this film is seen purely through the lens of entertainment, Nolan could have chosen to recognize why the bombs are such a galvanizing subject to begin with: They have done much, much more than make white, middle-class Americans feel anxious or guilty.</p>
<p>Their blasts reverberated across the globe, tearing apart not only America’s wartime enemies but also colonized peoples and racial minorities. </p>
<p>Cold War nuclear production disproportionately hurt Native and Indigenous Americans who worked at uranium mines and the residents of <a href="https://www.arcjournals.org/international-journal-of-research-in-sociology-and-anthropology/volume-3-issue-4/4">the Pacific Islands chosen as the sites of several dozens of U.S. nuclear tests</a>.</p>
<p>For those on the receiving end, the effects of the nuclear explosions are not a thing of the past. <a href="https://theconversation.com/bikini-islanders-still-deal-with-fallout-of-us-nuclear-tests-more-than-70-years-later-58567">They are a daily reality</a>. </p>
<p>And the effects of radiation continue to plague not just humans but the environment. Scientists still don’t know what to do with <a href="https://upittpress.org/books/9780822966128/">highly radioactive nuclear waste</a>, whether it’s from nuclear power plants or former nuclear test sites that remain off-limits <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4165831/">because they are too contaminated to inhabit</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/">As global conflicts increase the possibility of nuclear war</a>, it’s certainly important to talk about the ongoing legacies of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. </p>
<p>But to create a more balanced understanding of nuclear weapons, it would be helpful if talented filmmakers like Nolan made more of an effort to look beyond the narrow immediacy of a mushroom cloud.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Naoko Wake does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For all its praise, the film furthers the dominant narrative of the bombs as a morally fraught but necessary project, with American anxieties playing a starring role.Naoko Wake, Professor of History, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225882024-02-27T19:40:15Z2024-02-27T19:40:15ZBetty Smith enchanted a generation of readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ − even as she groused that she hoped Williamsburg would be flattened<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577625/original/file-20240223-28-ht6czh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C11%2C3691%2C2714&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Betty Smith's novel sold millions of copies in the 1940s.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-young-women-smile-as-they-crowd-around-another-who-news-photo/119076541?adppopup=true">Weegee/International Center of Photography via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Eighty years ago, in the winter and spring of 1944, Brooklyn-born author <a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/smith-betty">Betty Smith</a> was entering a new chapter of life.</p>
<p>A year earlier, she was an unknown writer, negotiating with her publisher about manuscript edits and the date of publication for her first book, “<a href="https://archive.org/stream/ATreeGrowsInBrooklynByBettySmith/A+Tree+Grows+In+Brooklyn+by+Betty+Smith_djvu.txt">A Tree Grows in Brooklyn</a>,” a semi-autobiographical novel about the poor but spirited Nolan family. </p>
<p>Now she was one of the lucky few. Her book was spotted in cafes, on buses and in bookstores all over town. The following year, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038190/">when it was being made into a film</a> directed by Elia Kazan, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=H1MEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA43&dq=A+Tree+Grows+in+Brooklyn&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj25depp-CDAxXiSTABHYd3C6YQ6AF6BAgKEAI#v=onepage&q=A%20Tree%20Grows%20in%20Brooklyn&f=false">Life magazine reported</a>, “Betty Smith’s ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ (2,500,000 copies sold) has become one of the best-loved novels of our time.”</p>
<p>New York in the 1940s was not the city we know today. The Empire State Building had not reached its <a href="https://www.esbnyc.com/about/history">full height</a>, nor had the statue of <a href="https://www.centralpark.com/things-to-do/attractions/alice-in-wonderland/">“Alice in Wonderland” taken up residence in Central Park</a>. And it would be decades before anyone was humming along to a tune that brashly commanded, “Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leavin’ today, I want to be a part of it: New York, New York!” </p>
<p>Brooklyn, too, was still becoming itself – and no other 20th-century American novel did quite so much for the borough’s reputation.</p>
<h2>Readers fall for Brooklyn</h2>
<p>During World War II, writes law professor <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/when-books-went-to-war-molly-guptill-manning">Molly Guptill Manning</a>, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” was one of the most popular books among the Armed Services Editions, which were mass-produced paperbacks selected by a panel of literary experts for distribution to the U.S. military during World War II. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Green horizontal copy of 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' with creases along the cover." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Armed Services Edition of ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://blogs.lib.unc.edu/ncm/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2017/03/A-Tree-Grows-in-Brooklyn-ASE.jpg">UNC Libraries</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It seemed like everyone wanted to declare some affiliation with the novel-turned-film and, by extension, with Brooklyn. Even readers who had never set foot in the borough nonetheless found themselves enchanted by it through Smith’s portrayal. </p>
<p>As one reader wrote to Smith, “Raised as a ‘rebel of the old South,’ Brooklyn has long been my symbol of all yankee, thus learning to hate it; but now I have learned to love it through Francie’s eyes … as Francie loved it.”</p>
<p>Advertisers also took note, riffing on Smith’s title with tags such as, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA8&dq=A+Tree+Grows+in+Brooklyn&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjgn8vbp-CDAxU6RDABHX3uAF44ChDoAXoECAkQAg#v=onepage&q=A%20Tree%20Grows%20in%20Brooklyn&f=false">A Dress Grows on Peggy</a>,” or Rheingold extra dry lager – the “beer that grows in Brooklyn.”</p>
<h2>Poverty loses its sheen of shame</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, readers who had grown up in the borough responded enthusiastically to Smith’s evocations of their favorite neighborhood haunts, writing to her to share their own memories of the shops and streets that she had included in the novel. </p>
<p>“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” had done something remarkable for them: It removed the veil of shame that surrounded tenement living and, as historian Judith E. Smith has written, <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/visions-of-belonging/9780231121712">helped them reclaim their humble origins</a>.</p>
<p>And not just reclaim them. The novel affirmed the desire to move beyond poverty, as the protagonist, Francie, had done, and Betty Smith, too.</p>
<p>Francie’s wanderings through Brooklyn lead to her discovery of a more inviting public school than her own. With her father’s help, she manages to enroll in the school, which is better funded but farther from home. Despite the extra-long schlep, Francie sees it as “a good thing” to have found this new school: “It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.” </p>
<p>It was a feeling that people of many backgrounds could understand, and not just in Brooklyn. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Red and white brick apartment buildings in Brooklyn." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">702 Grand Street in Williamsburg, where Smith spent part of her childhood and which served as the setting for ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,’ pictured in 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.compass.com/listing/702-grand-street-brooklyn-ny-11211/265170627315403233/">Compass Real Estate</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Smith certainly understood the importance of broadening her horizons: Although she never finished high school, when her marriage to a University of Michigan graduate student brought her to Ann Arbor, she was able to audit classes as a special student.</p>
<p>There, her work for her playwriting classes led to a prestigious playwriting prize, and then an invitation to study at Yale School of Drama. Divorced at that point, Smith was free to pursue her education in theater at Yale. The theme of self-improvement through education made “A Tree Grows” relatable for readers of modest origins.</p>
<p>Readers were quick to see the novel as a paean to Brooklyn, and often sought to bond with Smith over their presumed shared love of Brooklyn.</p>
<p>“I hope you will give us further stories of the Brooklyn which you know, and, I am sure, love so well,” wrote one reader. </p>
<p>“Some day, if you have time, it might be fun to chew the fat a bit about old Williamsburgh (sic),” journalist Meyer Berger wrote to Smith after reading and reviewing her novel. </p>
<p>“Betty Smith obviously loves Brooklyn and is proud of it,” Orville Prescott declared in his <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1943/08/18/issue.html">glowing New York Times review</a>.</p>
<h2>Smith scorns the borough’s new arrivals</h2>
<p>But did Betty Smith love Brooklyn? </p>
<p>After all, she wrote the novel while living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina – years after having moved away from New York. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bkmag.com/2021/08/20/priced-out-the-2020-census-throws-brooklyns-affordable-housing-crisis-into-relief/">Like so many who leave Brooklyn today</a>, Smith did not return to take up residence, in part because she could not afford to live there on her own. By the time she had earned a windfall from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” she had come to love Chapel Hill.</p>
<p>Smith also left Brooklyn with mixed feelings about her hometown. <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/visions-of-belonging/9780231121712">She wrote to her publishers in 1942</a>, “If Hitler’s bombers should ever get over and if any portion of this great city has to be wiped out, it would be a blessing if it were (Williamsburg).” </p>
<p>“Evil seems to be part of the very materials that the sidewalks are made out of and the wood and the brick of the houses,” she added. </p>
<p>Although writing about Brooklyn had brought her fortune and fame, she had no desire to return. </p>
<p>As she explained in her 1942 letter, Smith perceived Brooklyn’s current situation as the result of a changing population and growing crime: “A hundred years ago, it was a quiet peaceful village settled by hard-working, sturdy, honest burghers,” Smith reflected in her letter, adding that even 25 years ago, Williamsburg was a gentler place. “But now it’s a fearful one.” </p>
<p>Smith offered her own analysis of the situation: “The feuds in the neighborhood came about because most of the Italians originally came from Sicily and were fierce and murderous. The Jews in the neighborhood were mostly Russian Jews, conditioned to pogroms and much fiercer and more ready to fight.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Kids tug and pull at one another while a woman cries in the background and another woman tries to keep order." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A crowd gathers in Williamsburg in 1941 to see the corpse of a man shot twice by an unknown gunman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/premium-rates-apply-a-crowd-gathers-in-the-williamsburg-news-photo/2716771?adppopup=true">Weegee/International Center of Photography via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like many Americans at the time, Smith held some entrenched and intolerant views about immigrants and their character. Since she was often invited to contribute guest essays to publications during the height of her fame, she had ample opportunity to express her worldview. </p>
<p>After World War II, Smith directed this hostility toward foreigners at America’s wartime enemies. In her August 1945 essay “<a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1945/08/26/305533912.html?pageNumber=104">Thoughts for These Days of Victory</a>,” she encouraged readers not to forget their anger at wartime enemies: “Let us hold this bitterness so that we’ll not again be lulled into a false sense of security. The war proved conclusively that not all men are brothers and that not all nations are sisters.” </p>
<p>A full understanding of the Betty Smith behind the novel that changed how Americans felt about Brooklyn – and their humble origins – are complicated by Smith’s own views and her experiences away from Brooklyn. </p>
<p>As Smith knew, making something of yourself often requires leaving home. It’s hard to tell whether distance made her heart grow fonder. In leaving Brooklyn, Smith had not suddenly started seeing her hometown through rose-colored glasses.</p>
<p>In Chapel Hill she was finally able to see Brooklyn – and write about it – in a way that brought readers of all kinds closer to Brooklyn and legitimized their own origin stories. That, in and of itself, is a kind of love, even if it’s not the unconditional kind so many had imagined.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Gordan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation. But Smith rarely saw her hometown through rose-colored glasses − and even grew to resent it.Rachel Gordan, Assistant Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2243442024-02-26T14:24:53Z2024-02-26T14:24:53ZI watched Plymouth’s unexploded bomb being taken out to sea, and recalled the city’s wartime story<p>Its Friday evening and I’m sitting waiting for a bomb to sail past me. This isn’t a regular Friday and I can no longer feel my toes or fingers as I sit in the gathering gloom in the gardens of Admiralty House, overlooking the river Tamar, close to the Devonport Naval Base.</p>
<p>Four days previously, on Tuesday, February 20 2024, a builder working on a house extension in the Keyham area of Plymouth, on England’s south coast, began to take an interest in a corroded lump of metal he’d recently exposed. </p>
<p>Initially it looked like an old pipe or boiler that someone had buried in the back garden. But it was raining. As the wet soil fell away from “the pipe”, the dimensions and shape resolved into what would prove to be a second world war-era, SC500, high-explosive, air-dropped munition. </p>
<p>That’s a 500kg bomb to you and me. It was dropped there by the German Luftwaffe, most likely in the heavy raids the city was subjected to in March-April 1941. </p>
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<p>Plymouth, where I have taught for 20 years, <a href="https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/The-War-for-Englands-Shores-Hardback/p/24042">was home</a> to the Devonport naval base. This put it high on the list of targeting priorities for the German Air Force and Navy in 1941. </p>
<p>Between March and April of that year, German forces launched <a href="https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571271030-living-through-the-blitz/">deadly raids</a> against Plymouth. Thousands of munitions, ranging from 1kg incendiaries to 1,000kg high-explosive bombs, rained down on the city. They razed the city centre, destroying and damaging over 20,000 homes and killing almost 1,200 Plymouthians. </p>
<p>Eighty three years later, the local Royal Navy Unexploded Ordnance Team – the Bomb Squad – confirmed that a bomb had indeed been found in the terraced streets behind the dockyard. A remarkably efficient operation immediately swung into action. This involved Royal Navy and Army explosives experts, the police, the emergency services, the local council, its workers and other volunteers, together with the residents of the city. </p>
<p>This has <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3396315/Royal-Navy-bomb-disposal-experts-remove-WWII-bomb-discovered-nature-reserve.html">happened before in Plymouth</a>. Every year the occasional bomb is found in those cities across Britain that were blitzed during the second world war. </p>
<h2>War-time history</h2>
<p>Just the week before the Keyham bomb was discovered, I had taken my history students to the Box, Plymouth’s local museum, to look at the Blitz records held there. The <a href="https://www.theboxplymouth.com/blog/history/blitz-80-the-bomb-book">Plymouth Bomb Book</a>, in particular, makes for sobering reading. </p>
<p>This book features a map of the city dotted with red for all the places where high-explosive bombs are known to have fallen – the visual equivalent of a city stricken with an outbreak of war-related measles. The war would leave its mark on the city. New houses would come to break up older blocks. Whole districts would be destroyed and cleared away and a city centre redeveloped according the <a href="https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/3219/">1943 Plan for Plymouth</a>. </p>
<p>Despite the devastation essential services were quickly restored. The vitally important dockyard continued to function. The city picked itself up even as the dead were buried. The rubble that had formerly been shops, offices and homes was tidied into orderly mounds to await removal. </p>
<p>But the war also fostered a feeling among local residents that however good the new post-war Plymouth looked, it could never approach the grandeur of what was lost in 1941.</p>
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<h2>An efficient handling</h2>
<p>As the city was rebuilt in the 1950s and 1960s, the occasional unexploded bomb left beneath the surface would emerge. The Keyham bomb lay undisturbed for more than 80 years. </p>
<p>Its age and its situation in a dense urban environment, meant that by Thursday, February 22, the exclusion zone around the bomb site had extended from 200 metres to over 300 metres. Over 1,200 properties were vacated; 3,250 people found <a href="https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/plymouth-bomb-evacuation-3250-people-9121507">temporary accommodation.</a> </p>
<p>Family and friends, emergency centres, and local hotels were drawn into a mass civilian evacuation. It was remarkably good humoured, and efficiently handled by the authorities, Plymouthians demonstrating the kind of stoicism that their forbears had shown in 1941.</p>
<p>In the city there was a sense that people understood what was at stake for householders whose homes were at risk and for the teams charged with dealing with the emergency. Plymouth, after all, is a city fully aware of its wartime heritage. </p>
<p>With any attempt to blow up the bomb in situ likely to result in the destruction of not one, but several properties, an ambitious plan was hatched. The goal was to extract it and transport it, via road, to get it out to sea. </p>
<p>On Friday, February 23, people living along the route were notified by both government emergency message (its first use in a real emergency in the UK) and by the local media that they had to leave their homes. Everyone did so calmly and efficiently. Homes emptied. Businesses shut down early. </p>
<p>It took 20 minutes for the bomb to be gingerly lifted from its muddy resting place and transported by lorry to the water’s edge. Once at the river Tamar, which flows into the Hamoaze river before joining Plymouth Sound, the bomb was loaded on to a vessel and escorted, by Ministry of Defence police at a distance, out to sea. </p>
<p>It was a protracted process. In the cold and occasional rain, we waited and waited. Our thoughts were with the driver of the lorry and with the crews involved in getting it out to sea. </p>
<p>The bomb sailed quietly past my position then transited the sound, out to beyond the breakwater. As it was lowered to the ocean floor, to await disposal by explosion, you could almost hear the sounds of a city breathing out in relief. You sensed too, a certain civic pride in a challenge well handled.</p>
<p>Shortly before 10pm, in the February darkness, the bomb was exploded in its watery grave. The episode that had begun with high drama, four days earlier, ended in a gentle whimper that most people in the city didn’t hear.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224344/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harry Bennett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent events in Keyham, Plymouth, are a reminder that every year unexploded second world war-era ordinance is still found in British cities.Harry Bennett, Associate Professor (Reader) in History, University of PlymouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2210822024-02-23T13:49:28Z2024-02-23T13:49:28ZThe Russia-Ukraine War has caused a staggering amount of cultural destruction – both seen and unseen<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577441/original/file-20240222-24-fymjst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3988%2C2652&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The ruins of a church in Bohorodychne, Donetsk district, Ukraine, on Jan. 27, 2024.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-a-church-destroyed-by-the-war-in-bohorodychne-news-photo/1958547329?adppopup=true">Ignacio Marin/Anadolu via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>War doesn’t just destroy lives. It also tears at the fabric of culture. </p>
<p>And in the case of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now about to enter its third year, the remarkable destruction of Ukrainian history and heritage since 2022 hasn’t been a matter of collateral damage. Rather, the Russian military has deliberately targeted <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7424472">museums, churches and libraries</a> that are important to the Ukrainian people. </p>
<p>It’s impossible to document the full extent of the destruction, particularly in the active military zones in eastern and southern Ukraine. However, as archaeologists and filmmakers, we wanted to do what we could. This meant traveling to liberated villages, museums and churches in northern and eastern Ukraine adjacent to regions with ongoing fighting. </p>
<p>Working closely with Ukrainian colleagues, we ended up making two nine-day trips – one in March 2023 and another in October 2023.</p>
<p>Here is some of what we found:</p>
<h2>Sifting through the ruins</h2>
<p>In liberated parts of Ukraine, the bodies of the dead have long been carried away and, for the most part, buried in local cemeteries. But enter any formerly occupied city or town, and you’ll immediately notice that the scars from battles that took place from March 2022 to July 2022 remain starkly visible. </p>
<p>Driving around Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/19/russian-strike-on-chernihiv-ukraine">we witnessed hundreds of burned-out buildings</a>, and many more that are riddled with bullet holes and damaged by shrapnel. </p>
<p>As we wound through small farming villages, we were struck by the ferocity and randomness of modern military firepower: One part of a village could be completely flattened, while a block down the road, the houses were untouched.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman in red coat walking along sidewalk as a destroyed building looms over her." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577367/original/file-20240222-30-6vn3xl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577367/original/file-20240222-30-6vn3xl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577367/original/file-20240222-30-6vn3xl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577367/original/file-20240222-30-6vn3xl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577367/original/file-20240222-30-6vn3xl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577367/original/file-20240222-30-6vn3xl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577367/original/file-20240222-30-6vn3xl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Ukraine Hotel in Chernihiv, pictured in March 2023 after it had been bombed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian Kuijt</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During a wet day in the middle of October 2023, we drove through small tree-lined roads to see the remains of <a href="https://war.city/tours/chernihiv-region/">the Church of the Ascension</a> in Lukashivka, a small village about 8 miles from Chernihiv.</p>
<p>Previously home to about 300 people, Lukashivka was occupied by the Russians in March 2022 and later recaptured by the Ukrainian military. </p>
<p>Built in 1913 with a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfry_(architecture)">two-tiered belfry</a> that can be seen for miles, this large white-brick church is now a shell of what it once was: Its wood flooring has been scorched and its brick roof blown open. In a few sections of the wall, the original plaster and paintings are still preserved.</p>
<p>Inside the place of worship, we traversed the detritus of war, hearing the crunch of spent cartridges, rocket cases, broken bottles and heaps of burned cans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman rides a bike on a wet, cloudy day, past a damaged white church with gold dome." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577368/original/file-20240222-20-wj5qe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577368/original/file-20240222-20-wj5qe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577368/original/file-20240222-20-wj5qe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577368/original/file-20240222-20-wj5qe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577368/original/file-20240222-20-wj5qe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577368/original/file-20240222-20-wj5qe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577368/original/file-20240222-20-wj5qe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Church of the Ascension in Lukashivka, a small village near the city of Chernihiv, in October 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian Kuijt</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>We’ll never really know how many soldiers and civilians died fighting over Lukashivka and the church. </p>
<p>We do know, however, that cultural heritage has few friends during war.</p>
<p>The partially preserved church at Lukashivka is one of hundreds of cultural and religious buildings that have been damaged or destroyed over the last two years. This includes <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/russian-air-strike-damages-transfiguration-cathedral-odesa-180982616/">the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Odesa</a>, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-mariupol-theater-c321a196fbd568899841b506afcac7a1">the Mariupol Drama Theater</a> and the <a href="https://chytomo.com/en/the-bombing-of-kharkiv-damaged-one-of-europe-s-largest-libraries/">Korolenko Kharkiv State Scientific Library</a>, one of the largest libraries in Europe.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The authors explore the Church of the Ascension in Lukashivka, where intense fighting had taken place.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>More than meets the eye</h2>
<p>If traveling in Ukraine has taught us one important lesson, it’s that the digging of trenches can erase history. </p>
<p>While the destruction of churches, libraries and museums viscerally evokes a sense of loss, there’s an entire unseen world below the ground surface – filled with untold numbers of artifacts, bones and buried buildings – that are exposed when trenches are created. </p>
<p>In fact, it’s likely that this war has destroyed more history and archaeology buried below the ground than above it. </p>
<p>As armies did during <a href="https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/about-wwi/trench-warfare">World War I</a>, the Ukrainian military built deep trenches and bunkers along rivers and high ground in the early months of the war. Two years later, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/nov/07/21st-century-trench-warfare-ukrainian-frontline-in-pictures">these defensive trench systems are a central element of the ground war</a> and demarcate the front lines.</p>
<p>In many cases, the trenches were dug into the remains of buried archaeology sites, most of which were previously unknown and untouched. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in military fatigues peers over the top of a muddy trench." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576221/original/file-20240216-26-cxs6t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576221/original/file-20240216-26-cxs6t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576221/original/file-20240216-26-cxs6t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576221/original/file-20240216-26-cxs6t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576221/original/file-20240216-26-cxs6t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576221/original/file-20240216-26-cxs6t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576221/original/file-20240216-26-cxs6t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Ukrainian officer steps out of a trench network near the city of Kupiansk in eastern Ukraine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ukrainian-officer-steps-out-of-a-muddy-trench-network-as-news-photo/2008690272?adppopup=true">Scott Peterson/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>In March 2023, for example, we visited sites around Iripin and Bucha, two villages on the northern edge of Kyiv, to document how medieval and Bronze age sites buried below the surface had been destroyed by trenches or, in other cases, were now blanketed by minefields to stop Russian military units. </p>
<p>We also went to <a href="https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.159">the 11th century archaeology site of Oster</a>. Perched on a small hill southeast of Chernihiv, Oster was an important regional center in the medieval period. It had a brick-and-stone church and a large settlement nearby. As part of the siege of Chernihiv in March 2022, Ukrainian troops built deep trenches and bunkers around the edges of Oster, since the site overlooks rivers and crossing points.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.159">When we visited Oster a year after the invasion</a>, we noticed that the trench system around the church was dug into a large, 11th century settlement and burial ground. Laying exposed on the dirt piles along the trenches we found medieval human skeletal remains. The more we studied the system of trenches and bunkers, which encircles an area of about 650 feet (198 meters), the more human bones we saw.</p>
<p>A crew of archaeologists has returned to photograph the destruction of these burial grounds. But given the ongoing war, it isn’t possible to fully document the destruction, let alone fill in the trenches, which still may be needed by soldiers. </p>
<p>The previously unknown burial ground at Oster is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of similar sites that have been damaged or destroyed in central and northeastern Ukraine.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The authors explore a system of trenches that had been built at Oster, an important medieval archaeological site.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>War and the fabric of culture</h2>
<p>Even after the fighting ends, large areas of Ukraine will remain inaccessible for years, given the widespread <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/11/30/23979758/ukraine-war-russia-land-mines-artillery-humantarian-crisis">use of mines</a> and <a href="https://occup-med.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12995-023-00398-y">environmental contaminants</a>. </p>
<p>Surviving collections and museum exhibits <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_in_Ukraine">inside and outside of Ukraine</a> have assumed greater importance: They may represent the sole evidence of ancient cultures originating from these damaged territories.</p>
<p>We can confidently say that Europe has not experienced destruction of this magnitude, let alone this quickly, since World War II. </p>
<p>The bombings of churches, libraries and residences have destroyed major areas of Ukraine. As with the Nazis’ pilfering of paintings, bronze sculptures and art <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/story/world-war-ii-looted-art-turning-history-into-justice-u-s-national-archives/PQXxtIcpKuJmJw?hl=en">in the last few years of World War II</a>, in the first months after the invasion <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/catastrophic-putin-war-wiping-out-ukraine-recent-history-1771314">the Russian army looted museums, stole art and destroyed churches</a> with missiles and tank shells. </p>
<p>Make no mistake: At its core, the Russian full-scale invasion is a military attempt to erase Ukraine’s history, culture and heritage.</p>
<p>Seemingly entrenched in a 1950s geopolitical framework, President Vladimir Putin and other representatives of the Russian state <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/opinion/ukraine-war-national-identity.html">dispute that Ukraine is a sovereign nation</a>. Ukraine’s churches, museums and libraries are a threat to Russia, for they are the material and symbolic fabric that holds together Ukrainian identity and resistance. </p>
<p>That’s why this war is as much about culture as it is about land.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man looks through rubble near a destroyed pink building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577373/original/file-20240222-24-rkxmni.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577373/original/file-20240222-24-rkxmni.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577373/original/file-20240222-24-rkxmni.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577373/original/file-20240222-24-rkxmni.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577373/original/file-20240222-24-rkxmni.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577373/original/file-20240222-24-rkxmni.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577373/original/file-20240222-24-rkxmni.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A children’s library destroyed by a missile attack in the city of Chernihiv.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Viacheslav Skorokhod</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221082/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pavlo Shydlovskyi has received funding from Goethe-Institut. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Kuijt and William Donaruma do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In addition to destroyed buildings, there’s an entire underground world – filled with untold numbers of artifacts, bones and ruins – that are exposed and damaged by the digging of trenches.Ian Kuijt, Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre DamePavlo Shydlovskyi, Associate Professor of Archaeology, Taras Shevchenko National University of KievWilliam Donaruma, Professor of the Practice in Filmmaking, University of Notre DameLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2233952024-02-15T20:35:47Z2024-02-15T20:35:47ZVladimir Putin justifies his imperial aims in Tucker Carlson interview<p>During his <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/tucker-carlson-vladimir-putin-interview-1.7110120">much-publicized recent interview</a> with American right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined his perception of Russian history as the second anniversary of his invasion of Ukraine approaches. </p>
<p>His comments build on <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-new-ukraine-essay-reflects-imperial-ambitions/">his 2021 essay</a>, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” that claimed Russians and Ukrainians are one people, and that the concept of Ukraine as a state was invented by the Bolsheviks.</p>
<p>During his interview with Carlson, Putin traced Russian history to the ninth century. In his view, southern Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire when Catherine II — known more commonly as Catherine the Great — captured it from the Ottoman Empire. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-catherine-the-great-may-have-inspired-putins-ukraine-invasion-178007">How Catherine the Great may have inspired Putin's Ukraine invasion</a>
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<p>Western historians treated Putin’s remarks <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68255302">with disdain</a>, accusing him of being a bad historian. But his assertions reflect an important Russian claim — namely, that it has a legitimate right to occupy Ukraine.</p>
<h2>Putin: Russia saved Europe from Nazis</h2>
<p>Russia’s identity today is closely connected to the Second World War, or to use Russian parlance, the <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/great-patriotic-war-russia-invasion-ukraine">Great Patriotic War.</a> In the Carlson interview, Putin <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/putin-blames-poland-world-war-ii/604426/">once again</a> blamed its outbreak in 1939 on Poland for not satisfying German demands and its 1934 non-aggression pact with Germany.</p>
<p>As for the Soviet Union’s own pact with the Nazis in August 1939, which carved up Poland, Putin argued it was a matter of expediency and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/5fd1ed7dafc9918673a13b2fa8893c2f">distrust of the West</a>.</p>
<p>Today, the Putin regime uses the Second World War as the basis of modern Russian identity. It points out that Russians, under the Soviet Union, suffered the brunt of the conflict and ended the war in 1945. </p>
<p>The fact that <a href="http://www.infoukes.com/history/ww2/page-26.html">4.5 million Ukrainians fought</a> in the Red Army is largely ignored as Russia argues it alone <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/05/08/dont-forget-how-the-soviet-union-saved-the-world-from-hitler/">saved Europe from the Nazis</a>.</p>
<h2>Neo-Nazi takeover?</h2>
<p>Russian mainstream and social media today are devoted to the task of bolstering this version of Second World War history. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/02/world/europe/ukraine-nazis-russia-media.html">News outlets link the war to the invasion of Ukraine</a>, alleging the country was taken <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/event/2014-coup-ukraine">over by neo-Nazis in 2014</a>. At the behest of the West, so goes the allegation, Ukrainian protesters overthrew the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, and installed a neo-Nazi regime. </p>
<p>These alleged “Nazis” in Kyiv are <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-does-russias-leadership-keep-saying-that-ukrainians-are-nazis-11652361854">the ideological descendants of Moscow’s past enemies</a>: followers of <a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2013351/canadian-monument-to-controversial-ukrainian-national-hero-ignites-debate">Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych</a>, supposed traitors still feted in cities that include Edmonton.</p>
<p>It seems hard to imagine how educated Russians would believe modern-day Ukraine is a Nazi haven. But one has to understand the Moscow environment, where figures like Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/opinion/putin-russia-medinsky.html">former Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky</a> propagate the official narrative. </p>
<h2>‘Cleansing’ Ukraine</h2>
<p>Lavrov recently claimed the Russian invasion of Ukraine <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/01/18/lavrov-says-offensive-in-ukraine-cleansed-russian-society-a83763">has “cleansed” Ukrainian society</a> of those “who do not feel they belong to Russia history and culture.”</p>
<p>Medinsky, who authored the Grade 10 history textbook for Russian high school students, has advanced a new interpretation of the Second World War that focuses on the <a href="https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/02/13/unpredictable-past-en">“genocide of the Soviet people</a>.” New graves of Russian victims have suddenly been discovered and excavated, and Soviet losses continue to be counted. </p>
<p>As for the Holocaust in neighbouring Belarus — a subject several western scholars <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00085006.2018.1426936">are studying</a> — Jews and other minorities <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-742440">are now subsumed under the term “Soviet people</a>.” </p>
<p>Just as history is continually being rewritten and propagated in Russian schools, it’s happening in Belarus, too. The two countries will soon <a href="https://belrus.ru/info/gryzlov-rossiya-i-belarus-dogovorilis-o-sozdanii-edinyx-uchebnikov-istorii/">produce a common textbook</a> featuring new theories about the <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-692119">“genocide of the Belarusian people</a>.” The memory of the Second World War is alive and well in both nations. </p>
<h2>Justifying authoritarianism</h2>
<p>Why is there such a Russian focus on a war that ended almost 80 years ago? </p>
<p>Because it’s used to justify authoritarian states, the rule of dictators like Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko, and — above all else — the realignment of the territorial agreements made after the end of the Second World war in 1945. </p>
<p>Those western analysts <a href="https://www.upi.com/Voices/2022/02/25/ukraine-Vladimir-Putin-wont-back-down-Ukraine/4901645793270/">who never saw beyond NATO’s expansion as the cause of the invasion of Ukraine</a> — and the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/">alleged promises made in 1990 to Mikhail Gorbachev</a> not to expand the alliance — need a rethink. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ukraine-russia-standoff-is-a-troubling-watershed-moment-for-nato-175963">The Ukraine-Russia standoff is a troubling watershed moment for NATO</a>
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<p>Contrary to some assessments, the current war is not about NATO, which doesn’t truly threaten Russia. If it did, why did Putin refrain from denouncing <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61397478">Sweden and Finland</a> when they joined the alliance?</p>
<p>Nor do the origins of the war on Ukraine lie in politics in Kyiv, or the <a href="https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/explainers/understanding-ukraines-euromaidan-protests">Euromaidan protests</a> or <a href="https://apnews.com/article/european-union-ukraine-membership-questions-45b7f723761f5e5fa7a49d7302033469">Ukraine’s efforts to join the European Union.</a></p>
<p>They lie in the past, in a narrow, distorted perception of Russian history and Russia’s claims to lands it once ruled. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-the-euromaidan-revolution-lives-on-in-the-ukrainian-russian-war-179265">The legacy of the Euromaidan Revolution lives on in the Ukrainian-Russian war</a>
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<h2>A return to colonialism?</h2>
<p>Carlson provided Putin <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-68244602">with a forum to outline his imperialist dreams</a>. </p>
<p>If those watching were to accept Putin’s version of Second World War history as valid, it means they’d be amenable to the world not only returning to the period of colonial empires once prevalent prior to the 20th century — they’d also be giving a green light for Putin to make similar claims to other states once part of the Soviet Union, like Georgia, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/26/europe/moldova-transnistria-russia-tensions-explainer-intl/index.html">Moldova</a> and other sovereign nations.</p>
<p>Carlson failed to call out the facile nature of Putin’s claims during the interview. </p>
<p>But the former leader of Mongolia, Tsakhia Elbegdorj, poked fun at the Russian president by unveiling a map of Genghis Khan’s Mongolian Empire <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-mongolia-leader-shares-empire-map-mock-putin-ukraine-claims-2024-2">on social media that showed a territory vastly larger than Russia while noting</a>: “Don’t worry. We are a peaceful and free nation.”</p>
<p>Mongolia may be. But Putin’s Russia is not. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1756958162664480845"}"></div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223395/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Roger Marples does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why is there such a Russian focus on the Second World War? Because it’s used to justify authoritarian states, the rule of dictators like Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko.David Roger Marples, Professor, Russian and East European History, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2232532024-02-14T14:26:07Z2024-02-14T14:26:07ZWagner Group is now Africa Corps. What this means for Russia’s operations on the continent<p><em>In August 2023, Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/05/hand-grenade-explosion-caused-plane-crash-that-killed-wagner-boss-says-putin">his private jet crashed</a> about an hour after taking off in Moscow. He had been Russia’s pointman in Africa since the Wagner Group <a href="https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/what-russias-wagner-group-doing-africa">began operating on the continent in 2017</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The group is known for <a href="https://theconversation.com/wagner-group-in-africa-russias-presence-on-the-continent-increasingly-relies-on-mercenaries-198600">deploying paramilitary forces, running disinformation campaigns and propping up influential political leaders</a>. It has had a destabilising effect. Prigozhin’s death – and his <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/24/timeline-how-wagner-groups-revolt-against-russia-unfolded">aborted mutiny</a> against Russian military commanders two months earlier – has led to a shift in Wagner Group’s activities.</em></p>
<p><em>What does this mean for Africa? <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=fvXhZxQAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">Alessandro Arduino’s research</a> includes mapping the evolution of <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538170311/Money-for-Mayhem-Mercenaries-Private-Military-Companies-Drones-and-the-Future-of-War">mercenaries</a> and private military companies across Africa. He provides some answers.</em></p>
<h2>What is the current status of the Wagner Group?</h2>
<p>Following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, the Russian ministries of foreign affairs and defence quickly reassured Middle Eastern and African states that it would be <a href="https://jamestown.org/program/the-wagner-group-evolves-after-the-death-of-prigozhin/">business as usual</a> – meaning unofficial Russian boots on the ground would keep operating in these regions.</p>
<p><a href="https://adf-magazine.com/2024/01/with-new-name-same-russian-mercenaries-plague-africa/">Recent reports</a> on the Wagner Group suggest a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/12/russias-wagner-group-expands-into-africas-sahel-with-a-new-brand.html#:%7E:text=Wagner%20Group%20has%20been%20replaced,its%20new%20leader%20has%20confirmed.">transformation</a> is underway. </p>
<p>The group’s activities in Africa are now under the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-is-the-fallout-of-russias-wagner-rebellion/">direct supervision</a> of the Russian ministry of defence. </p>
<p>Wagner commands an estimated force of <a href="https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/what-russias-wagner-group-doing-africa#:%7E:text=Rather%20than%20a%20single%20entity%2C%20Wagner%20is%20a,of%20former%20Russian%20soldiers%2C%20convicts%2C%20and%20foreign%20nationals.">5,000 operatives</a> deployed throughout Africa, from Libya to Sudan. As part of the transformation, the defence ministry has renamed it the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-01-30/russia-raises-the-stakes-in-tussle-over-africa">Africa Corps</a>. </p>
<p>The choice of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-russian-military-unit-recruiting-former-wagner-fighters-ukraine-veterans-2023-12?r=US&IR=T">name</a> could be an attempt to add a layer of obfuscation to cover what has been in plain sight for a long time. That Russian mercenaries in Africa <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-canadian-owned-mine-seized-by-russian-mercenaries-in-africa-is-helping/">serve one master</a> – the Kremlin. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the direct link to Russia’s ministry of defence will make it difficult for Russia to argue that a foreign government has requested the services of a Russian private military company without the Kremlin’s involvement. The head of the Russian ministry of foreign affairs <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/mali-asked-private-russian-military-firm-help-against-insurgents-ifx-2021-09-25/">attempted to use this defence in Mali</a>.</p>
<p>The notion of transforming the group into the Africa Corps may have been inspired by World War II German field marshal <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/afrika-korps">Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps</a>. Nazi Germany wove myths around his <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/115/4/1243/35179?redirectedFrom=fulltext">strategic and tactical successes in north Africa</a>.</p>
<p>But will the Wagner Group under new leadership uphold the <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/wagner-group-africa-where-rubber-meets-road-206202">distinctive modus operandi</a> that propelled it to infamy during Prigozhin’s reign? This included the intertwining of boots on the ground with propaganda and disinformation. It also leveraged technologies and a sophisticated network of financing to enhance combat capabilities.</p>
<h2>What will happen to Wagner’s modus operandi now?</h2>
<p>In my recent book, <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538170311/Money-for-Mayhem-Mercenaries-Private-Military-Companies-Drones-and-the-Future-of-War">Money for Mayhem: Mercenaries, Private Military Companies, Drones and the Future of War</a>, I record Prigozhin’s adept weaving of disinformation and misinformation. </p>
<p>Numerous meticulously orchestrated campaigns flooded Africa’s online social platforms <a href="https://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/yevgeniy-prigozhins-africa-wide-disinformation-campaign/">promoting</a> the removal of French and western influence across the Sahel. </p>
<p>Prigozhin oversaw the creation of the Internet Research Agency, which operated as the propaganda arm of the group. It supported Russian disinformation campaigns and was sanctioned in 2018 by the US government for meddling in American elections. Prigozhin <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/14/europe/russia-yevgeny-prigozhin-internet-research-agency-intl/index.html">admitted</a> to founding the so-called troll farm: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve never just been the financier of the Internet Research Agency. I invented it, I created it, I managed it for a long time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>From a financial perspective, Prigozhin’s approach involved establishing a <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1581">convoluted network of lucrative natural resources mining operations</a>. These spanned gold mines in the Central African Republic to diamond mines in Sudan. </p>
<p>This strategy was complemented by significant cash infusions from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/09/how-russia-recruiting-wagner-fighters-continue-war-ukraine">Russian state</a> to support the Wagner Group’s direct involvement in hostilities. This extended from Syria to Ukraine, and across north and west Africa.</p>
<p>My research shows Prigozhin networks are solid enough to last. But only as long as the golden rule of the mercenary remains intact: guns for hire are getting paid.</p>
<p>In Libya and Mali, Russia is unlikely to yield ground due to enduring geopolitical objectives. These include generating revenue from oil fields, securing access to ports for its navy and securing its position as a kingmaker in the region. However, the Central African Republic may see less attention from Moscow. The Wagner Group’s involvement here was <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/07/africa-corps-wagner-group-russia-africa-burkina-faso/">primarily linked</a> to Prigozhin’s personal interests in goldmine revenues.</p>
<p>The Russian ministry of defence will no doubt seek to create a unified and loyal force dedicated to military action. But with the enduring legacy of Soviet-style bureaucracy, marked by excessive paperwork and procrastination in today’s Russian officials, one might surmise that greater allegiance to Moscow will likely come at the cost of reduced flexibility.</p>
<p>History has shown that Africa serves as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/wagner-group-mercenaries-in-africa-why-there-hasnt-been-any-effective-opposition-to-drive-them-out-207318">lucrative arena for mercenaries</a> due to various factors. These include: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>the prevalence of low-intensity conflicts reduces the risks to mercenaries’ lives compared to full-scale wars like in <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/13/russia-ukraine-war-list-of-key-events-day-720">Ukraine</a></p></li>
<li><p>the continent’s abundant natural resources are prone to exploitation</p></li>
<li><p>pervasive instability allows mercenaries to operate with relative impunity.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>As it is, countries in Africa once considered allies of the west are looking for alternatives. Russia is increasingly looking like a <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-essential-reads-on-russia-africa-relations-187568">viable candidate</a>. In January 2024, Chad’s junta leader, Mahamat Idriss Deby, met with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow to “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/putin-meets-chad-junta-leader-russia-competes-with-france-africa-2024-01-24/">develop bilateral ties</a>”. Chad previously had taken a pro-western policy.</p>
<p>A month earlier, Russia’s deputy defence minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who’s been tasked with overseeing Wagner’s activities in the Middle East and north Africa, <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2023/12/04/russian-officials-visit-niger-to-strengthen-military-ties/">visited Niger</a>. The two countries <a href="https://theconversation.com/niger-and-russia-are-forming-military-ties-3-ways-this-could-upset-old-allies-221696">agreed to strengthen military ties</a>. Niger is currently led by the military after a <a href="https://www.iiss.org/en/publications/strategic-comments/2023/the-coup-in-niger/">coup in July 2023</a>.</p>
<h2>Where does it go from here?</h2>
<p>There are a number of paths that the newly named Africa Corps could take.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>It gets deployed by Moscow to fight in conflicts meeting Russia’s geopolitical ends. </p></li>
<li><p>It morphs into paramilitary units under the guise of Russian foreign military intelligence agencies.</p></li>
<li><p>It splinters into factions, acting as heavily armed personal guards for local warlords. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>The propaganda machinery built by Prigozhin may falter during the transition. But this won’t signal the immediate disappearance of the Russian disinformation ecosystem. </p>
<p>Russian diplomatic efforts are already mobilising to preserve the status quo. This is clear from Moscows’s <a href="https://jamestown.org/program/brief-russia-deepens-counter-terrorism-ties-to-sahelian-post-coup-regimes/">backing</a> of the recent Alliance of Sahelian States encompassing Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. All three nations are led by military rulers who overthrew civilian governments a recently announced <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/niger-mali-burkina-faso-say-they-are-leaving-ecowas-regional-block-2024-01-28/">plans to exit</a> from the 15-member Economic Community of West African States.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alessandro Arduino is a member of the International Code of Conduct Advisory Group.</span></em></p>Will the Wagner Group under new leadership uphold the ruthless modus operandi that propelled it to the spotlight in Africa?Alessandro Arduino, Affiliate Lecturer, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2231562024-02-14T14:13:58Z2024-02-14T14:13:58ZThe New Look: Apple TV drama shows how Dior brought optimism to a war-weary world<p>Christian Dior’s 1947 “<a href="https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O75379/bar-skirt-suit-christian-dior/?carousel-image=2018LB9107">new look</a>” – a collection of extravagantly brimmed hats, wide full skirts and cinched waists that drew attention to the female silhouette – signalled a new post-war era of optimism, pleasure and a sense of life returning to normal. </p>
<p>Dior’s <a href="https://www.businessoffashion.com/education/fashion-az/haute-couture">haute couture</a> collection remains a historical moment for post-war fashion, and lends its name to Apple’s new ten-part series. The drama explores the state of Parisian couture in the final year of the second world war and the years that followed through the lives of important designers. This includes Dior and his contemporaries Coco Chanel, Pierre Balmain, <a href="https://theconversation.com/disneys-cristobal-balenciaga-reveals-the-power-the-politics-and-the-drama-of-high-fashion-222528">Cristóbal Balenciaga</a>, Lucien Lelong, Hubert de Givenchy and Pierre Cardin.</p>
<p>Inspired by true events, the series stars Ben Mendelsohn as Dior, Maisie Williams as his younger sister Catherine, Juliette Binoche as Chanel, John Malkovich as Lelong and Glenn Close as the US Harper’s Bazaar fashion editor Carmel Snow.</p>
<p>The series begins in the wake of Dior’s huge success with the launch of his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Golden_Age_of_Couture.html?id=lEXrAAAAMAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y">new look</a> collection in 1947 with a Q&A at Sorbonne University in Paris. After a riotous welcome from an audience of fashion students, the Frenchman explains: “For those who lived through the chaos of war, creation was survival.” </p>
<p>This is the theme of the series, revealed in flashback: how the destruction and horror of war affected the world-renowned Parisian fashion market – its designers, design houses, those who worked within the industry and the people of France themselves.</p>
<p>A central character on and off screen is Dior’s <a href="https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571356539-miss-dior/">courageous</a> sister Catherine, who is little known and rarely mentioned in the history of Dior’s life, beyond the naming of his perfume <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliapelloux/2021/11/07/the-house-of-dior-celebrates-catherine-dior-miss-dior/">Miss Dior</a> in her honour in 1947. Throughout the series her fate is emblematic of the French population’s experience of occupation, and is depicted as the driving force of Dior’s dedication to couture.</p>
<h2>French fashion during wartime</h2>
<p>In June 1940, Nazi forces took control of northern and western France and its textile industry. By November 1942 the remainder of southern and eastern France fell to the German army.</p>
<p>Prior to the occupation, many non-French designers, such as Elsa Schiaparelli, left the country for London, New York and Los Angeles in anticipation of war. Once Nazi forces invaded, Paris and its international fashion markets were effectively cut off from the rest of the world.</p>
<p>The couturier Lucien Lelong occupies an important place in the series as Dior’s supportive employer – although much more could have been made of the key role he played in keeping Parisian couture open for business. “Creation cannot stop the bullets but creation is our way forward”, the character states. True to his word, as war raged, Lelong employed some of the most successful post-war designers in his atelier including Dior, Pierre Balmain and Hubert de Givenchy.</p>
<p>Lelong was elected president of the prestigious <a href="https://www.fhcm.paris/en/our-history">Chambre Syndicale de la Couture</a> in 1937, and <a href="http://www.fashionencyclopedia.com/Le-Ma/Lelong-Lucien.html">faced down threats</a> from the Nazis to move the entire couture industry to Berlin and Vienna. He negotiated, persuaded and outmanoeuvred the Germans throughout the war by insisting that couture – and the domestic textile industry it depended on – was uniquely French and therefore could not be replicated elsewhere. </p>
<p>The couture industry experienced severe rationing of fabric. But the series successfully demonstrates that Paris fashion <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/paris-fashion-and-world-war-two-9781350000261/">continued</a> with determination and innovation. As fashion designers were forced to limit the amount of material they used, unnecessary decorative additions such as ruffles and pockets became expendable. Instead, wartime couturiers turned to embroidery and beading for decoration – trends that continue to characterise haute couture today.</p>
<h2>The rival ‘American look’</h2>
<p>With the end of the war and freedom from Nazi occupation, Paris fashion was in a fight for its life. Its biggest rival was the American <a href="https://fashionunited.uk/news/background/the-contrast-between-haute-couture-and-ready-to-wear/2023063070291">ready-to-wear</a> apparel industry, an aspect of the story this new series dramatises to great effect.</p>
<p>Though the American industry also faced fabric rationing during the second world war, it was not occupied, and the restrictions weren’t as debilitating. While Asian silks and Italian wools were no longer available, good American cotton was plentiful.</p>
<p>A new generation of American designers came into their own with a homegrown design aesthetic. In 1945 <a href="https://sova.si.edu/record/nmah.ac.0631">Dorothy Shaver</a>, vice-president of the luxury retailer <a href="https://www.retaildive.com/news/a-look-back-at-the-long-history-of-lord-taylor/583823/">Lord & Taylor</a>, developed a marketing campaign around the phrase “<a href="https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/fspc_00208_1#abstract_content">the American look</a>”. This successfully encouraged American women to remember their roots and not return to the collections of the newly liberated Paris fashion houses.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lXN5Ws7LxkA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Dior’s beacon of hope</h2>
<p>Dior’s 1947 <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/story/christian-dior-the-new-look-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art/kwWhkHJ-Ok8UIg?hl=en">Carolle collection</a>, was renamed the “new look” at first viewing by American fashion editor Carmel Snow. Snow claimed it represented the creation of a new femininity – which Dior would later call “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Golden_Age_of_Couture.html?id=KrSljgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">the golden age of couture</a>”.</p>
<p>It stood in stark contrast to the austerity wardrobes of wartime Europe and America – wardrobes millions of women around the world would continue to wear in everyday creative adaptations and alterations for years to come.</p>
<p>In my view, leaving the proper substance of the new look story until episode eight of a ten-part series suggests a lack of balance, and makes the title of the drama feel a little misleading. Despite the voice-over in the trailer saying so, Dior’s new look did not reinvent fashion. Rather, it celebrated the end of the grim years of wartime trauma, misery and lack.</p>
<p>What Dior did through his collection was usher in a sense of optimism that women could once again enjoy the pleasure of pretty, feminine clothing that reflected individuality and joy. While the rationing of food, fabric and everyday essentials continued into the 1950s, this new look offered an exhausted Europe the sense that life would begin once more.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Kealy-Morris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After the ravages of war, Christian Dior’s groundbreaking 1947 collection of supremely feminine designs signalled a sense of leaving the dark days behind.Elizabeth Kealy-Morris, Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Dress and Belonging, Manchester Fashion Institute, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2226822024-02-08T13:37:04Z2024-02-08T13:37:04ZRussia’s fanning of anti-Israeli sentiment takes dark detour into Holocaust denialism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574111/original/file-20240207-16-big2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4164%2C3816&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People wave Russian, Palestinian and Hamas flags.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-wave-russian-palestinian-fatah-and-hamas-flags-and-news-photo/1734736098?adppopup=true">Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The war in Gaza isn’t only challenging the <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/gaza-war-reverberates-across">geopolitics of the Middle East</a>: It is also <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/11/how-does-israel-hamas-war-impact-russia-and-ukraine#:%7E:text=At%20the%20same%20time%2C%20the,assistance%20for%20that%20embattled%20country.">complicating matters in Ukraine</a>, as Russia seeks to capitalize on growing <a href="https://theconversation.com/international-reaction-to-gaza-siege-has-exposed-the-growing-rift-between-the-west-and-the-global-south-216938">anti-Israeli sentiment in the Global South</a>.</p>
<p>Russia was slow to condemn the <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/hamass-october-7-attack-visualizing-data">Oct. 7 attack in Israel</a> and has <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/12/russia-israel-hamas">hosted a succession of Hamas delegations in Moscow</a>. It also <a href="https://www.mei.edu/publications/essential-questions-about-russia-hamas-link-evidence-and-its-implications">works closely with Iran, Hamas’ main sponsor</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, U.S. backing for Israel is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/23/us/ukraine-gaza-global-south-hypocrisy.html">further eroding</a> support for Ukraine in the Global South, amid <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/23/us/ukraine-gaza-global-south-hypocrisy.html">accusations of double standards</a> over how the West views the plight of civilians in the two wars.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://www.wesleyan.edu/academics/faculty/prutland/profile.html">expert on modern Russia</a>, I see deeper dynamics at work. Putin’s stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict feeds into a narrative of using antisemitism to disparage perceived enemies and defend Russian actions: a tactic that has deep historical <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/99945786B60F74C869F8F1E36BE7280E/S0037677900158966a.pdf/origins_and_development_of_soviet_antisemitism_an_analysis.pdf">origins in the Soviet Union</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123407000105">czarist Russia</a>.</p>
<h2>‘A century of antisemitism’</h2>
<p>The Gaza war erupted at a crucial moment in the conflict in Ukraine. Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the fall of 2022 <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2024/01/hold-build-and-strike-a-vision-for-rebuilding-ukraines-advantage-in-2024/">had stalled</a>, while <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/us/politics/senate-ukraine-aid-bill.html">Republicans in the U.S. Congress blocked</a> the Biden administration’s efforts to send more aid to Ukraine.</p>
<p>On Jan. 25, 2024, the U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center, tasked with combating Russian disinformation, <a href="https://www.state.gov/more-than-a-century-of-antisemitism-how-successive-occupants-of-the-kremlin-have-used-antisemitism/">released a 50-page report</a> documenting the ways in which Russian propaganda has weaponized antisemitism to rally support against Western backing for Ukraine.</p>
<p>The report, released two days before <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/remember/international-holocaust-remembrance-day">International Holocaust Remembrance Day</a>, argues, “For over a century, Tsarist, Soviet and now Russian Federation authorities have used antisemitism to discredit, divide, and weaken their perceived adversaries at home and abroad.” </p>
<p>As if to prove the report’s main point, just two days before it was published, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman <a href="https://www.state.gov/faces-of-kremlin-propaganda-maria-zakharova/">Maria Zakharova</a> strayed into the area of Holocaust denialism.</p>
<p>In a Jan. 21 <a href="https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1926818/">press conference</a>, <a href="https://www.state.gov/faces-of-kremlin-propaganda-maria-zakharova/">Zakharova criticized</a> Germany for filing a motion in support of Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, where Israel is defending itself <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/10/south-africa-israel-icj-genocide-case/">against the charge</a> of genocide. </p>
<p>Germany, Zakharova said, had no right to lecture anyone about genocide. After all, she continued, during World War II, Germany presided over the extermination of “various ethnic and social groups,” with Hitler’s main goal being the elimination of the Slavic peoples.</p>
<p>At no point during her lengthy remarks, which ran to 1,500 words, did Zakharova mention that Jews had been among Hitler’s victims. The omission <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/russia-downplays-holocausts-impact-on-jews-pans-german-defense-of-israel-at-icj/">led to criticism</a> that Russia is deliberately downplaying if not denying the Jewish Holocaust.</p>
<p>Zakharova went on to conflate Germany’s defense of Israel with its support for Ukraine: “Berlin has once again mired itself in exterminating people in a part of Europe where 80 years ago Hitler failed in his effort to exterminate or subdue people.” </p>
<p>Presumably, Zakharova’s comments were aimed at <a href="https://www.ponarseurasia.org/why-the-west-is-losing-the-global-information-war-over-ukraine-and-how-it-can-be-fixed/">audiences in the Global South</a>, which have generally been more sympathetic to Russia’s argument that the war in Ukraine is a war against Western imperialism.</p>
<h2>Weaponizing hate</h2>
<p>This is not the first time that the Russian foreign ministry has opened itself to accusations of antisemitism. In May 2022, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov provoked international outrage when, in response to a question over how Russia could claim to be denazifying Ukraine when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-61296682">replied</a>: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. (That Zelensky is Jewish) means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent antisemites are usually Jews.”</p>
<p>Putin <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-61339749">subsequently apologized</a> for Lavrov’s remarks in a call with then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, although there was no public apology.</p>
<p>And Lavrov soon returned to the theme of equating the actions of perceived enemies with those of Nazis. In January 2023, Lavrov <a href="https://archive.is/uFCc1">said NATO</a> is “using Ukraine to wage a proxy war against Russia with the old aim of finally solving the ‘Russian question,’ like Hitler, who sought a final solution to the ‘Jewish question.’”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a suit shuffles papers behind a sign reading Russia. Behind him are various flags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574114/original/file-20240207-28-9m721g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574114/original/file-20240207-28-9m721g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574114/original/file-20240207-28-9m721g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574114/original/file-20240207-28-9m721g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574114/original/file-20240207-28-9m721g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574114/original/file-20240207-28-9m721g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574114/original/file-20240207-28-9m721g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Putin’s words are aimed at members of the Global South.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-pool-photograph-distributed-by-russian-state-agency-news-photo/1794235202?adppopup=true">Alexander Kazakov/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>This rising tide of state propaganda spilled over into some actual acts of mob antisemitism. In October 2023, at an airport in Dagestan, a Muslim-majority province in southern Russia, a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/29/mob-storms-dagestan-airport-in-search-of-jewish-passengers-from-israel">a crowd hunted</a> for Jewish refugees after a flight landed from Israel. Moscow has been accused of <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/putin-has-unleashed-a-twisted-new-wave-of-antisemitism">doing little</a> to rein in such manifestations of antisemitism.</p>
<h2>Distorting history</h2>
<p>As the State Department <a href="https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/GEC-Special-Report-More-than-a-Century-of-Antisemitism.pdf">report documents</a>, antisemitism has been a scourge in imperial, Soviet and now post-Soviet Russia. </p>
<p>It spans the pogroms of czarist Russia and the 1903 publication of the fake <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-is-still-pushed-by-anti-semites-more-than-a-century-after-hoax-first-circulated-145220">“Protocol of the Elders of Zion</a>,” through Stalin’s campaign against “<a href="https://tonykaron.com/what-is-rootless-cosmopolitan/">rootless cosmopolitans</a>,” to <a href="https://ia804707.us.archive.org/30/items/DisinformationFormerSpyChiefRevealsSecretStrategiesForUnderminingFreedomAttackin/Disinformation%20-%20Former%20Spy%20Chief%20Reveals%20Secret%20Strategies%20for%20Undermining%20Freedom%2C%20Attacking%20Religion%2C%20and%20Promoting%20Terrorism.pdf">Operation Zarathustra</a>, which involved Soviet agents painting neo-Nazi graffiti in West Germany in the late 1950s.</p>
<p>Zakharova’s remarks can be seen as a continuation of the Soviet tradition of Holocaust denial. As Cold War scholar Izabella Tabarovsky <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/dont-learn-russians-about-the-holocaust">has noted</a>, “The Soviets systematically denied that Jews were particular targets of Nazi atrocities.” Memorials on the sites of killing fields in the Soviet Union where Jews were marched out and shot in the fall of 1941 and 1942 typically referred to the victims as “peaceful Soviet citizens” rather than Jews. </p>
<p>The official Russian narrative of World War II argues that the loss of <a href="https://doi.org//10.1080/09668139408412190">27 million lives</a> meant that the Soviet Union was the main victim of Nazism. It is, of course, true that Russians suffered grievously at the hands of the Nazis and that the <a href="https://www.queenslibrary.org/book/Absolute-war-:-Soviet-Russia-in-the-Second-World-War/1167271">Soviet Union bore the brunt of the fighting</a> against Hitler once they joined the war in June 1941, two years after it started.</p>
<p>However, Belorussians, Ukrainians, Yugoslavs and Poles all suffered <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union">greater casualties</a>, as a proportion of their population, than Russians. </p>
<p>And the Jews and Roma of Europe, of course, were uniquely targeted for elimination.</p>
<p>As the Soviet Union drew into closer alliance with the Arab world in the 1960s, the Soviet Union became increasingly hostile to U.S.-backed Israel. For example, Moscow was a sponsor of the controversial United Nations <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20121206052903/http:/unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/761C1063530766A7052566A2005B74D1">Resolution 3379</a>, which denounced Zionism as a form of racism. The resolution, seen by critics as <a href="https://www.state.gov/usun-engaging-the-united-nations-in-the-fight-against-antisemitism/">fueling antisemitism</a>, passed the U.N. General Assembly in 1975 but was revoked in 1991.</p>
<h2>Putin’s flirtation with antisemitism</h2>
<p>During the first years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, he had a <a href="https://www.meforum.org/690/putins-pro-israel-policy">very positive</a> attitude toward Israel. In 2005, he was the first Russian leader to visit Israel. And there is no evidence that Putin is personally antisemitic. </p>
<p>Ties between Russia and Israel were deep, in part due to the presence of some 1.25 million <a href="https://ridl.io/war-aliyah-of-russian-speaking-jews-to-israel-past-experience-and-new-surprises/">Jews from the former Soviet Union in Israel</a>, accounting for 17% of the total population. Around 50,000 more have arrived since the outbreak of the Ukrainian war in 2022.</p>
<p>However, after 2021, as Russian officials started making absurd claims about <a href="https://tass.com/politics/1502775">neo-Nazis being in power in Kyiv</a>, the relationship with Israel cooled. </p>
<p>Israel <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/netanyahu-has-finally-realised-russia-is-no-friend-of-israel/">backed Ukraine</a> during the June 2021 to December 2022 coalition government of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid and condemned the Russian invasion. But Israel subsequently <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/why-israel-has-been-slow-support-ukraine">shifted away from Kyiv</a> after Benjamin Netanyahu took power in 2022.</p>
<p>In part, Israel changed its stance because it did not want Russia to use its air defenses in Syria to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/world/middleeast/russia-syria-israel-ukraine.html">prevent Israel from striking</a> targets there. After the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, however, Israel stepped up its raids in Syria and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-03/israel-russia-ties-worsen-as-it-fights-iran-proxies-in-syria-amid-war-with-hamas">stopped warning Russia</a> in advance, while Russia aggressively condemned Israel’s military actions in Gaza. </p>
<h2>Putin’s ploy may backfire</h2>
<p>Russia’s ploy to link the wars in Gaza and Ukraine may win it a few more friends in the Global South. But it risks alienating influential players such as <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/strategising-indias-red-sea-maritime-diplomacy-13662382.html">India</a>, which under Narendra Modi has become <a href="https://time.com/6336217/india-modi-pro-israel/">increasingly pro-Israel</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/red-sea-crisis-expert-unpacks-houthi-attacks-and-other-security-threats-220951">strikes by Houthi militants</a> on ships in the Red Sea are of concern to India and others who see their international trade disrupted. India is now the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-oil-europe-india-ukraine-war-b2477443.html">second-largest importer</a> of Russian oil after China, and that oil is carried on tankers through the Suez Canal. </p>
<p>On Jan. 26 2024, a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/crew-battle-blaze-tanker-hit-by-missile-gulf-aden-2024-01-27/">Houthi missile struck</a> an Indian-crewed tanker carrying Russian oil from Greece to Singapore, vividly illustrating how Moscow’s fanning of anti-Israeli sentiment can backfire, affecting the economic interests of its allies and of Russia itself. </p>
<p>The next day, Putin <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73334">spoke at a ceremony</a> to open a monument to Nazi genocide in Zaitsevo, near St. Petersburg, to mark the 80th anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Leningrad. He talked about death camps and Auschwitz but never mentioned the Jews.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Rutland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Gaza war has complicated issues in Ukraine, with Putin looking to exploit events in the Middle East to garner support among the Global South.Peter Rutland, Professor of Government, Wesleyan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2124162024-02-05T13:31:18Z2024-02-05T13:31:18ZEnemy collaboration in occupied Ukraine evokes painful memories in Europe – and the response risks a rush to vigilante justice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573141/original/file-20240202-21-8rxp75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C389%2C5000%2C2926&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A suspected Russian collaborator arrested in Kharkiv, Ukraine.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RussiaUkraineCollaborationArrests/5c55957802d04749be3bc74030956441/photo?Query=collaboration%20ukraine&mediaType=photo&sortBy=creationdatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=25&currentItemNo=11">AP Photo/Felipe Dana</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Collaboration with the enemy is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198788898.003.0002">common and often painful</a> part of armed conflict. It is also an issue in which I have both a professional and personal interest. </p>
<p>The war in Ukraine is, in many ways, <a href="https://twitter.com/amanpour/status/1696576647552496122">a transparent conflict</a>, with cellphone images, drone cameras and satellite imagery feeding a flow of data to social media platforms and news outlets.</p>
<p>But in Ukraine’s occupied territories, there are actions and decisions that many people – ordinary residents and officials alike – will want to remain hidden, not just for now but for years to come.</p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://ronaldniezen.ca/">scholar of international human rights</a> who has <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/narratives-of-mass-atrocity/1B0560BEB271D364CF43345C02856527">studied the aftermath of mass atrocities</a>. I have also written a novel, “<a href="https://www.blackrosewriting.com/mystery/thememoryseeker?rq=Niezen">The Memory Seeker</a>,” inspired by my family’s experience with the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.</p>
<p>When my father died several years ago at age 96, he left behind unanswered questions about his sympathies and activities during the war. Had he supplied the Nazis with information? Had he, for example, denounced people of age to be forced to work in German factories? This doubt has led me to explore wartime complicity and how it is dealt with. </p>
<h2>Liberating powers</h2>
<p>There can be no doubt that there <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/magazine/ukraine-kherson-collaboration-russia.html">has been collaboration</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/26/ukraine-russia-collaborators-revenge">in the areas Russia has occupied</a> since invading Ukraine in February 2022.</p>
<p>In June 2022, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-bucha-commemorates-one-year-since-liberation/a-65190611">Bucha was the first liberated city</a> from which <a href="https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2022/06/21/civilian-collaboration-and-reprisals-behind-ukraines-front-lines/.">collaboration with Russians was reported</a>. The mayor of Bucha, Anatoliy Fedoruk, <a href="https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2022/06/21/civilian-collaboration-and-reprisals-behind-ukraines-front-lines/">claimed that some local residents</a> provided Russians with information about local people so that the invading army “knew in advance” whom to kill and where to find them.</p>
<p>As the Ukrainian counteroffensive advanced after the initial Russian invasion, collaboration was also reported in other liberated <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/19/europe/kupiansk-ukraine-liberated-russia-intl-cmd/index.html">cities like Kharkiv</a>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/06/the-hunt-for-russian-collaborators-in-ukraine">Izium</a> and villages in the southern front. </p>
<p>Now, with retaken territories long under Ukrainian control, the former occupiers, collaborators and sympathizers are <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/06/the-hunt-for-russian-collaborators-in-ukraine">the ones being hunted</a>, rooted out and, in some cases, brought to justice.</p>
<p>The problem of collaboration is especially thorny in <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/why-is-the-donbas-so-important-for-russia/a-61547512">Ukraine’s Donbass region</a>, with its long history of Russian-Ukrainian cultural and linguistic interaction. </p>
<p>The industrialization of the area in the 19th and 20th centuries brought in a large number of Russian-speaking workers, and the region still has a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/02/1101712731/russia-invasion-ukraine-russian-language-culture-identity">significant Russian-speaking population</a>. Since the summer of 2022, the front has stalemated, with a little more than half the region under Russian control. Divided loyalties are especially common in these circumstances and sometimes <a href="https://bihus.info/zamgolovy-naczpolu-pidzhyvaye-u-partnera-rosijskogo-kryminalnogo-avtoryteta-i-maye-druzhynu-z-rosijskym-pasportom/">reach the upper echelons of Ukraine’s administrative power</a>.</p>
<h2>What to do with collaborators</h2>
<p>The problem of collaboration was a concern for Ukrainian authorities from the first days of Russia’s February 2022 invasion. On March 3, 2022, the Ukrainian parliament amended the country’s criminal code with two new laws criminalizing any type of <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2022-04-04/ukraine-new-laws-criminalize-collaboration-with-an-aggressor-state">cooperation with an aggressor state</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://zmina.ua/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/zvit_zmina_eng-1.pdf">Criminal Liability for Collaboration Law</a> prohibits the expression of certain opinions, such as dissemination of the aggressor state’s propaganda in educational institutions, denial of Russia’s armed occupation of Ukraine and refusal to recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over the temporarily occupied territories.</p>
<p>It also prohibits cooperation with an aggressor state, its occupation administrations and its armed forces or paramilitary forces. </p>
<p>Punishment for violations may include a ban on holding positions in government and house arrest for up to 15 years, with or without confiscation of property. </p>
<p>The changes to Ukraine’s criminal code reflected concern among Ukraine’s leaders that collaboration with Russia would give the invading forces both ideological and military advantages.</p>
<p>Yet in the near-daily <a href="https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/speeches">speeches made since then by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy</a>, I was unable to find any reference to the need to root out collaborators. The reason may be that merely drawing attention to the problem of collaboration is bad for morale, even if the number of active sympathizers in a given location is very small. It also interrupts narratives of collective heroism and national unity and implies divided loyalties.</p>
<p>But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been happening.</p>
<p>Among the more than <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/11/19/ukraine-gives-swift-justice-to-suspected-collaborators-in-recently-liberated-areas_6267879_4.html">7,000 criminal collaboration cases</a> opened by Ukrainian prosecutors are clear-cut violations involving collaborators who helped Russians <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/in-ukraine-collaboration-cases-arent-always-clear-cut/">identify military targets</a> and others who identified neighbors who were Ukrainian loyalists and possible partisans.</p>
<p>In other cases, however, matters are less clear. What is one to do, for example, with those who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/26/ukraine-russia-collaborators-revenge">continued their jobs under Russian occupation</a> and provided basic services in local government offices or in education? Or the garbage collectors who <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-kherson-wartime-collaboration-law-problems-amendments/">continued to work</a> while the Russians occupied their town? These kinds of cases, too, are being prosecuted.</p>
<p>There are risks of overreach inherent in prosecuting people like sanitation workers and school teachers. Still, this legal approach to collaboration is <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.32_GC-III-EN.pdf">consistent with the fourth Geneva Convention</a> regarding the treatment of civilians in conditions of war. The convention <a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/publications/icrc-002-0173.pdf">calls for judgments to be</a> “pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”</p>
<h2>The rush to (in)justice</h2>
<p>Sometimes the sheer number of offenses overwhelms the capacity for a state to prosecute them.</p>
<p>What is to be done, for example, about those who are accused of collaboration by, say, giving directions when asked by an enemy soldier or <a href="https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/live-oekraine-roept-burgers-in-bezet-gebied-op-om-door-rusland-georganiseerde-verkiezingen-te-mijden%7Eb14c7f5d/">participating in a sham election</a>? Were they acting out of a survival instinct or did they really sympathize with the Russians? Their motives may be known only to them. </p>
<p>Then there is the unofficial response by liberated populations against collaborators. Liberation brings tremendous release, not only of newfound freedom but of temptations toward revenge against those who once supported the occupier.</p>
<p>This could be one reason why societies that experience occupation followed by liberation are prone to vengeance-seeking and lawlessness.</p>
<p>It may be for that reason that my father decided to keep his wartime experience cloaked in secrecy.</p>
<p>The Netherlands, even with its global reputation for upholding human rights and democratic values, was no exception to the rush to judgment of suspected collaborators after World War II. Officially, there were trials and executions of <a href="https://www.annefrank.org/en/timeline/119/arrest-of-nsb-leader-anton-mussert/">prominent Nazis like Anton Mussert</a>, head of the Dutch fascists, and scores of other high-ranking party members. Thousands more served prison time.</p>
<p>Informal tribunals were held to punish those deemed to have been sympathetic to the Nazis, including <a href="https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_han001200001_01/_han001200001_01_0015.php">women who had illicit relationships</a> with occupying German soldiers – who had their hair violently sheared and were publicly humiliated.</p>
<p>Vigilante violence was common across post-war Europe. In Italy between 1943 and 1947, vengeful partisans began a “cleansing” of police and civil servants associated with the fascist regime and went on to <a href="https://www.thelocal.it/20181122/italian-film-red-land-rossa-istria-wwii-massacres">execute thousands of German sympathizers</a>.</p>
<p>Across Europe in the aftermath of World War II, the will to revenge, for a while at least, was expressed in the justice of the mob. </p>
<h2>The post-occupation challenge</h2>
<p>A similar rush to justice appears to be playing out in parts of liberated Ukraine.</p>
<p>Journalist <a href="https://www.joshuayaffa.com/">Joshua Yaffa</a>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/06/the-hunt-for-russian-collaborators-in-ukraine">writing from liberated Izyum</a> for The New Yorker, found a town in which hundreds had been questioned or detained on suspicion of collaboration with occupying Russians. “Every case will be looked into,” an investigator assured him. “No one should sleep too comfortably.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Ukraine watchers like Emily Channell-Justice, director of Harvard University’s Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program, have <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukrainian-vigilantes-may-seek-revenge-for-russian-war-crimes-expert-2022-4">expressed concern</a> that Ukrainian vigilante groups may seek extra-judicial revenge.</p>
<h2>Families divided</h2>
<p>As the war enters its third year, the issue of collaboration will continue to gnaw away in occupied parts of Ukraine. And the longer the Russian occupation goes on, the more those in the occupied areas will be pressured into everyday complicity.</p>
<p>Liberation, when and where it comes, brings with it difficult conversations both in official and family settings. As with the Netherlands at the end of Nazi occupation, the search for collaborators in Ukraine will not only be made by police and partisans; it will happen within families coming to terms with the past.</p>
<p>And if my family’s experience of World War II is anything to go by, stories of the occupation will be parsed for loyalties, and silence will nurture suspicion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronald Niezen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Liberated cities are prone to vigilante justice against those accused of conspiring with the enemy.Ronald Niezen, Professor of Practice in Sociology and Political Science/International Relations, University of San DiegoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2224292024-02-02T12:54:31Z2024-02-02T12:54:31ZMasters of the Air: the real history behind the show’s black fighter pilots<p>New Apple TV series, Masters of the Air, tells the story of the American air effort in Europe during the second world war through the eyes of the Bloody 100th Bomb Group, who were based at Thorpe Abbotts in Norfolk, England. </p>
<p>Viewers have been debating whether its inclusion of black fighter pilots, the famed “Tuskegee Airmen” who served in Italy, is appropriate. As a historian who researches the <a href="https://rdcu.be/dxslz">American air war</a> and the wartime <a href="https://8thaf.co.uk/">“friendly invasion”</a> of Britain by American troops, I believe a historical perspective can help unpick this contentious issue. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/masters-of-the-air-review-austin-butler-barry-keoghan-callum-turner-1235805462/">Negative comments</a> have centred on the inclusion of the all-black 99th Fighter Squadron and 332nd Fighter Group who flew in the Mediterranean. This follows the logic that their inclusion is historically inaccurate, as they were not part of the air campaign flown from Britain. </p>
<p>The unpleasant wartime reality for the Tuskegee Airmen was that, in addition to a determined enemy, they had to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/freedom-flyers-9780199896554?cc=in&lang=en&">fight their own side</a> – the US War Department, the US Army Air Force and white commanders – for the right to serve.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/masters-of-the-air-apples-air-force-drama-is-imperfect-but-powerful-222220">Masters of the Air: Apple's Air Force drama is imperfect, but powerful</a>
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<p>Although <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/masters-of-the-air-review-austin-butler-barry-keoghan-callum-turner-1235805462/">criticised</a> as “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/masters-of-the-air-review-austin-butler-barry-keoghan-wwii-steven-spielberg-tom-hanks-1234948913/">tokenism</a>”, the show’s screenwriter, John Orloff, ensured airtime for these men’s stories in what would otherwise have been an all-white show. He subsequently <a href="https://www.threads.net/@john_orloff_writes/post/C1e35O8uohS?hl=en">wrote on Threads</a> that he was “totally baffled by some people’s reaction to the Tuskegee Airmen’s inclusion” and that he was “honored to be a small part of telling their story”.</p>
<h2>Black pilots in the US Army Air Force</h2>
<p>By the start of 1944, the American air campaign had undergone considerable changes in command structure. Anxious to fend off Allied rivalries, achieve closer coordination and promote the case for an independent US Air Force (it was then part of the army) its chief, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, established the United States Strategic Air Force in Europe (USSTAF). </p>
<p>Based in London and commanded by General Carl A. Spaatz, <a href="https://media.defense.gov/2010/Oct/12/2001330126/-1/-1/0/AFD-101012-035.pdf">USSTAF controlled the combined strategic bombing efforts</a> of the Eighth Air Force in Britain (including the 100th Bomb Group) and the Fifteenth Air Force in Italy (including the 332nd Fighter Group).</p>
<p>Although black pilots were prevented from serving directly with the 100th, they were still very much part of a unified American campaign against Germany that transcended geographic boundaries.</p>
<p>Despite this laudable inclusion, Masters of the Air struggles to move beyond the established Tuskegee story that has already been portrayed in other TV shows and films, including The Tuskegee Airmen (1995) and Redtails (2012).</p>
<h2>Black stories the show doesn’t tell</h2>
<p>Approximately 130,000 African Americans served in Britain during the war with 12,000 supporting the air campaign. In accordance with contemporary US War Department <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/when-jim-crow-met-john-bull-9781850430391/">policy</a>, most were relegated to service and supply roles, as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law">Jim Crow segregation laws</a> and discrimination followed them to Britain.</p>
<p>Members of the <a href="https://8thaf.co.uk/exhibition/1/jim-crow-segregation-visits-britain">Combat Support Wing</a>, set up to improve morale following the <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-troops-were-welcome-in-britain-but-jim-crow-wasnt-the-race-riot-of-one-night-in-june-1943-98120">Bamber Bridge Race Riot of 1943</a> were responsible for hauling supplies to the airfields, including Thorpe Abbotts. They often faced long hours and the routine refusal of food and accommodation from the “white” bases they serviced. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://8thaf.co.uk/exhibition/2/923rd-engineer-aviation-regiment">923rd Engineer Aviation Regiment</a> were a unit of approximately 3,200 men tasked with constructing and maintaining the airfields. From late 1942, they performed backbreaking construction shifts to ensure the completion and maintenance of vital airfields. In April to May 1944, approximately 200 men of the <a href="https://8thaf.co.uk/exhibition/2/923rd-engineer-aviation-regiment">827th Battalion from Regiment</a> worked to repair the runways at Thorpe Abbotts at the very time that some of most dramatic actions of the 100th were taking place.</p>
<p>Masters of the Air is silent on this black experience much closer to home, representing neither the significant contribution of these men, nor the endemic racism they faced. The mythology of the 100th still masks the realities of 1940s American society, despite the available evidence of a substantial black presence at Thorpe Abbotts. </p>
<p>The story of the Tuskegee Airmen is a worthy and inspiring tale of victory over prejudice and Masters of the Air is correct to include them. But its failure to show black soldiers at Thorpe Abbotts allows some of the myths surrounding the Bloody 100th and the wider “friendly invasion” to continue unchallenged.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graham Cross receives funding from the British Academy. </span></em></p>The unpleasant wartime reality for the Tuskegee Airmen was that, in addition to a determined enemy, they had to fight their own side for the right to serve.Graham Cross, Senior Lecturer in History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213442024-01-31T18:28:58Z2024-01-31T18:28:58ZHow the social structures of Nazi Germany created a bystander society<p>In the initial post-war judicial proceedings to establish what had happened under Nazism, and to punish the perpetrators of crimes, victims’ accounts were often <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/reckonings-9780198811244?lang=en&cc=in#">discredited</a>. Only in 1961, with the high-profile trial of Nazi war criminal <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/eichmann-trial/about.html">Adolf Eichmann</a> in Jerusalem, did the focus shift.</p>
<p>For many survivors, the concept of “Holocaust testimony” – accounts of what they had lived through – took on almost sacred dimensions. In 1989, author and Auschwitz-survivor Elie Wiesel <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/11/movies/art-and-the-holocaust-trivializing-memory.html">argued</a> that it was unethical for anyone besides surviving victims of the Holocaust to try to represent or explain it. </p>
<p>In some ways, Wiesel’s insistence that only surviving victims could really “know” the Holocaust has contributed to the mystification of this historical period. Holocaust deniers <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24461408">have misappropriated</a> this very process to their own ends. </p>
<p>Examining contemporary non-victims’ perspectives can help us to understand the violence perpetrated as, in part, the result of social systems. <a href="https://ellenpilsworthorg.wordpress.com/knowing-the-nazis/%22">My research</a> explores how accounts by anti-Nazi refugees were received (in translation) by British readers at the time. </p>
<p>Such memoirs <a href="https://jpr.winchesteruniversitypress.org/articles/10.21039/jpr.5.1.96">can illustrate</a> the process by which Nazism transformed the German population into what historian Mary Fulbrook calls a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bystander-society-9780197691717?cc=gb&lang=en&">“bystander society”</a> – even before the conditions of wartime normalised acts of excessive violence. </p>
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<img alt="An archival photograph from Nazi Germany." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">German citizens line the streets to see Hitler in Bad Godesberg am Rhein, in 1938.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H12704,_Bad_Godesberg,_Vorbereitung_M%C3%BCnchener_Abkommen.jpg">Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H12704</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<h2>Living in Nazi Germany</h2>
<p>In 1939, Sebastian Haffner, whose real name was Raimund Pretzel, wrote a memoir titled <em>Geschichte eines Deutschen. Die Erinnerungen 1914–1933</em> (Stories of a German. Recollections 1914-1933). </p>
<p>It was published after the author’s death in 2000, using the pen name under which he had become famous as a journalist in post-war West Germany. An English translation followed in 2003, titled Defying Hitler. Historian Dan Stone <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230282674_9">has described</a> it as “among the more remarkable contemporary analyses of Nazism and the Third Reich”. </p>
<p>Haffner was a law trainee when Hitler took power. As the Nazi regime destroyed the democratic legal system he had studied, he took up journalism instead. His partner, Erika Schmidt-Landry, had been designated “Jewish” according to the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nuremberg-race-laws">Nuremberg race laws</a>. When she became pregnant with Haffner’s child, the couple left Germany for England. </p>
<p>In the UK, Haffner started writing a memoir of his life so far, including his view of the rise of Nazism. In one telling scene, he describes how he felt when the Jewish colleagues in his law firm were forced out by Nazi storm troopers (AKA brown shirts) on April 1 1933, the day of the Jewish boycott. Some colleagues paced about nervously. Others sniggered. One Jewish colleague simply packed his bags and left. </p>
<p>Haffner writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My own heart beat heavily. What should I do? How keep my poise? Just ignore them, do not let them disturb me. I put my head down over my work. […] Meanwhile a brown shirt approached me and took up position in front of my work table. ‘Are you Aryan?’ Before I had a chance to think, I had said, ‘Yes.’ […] The blood shot to my face. A moment too late I felt the shame, the defeat. […] I had failed my first test. I could have slapped myself.</p>
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<p>On another occasion, at a compulsory indoctrination camp for law students, Haffner is forced to perform the Hitler salute and sing pro-Nazi songs. He writes: “For the first time I had the feeling, so strong it left a taste in my mouth: ‘This doesn’t count. This isn’t me. It doesn’t count.’ And with this feeling I too raised my arm and held it stretched out ahead of me for about three minutes.”</p>
<p>Haffner’s account illustrates the self-deception and denial by which many people who did not actively support the Nazi regime survived within it. In an interview given in 1989, Haffner <a href="https://www.penguin.de/Buch/Geschichte-eines-Deutschen-Als-Englaender-maskiert/Sebastian-Haffner/DVA-Sachbuch/e226084.rhd">said</a> it wasn’t that all Germans were Nazis but nor did Nazism hardly affect everyday life: “It was possible to live in a way alongside it.”</p>
<h2>A bystander society</h2>
<p>Fulbrook <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bystander-society-9780197691717?cc=gb&lang=en&">has shown</a> how ordinary Germans were drawn into “processes of complicity”. Under Nazism, standing by as state-sponsored acts of collective violence were perpetrated gradually became the required norm. The personal risks of doing otherwise were very real. “What might be a morally laudable stance in a liberal, democratic regime,” Fulbrook writes, “may be, in other circumstances, both ineffective and potentially suicidal.”</p>
<p>If someone in the UK in 2024 judges German bystanders to Nazi crimes as “guilty” for not standing up for victims, they do so according to the moral obligations of a liberal democracy. Hitler’s ascension to power in 1933, however, had marked the end of German democracy. The Third Reich was a brutal police state. People were encouraged to denounce opponents to the regime. Defiance ran the risk of arrest, imprisonment or political “re-education” in a concentration camp under <em>Schutzhaft</em> (“protective custody”).</p>
<p>Both in Germany and across the international community, everyone had to understand the violence enacted under Nazism on their own terms. Even the words “genocide” and “Holocaust”, by which the era has since been defined, were not yet in people’s vocabulary. </p>
<p>The term “<a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/coining-a-word-and-championing-a-cause-the-story-of-raphael-lemkin">genocide</a>” was coined by the Polish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, in 1944 to describe the Nazis’ programme of Jewish destruction. “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/what-is-the-origin-of-the-term-holocaust">Holocaust</a>”, a comparatively older word, only came to be widely used to formally describe the genocide perpetrated under Nazism against Jews <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/146235200112409">from the late 1950s</a>.</p>
<p>Further, racial segregation was also practised in other liberal democracies at the time. <a href="https://www.crf-usa.org/online-lessons/black-history-month/a-brief-history-of-jim-crow">Jim Crow laws</a> enforced racial segretation across the <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/black-codes-and-jim-crow-laws/%22">southern US states</a>. The notion of racial hierarchy underpinned the British and other European empires. </p>
<p>Engaging with contemporary non-victims’ perspectives can help us to understand the violence perpetrated during the Holocaust as an effect of social systems. American literature and Holocaust studies scholar Michael Rothberg <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25356">has argued</a> for an approach to historical violence that considers the perspectives of “implicated subjects”. </p>
<p>Rothberg suggests the categories of heroes and villains, victims and perpetrators are inadequate in accounting for the harms done. Moving beyond them can also elucidate the destructive social dynamics of our own period.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221344/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ellen Pilsworth receives funding from the British Academy and Wolfson Foundation, and the Martin Miller and Hannah Norbert-Miller Trust</span></em></p>The German population was transformed under Nazism into a “bystander society” – even before the conditions of wartime normalised acts of excessive violence.Ellen Pilsworth, Lecturer in German and Translation Studies, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2222202024-01-30T13:25:33Z2024-01-30T13:25:33ZMasters of the Air: Apple’s Air Force drama is imperfect, but powerful<p>Apple TV’s new second world war series, Masters of the Air, tells the story of the 100th Bomb Group of the US 8th Air Force, which operated B-17 “Flying Fortress” bombers from an airfield at Thorpe Abbotts in Norfolk. The series is based on <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/441997/masters-of-the-air-by-miller-donald-l/9781529918571">Donald L. Miller’s history book</a> of the same name and is produced by Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks.</p>
<p>As a historian with interests in the history and memory of the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/allies-in-memory/05A4421543030D7D1B3BD54AF9D5C27B#fndtn-information">8th Air Force</a>, I was largely impressed by the show’s historical accuracy, especially the recreation of the base at Thorpe Abbotts. The series delivers a moving portrayal of the American bomber boys and explores their role in the European air war with care and sensitivity. </p>
<p>But there are also missed opportunities, and the storytelling lacks the confidence and clarity of previous Spielberg-Hanks productions. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Masters of the Air.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The European air war</h2>
<p>Like many of its cinematic predecessors, Masters of the Air examines the doctrine employed by the 8th Air Force – daylight precision bombing. Focused on the “choke-points” in the German war economy – oil refineries, fighter production, ball-bearing manufacture – it was a key point of divergence with Britain’s Royal Air Force which attacked German industry through nighttime “area” bombing.</p>
<p>The merits of each approach are dealt with early on: an argument with RAF aircrew in the pub leads to fisticuffs and the matter is duly settled with one swift punch (in the favour of the Yanks).</p>
<p>The necessity of daylight precision bombing asserted, the series turns its attention to its cost in aircraft and aircrew. Missions are launched, and fortresses fall. Young aircrew bravely and stoically endure. </p>
<p>Air combat, we are shown, is brutal and chaotic. It consumes energy, sanity, hope. It breaks minds and bodies. In confronting the sheer arbitrariness of life and death, survival and sacrifice, Masters of the Air is a worthy successor to the Gregory Peck film, Twelve O’Clock High (1949).</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/masters-of-the-air-ten-other-films-and-tv-shows-about-the-friendly-invasion-of-the-american-eighth-air-force-221679">Masters of the Air: ten other films and TV shows about the 'friendly invasion' of the American Eighth Air Force</a>
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<h2>Missed opportunities</h2>
<p>The series pivots around real legends of the 100th Bomb Group, including Major Gale “Buck” Cleven (Austin Butler), Major John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner) and Major Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal (Nate Mann). </p>
<p>The nine episodes follow their war from rural East Anglia, to the skies over Germany, to the fields and forests of the European countryside and to the Stalag Lufts in which some were interned as prisoners of war. This enables the series to explore subjects that might otherwise have been absent: the bravery of European resistance fighters, the impact of Allied bombs on civilians, the crucial role played by Allied espionage and the brutality of the war in the east.</p>
<p>The result is a rich story which avoids an overly repetitive format based purely on bombing missions. But there are consequences.</p>
<p>One is that the series gives relatively little space to exploring the deep bonds between aircrew and East Anglians. This is a shame given the important role long <a href="https://www.100bgmus.org.uk/">played by the latter</a> in zealously guarding the 8th’s memory.</p>
<p>Another is the portrayal of racial segregation, the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-9981#:%7E:text=Executive%20Order%209981%3A%20Desegregation%20of%20the%20Armed%20Forces%20(1948),-EnlargeDownload%20Link&text=Citation%3A%20Executive%20Order%209981%2C%20July,Record%20Group%2011%3B%20National%20Archives.&text=On%20July%2026%2C%201948%2C%20President,segregation%20in%20the%20Armed%20Forces">official wartime policy</a> of the US military, which was not ended until 1948. A product of contemporary racism, this policy placed all African American personnel into separate units, and it restricted the vast majority to non-combat roles.</p>
<p>Military segregation is acknowledged in Masters of the Air through the story of the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/wing-war-ii-training-aircraft-legacy-tuskegee-airmen-180977313/">Tuskegee Airmen</a>, as the African American pilots of the 99th Pursuit Squadron and 332nd Fighter Group were known. </p>
<p>The only African American units to fly in combat, they served with distinction in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. As such, it it is absolutely right that Tuskegee Airmen like Alexander Jefferson (Branden Cook), Richard D. Macon (Josiah Cross) and Robert H. Daniels (Ncuti Gatwa) feature in the series.</p>
<p>At the same time, though, a parallel history more local to the 8th Air Force in England is overlooked. There were approximately 150,000 African Americans <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/they-treated-us-royally-the-experiences-of-black-americans-in-britain-during-the-second-world-war#:%7E:text=Around%20150%2C000%20of%20the%20US,to%20service%20and%20supply%20roles.">based in Britain</a> during the war, of which around 12,000 were in eastern England working tirelessly in logistics and supply. Like the Tuskegee Airmen, all were subject to the indignities and institutional racism of military segregation. </p>
<p>Masters of the Air misses the opportunity to acknowledge their service too. </p>
<h2>An uncertain future</h2>
<p>This is indicative of a broader issue. For all its stirring soundtrack (Blake Neely’s score certainly makes the spine tingle) the series lacks the power and punch of previous Spielberg-Hanks work.</p>
<p>Band of Brothers – with which the series will inevitably be compared – was made in the halcyon days of the turn of the 21st century. This was the moment, the decade between the end of the Cold War (1991) and 9/11 (2001), when the second world war became firmly established in American culture as the “Good War”.</p>
<p>The conflict <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/books/review-looking-for-good-war-elizabeth-samet.html">retains this sheen</a> in the American imagination, and Masters of the Air is in thrall to the “<a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/13/daily/generation-book-review.html?scp=1&sq=Tom%2520Brokaw%2520Reports:%2520The%2520Greatest%2520Generation&st=Search">greatest generation</a>”. But after the inconclusive “war on terror” and the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the series is also the product of a very different moment – one far less sure of the future.</p>
<p>In a sense, this brings to the series a heightened authenticity. After all, Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle), the series’ narrator, explicitly confronted the lingering uncertainties of his war experience in his powerful memoir, <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2023-4-page-67.htm">A Wing and Prayer</a> (1993) in which he explains how he “learned to live with ambiguity”. Just as importantly, though, such uncertainty marks Masters of the Air as inescapably of its time.</p>
<p>This was powerfully revealed on the very day the first two episodes were released (January 26), when <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/26/us-planning-to-station-nuclear-weapons-in-uk-amid-threat-from-russia-report">it was reported</a> that a modern US airbase in East Anglia – RAF Lakenheath – was being readied to potentially host nuclear weapons. </p>
<p>This is a decision inextricably linked to the events in Ukraine. But it also implies that the peace won by the “Bloody 100th” all those years ago – from an airfield just 40 miles away – is more fragile than it has been for quite some time.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Edwards has previously received funding from the ESRC, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, the US Army Military History Institute, and the US Naval War College. Sam is a Trustee of Sulgrave Manor (Northamptonshire), the ancestral home of George Washington, and of The American Library (Norwich) a memorial to the 2nd Air Division of the US 8th Air Force.</span></em></p>The show explores the American role in the European air war with care and sensitivity.Sam Edwards, Reader in Modern Political History, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2201992024-01-25T13:17:44Z2024-01-25T13:17:44ZNazi genocides of Jews and Roma were entangled from the start – and so are their efforts at Holocaust remembrance today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570420/original/file-20240119-27-9655vn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C1022%2C680&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Franz Roselbach, a Roma survivor of the Holocaust who was sent to Auschwitz when he was 15, attends a ceremony at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 2006. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/roma-survivor-of-the-holocaust-franz-roselbach-who-was-sent-news-photo/72830867?adppopup=true">Sean Gallup/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the United Nations passed a resolution to designate Jan. 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it did not define the Holocaust. <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/u-n-resolution-establishing-holocaust-remembrance-day">The 2005 proclamation</a> merely noted that it “resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities.”</p>
<p>Among those unnamed other minorities are Roma, who deserve to be part of the larger story of the Holocaust commemorated on this day. Their story is <a href="https://as.vanderbilt.edu/jewishstudies/people/faculty/ari-joskowicz/">closely connected with that of Jews’ suffering and struggle for recognition</a> – a relationship at the center of <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691244044/rain-of-ash">my 2023 book</a>, “Rain of Ash.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A blue and green flag with a red wheel design waves in front of a large stone monument with a statue on top." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Romani flag waves during an event on International Romani Day in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/romani-flag-hangs-at-a-pro-romani-demonstration-in-front-of-news-photo/468905978?adppopup=true">Adam Berry/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A chilling report</h2>
<p>To understand the connections between Jewish and Romani experiences, it is useful to return to one of the key moments when Europe’s Jews began to realize that they faced a new type of threat: systematic mass murder.</p>
<p>In March 1942, a prisoner fled Chelmno, a Nazi extermination camp in present-day Poland, <a href="http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/bajler.html">and escaped to the Warsaw Ghetto</a>. There, he told members of the ghetto’s underground resistance movement about mass killings in gas vans. </p>
<p>Szlamek, as the witness was known, recounted how Jewish prisoners had been <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/63902356">forced to dig mass graves</a> for truckload upon truckload of murdered Roma from Austria. In his vivid description of the process, he reported how these Jewish gravediggers warmed themselves by putting on the clothes of the Romani victims. Once their work for the day was done, the SS forced these Jews to lie on the bodies of those already in the burial pits before being shot themselves.</p>
<p>It’s a haunting image: Jews murdered on top of the Roma whose clothes they were wearing. It also encapsulates how connected the murders of these two groups were, even as the crimes committed against them continue to be remembered as distinct events.</p>
<h2>Missing chapter</h2>
<p>Younger generations in the United States are <a href="https://www.claimscon.org/millennial-study/">not able to identify basic facts about the Jewish Holocaust</a>, according to surveys by the Claims Conference, which advocates for restitution for Jewish victims and their descendants. Around half of millennial and Gen Z respondents could not name a single ghetto or concentration camp, and just over a third knew how many Jews had been murdered: around 6 million.</p>
<p>The public knows even less about the Romani Holocaust. Indeed, the history of <a href="https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/combatting-discrimination/roma-eu/roma-equality-inclusion-and-participation-eu_en">Europe’s largest ethnic minority</a> is a blank slate for many Americans, even those who consider themselves well-informed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A faded photograph of a soldier and a man in a suit standing as they interview a shorter woman in a kerchief." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr. Robert Ritter, whose pseudo-scientific work contributed to the Nazis’ forced sterilization and murder of Romani people, interviews a woman in 1938.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/gypsy-deportation-dr-robert-ritter-head-of-the-racial-news-photo/107759810?adppopup=true">Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is not a matter of students ignoring, or not properly absorbing, the lessons available in their history textbooks, as is the case for the Jewish Holocaust. Romani history is rarely in the textbooks to begin with.</p>
<p>Romani activists are keenly aware of this, and frequently they see Jews’ relative success telling the story of their genocide as a model for <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2019/10/30/roma-holocaust-amid-rising-hate-forgotten-victims-remembered">Romani struggles for recognition</a>.</p>
<p>Nazi Germany persecuted many groups; concentration camps were originally built to imprison the regime’s political opponents, while the first dedicated killing sites’ purpose was <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/euthanasia-program">to murder disabled people</a>. Among those persecuted, Roma and Jews were the only groups whom the Nazis and their allies systematically persecuted in large numbers as entire families – whether by deporting them to concentration and death camps, or <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/mass-shootings-of-jews-during-the-holocaust">systematically shooting them as racialized groups</a> in occupied areas of the Soviet Union. </p>
<p>As with Jews, many of Roma’s experiences of persecution and genocide occurred in locations well known to people who have learned something about the Holocaust, such as Auschwitz or <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lodz">the Lodz ghetto in occupied Poland</a>. The Roma murdered in Chelmno <a href="http://www.lodz-ghetto.com/the_gypsy_camp.html,36">came from Lodz</a>, where the Nazis had deported over 5,000 Roma from Austria in November 1941. Many <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-genocide/austria">Austrian Roma</a> who avoided these early deportations eventually ended up in Auschwitz. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An index card filled in with personal information positioned between three photographs of the same woman's face and two handprints." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1272&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1272&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1272&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gestapo dossiers for Roma people, whom the Nazis persecuted and considered ‘foreign and inferior.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sinti-and-roma-gestapo-dossiers-at-the-permanent-exhibition-news-photo/523965182?adppopup=true">Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the end, the Nazis killed approximately three-quarters of <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-genocide/austria">Austria’s prewar Romani population</a>: approximately 9,000 men, women and children. Among countries where the Romani genocide took place, this was one of the highest rates of murder, next to <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-genocide/latvia">Latvia</a>, <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-genocide/estonia">Estonia</a> and the areas of today’s Czech Republic that the Nazis <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-genocide/czech-republic">called the Protectorate</a>. </p>
<p>In many other locations, totals are less clear. Serious estimates for <a href="https://www.romarchive.eu/en/voices-of-the-victims/the-number-of-victims/">the overall number of victims</a> range widely, from 120,000 to over half a million.</p>
<h2>Many languages, many faiths, many countries</h2>
<p>Romani people are highly diverse. They have many religions: Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodox Christianity as well as Islam. Many <a href="https://rm.coe.int/roma-history-factsheets-eng/1680a2f2f8">speak Romani as their first language</a>, while others don’t. Whatever their relationship to the Romani language, all Roma are at home in at least one other language, depending on what country they live in. </p>
<p>Historically, many Romani families in Western Europe lived as itinerant traders and craftspeople, contributing to the popular image of them as travelers with wagon homes. Most Roma in Europe, however – particularly in Southeastern and East Central Europe, <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/20/sunday-review/a-diaspora-of-11-million.html">where the largest Romani populations live</a> – have been settled for many generations. Whether considered nomadic or settled, they were stigmatized: frequently isolated at the edge of settlements, excluded from civil rights, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/italys-treatment-of-roma-people-reflects-a-centuries-old-prejudice">targeted as a dangerous “nuisance</a>” by authorities.</p>
<p>When the Nazis and their allies persecuted this diverse population as “Gypsies,” they were able to <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documentation-on-the-persecution-of-roma">rely on policies to police and surveil them</a> that had been <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/bavarian-precedent-roma-european-culture">in place since the late 19th century</a>.</p>
<p>These policies, including special identity cards with fingerprints, did not disappear after liberation. Instead, following the Second World War, Roma across Europe remained marginalized <a href="https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/6450629">and overpoliced</a> in ways that made it hard for them to gain recognition of the genocide they had experienced.</p>
<h2>Shared stories</h2>
<p>An international Romani civil rights movement that took shape in the 1970s, building on earlier local efforts to organize, slowly changed this. Organizations like <a href="https://iru2020.org/">the International Romani Union</a>, <a href="https://eriac.org/">the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture</a> and <a href="https://zentralrat.sintiundroma.de/en/">the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma</a>, are forming a new landscape for Romani politics and recognition.</p>
<p>From the start, their efforts were tied together with those of Jewish victims. Jewish survivors could build on a much longer history of international organizing and philanthropy, and after 1945 they could rely on the help of the thriving U.S. Jewish community in their quest to document Nazi crimes and explain them to the wider public. Many of the oldest Jewish institutions in this field, such as <a href="https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/">the Wiener Holocaust Library</a> in London, offered crucial support, as scholars and activists strove to tell the history of the Romani Holocaust. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Five older men in suits and ties sit in a semicircle as one pulls up his sleeve." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hermann Hoellenreiner, a Sinto Holocaust survivor, shows his prisoner tattoo to David Lewin, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, as they and officials travel to a commemoration ceremony in 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/german-president-christian-wulff-looks-on-as-sinto-news-photo/108426185?adppopup=true">Jesco Denzel/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Roma and Jews found new ways to connect through their efforts for recognition and redress, though Jewish intellectuals, activists and institutions had much greater access to resources. <a href="https://vha.usc.edu/home">The Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive</a> is emblematic here: It has over 50,000 video interviews with Jewish survivors and 406 with Romani survivors. Yet this is nevertheless the largest dedicated collection of Romani testimony in the world.</p>
<p>While this unequal partnership has not dissolved, it is transforming. Jewish institutions are increasingly investing resources to preserve and digitize Romani history and to promote public education about both peoples’ experiences in collaboration with Romani activists. At the same time, Romani and Jewish activists are <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691244044/rain-of-ash">working together to overcome antisemitism and anti-Roma sentiment</a> – linked by a sense that understanding history is essential for the defense of liberal democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220199/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ari Joskowicz received funding from the American Philosophical Society, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, the American Society of Learned Societies, and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies.</span></em></p>Many young people today know little about the murder of European Jews during the Holocaust, and even less about the murder of Romani communities.Ari Joskowicz, Associate Professor of History, Jewish Studies and European Studies, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2218882024-01-24T17:21:20Z2024-01-24T17:21:20ZUK press warns of Nato war with Russia – newspapers are clearly keen to avoid mistakes of WWII<p>“Britain must prepare for war. America won’t save us this time,” declared the headline on a <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/19/britain-must-prepare-for-war-america-wont-save-us-this-time/">column in the Daily Telegraph</a> on January 19. The Daily Mail, meanwhile, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12981021/Nato-braced-war-Russia-20-years.html">asserted on January 18 that</a> Nato is “braced for all-out war with Russia in the next 20 years”. It cited a Nato official’s advice that civilians should “prepare for cataclysmic conflicts and the chilling prospect of being conscripted”. </p>
<p>The Sun has <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25372068/grant-shapps-grow-army-ww3-threat/">alerted its readers</a> to the prospect of “wars in Russia, China, Iran and North Korea in five years”. In the Spectator, a <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-west-must-stop-playing-mr-nice-guy/">recent column noted</a> the defence secretary Grant Shapps’ assertion that the UK is “moving from a post-war to pre-war world” and suggested that “the west must stop playing Mr Nice Guy”. </p>
<p>Another column in the New Statesman similarly <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/geopolitics/2023/12/robert-kaplan-war-world-disorder">warned that</a> a “worldwide, bipolar military conflict” will be “the organising principle of geopolitics for years to come”. It quoted Shapps as saying: “Old enemies are reanimated. New foes are taking shape. Battle lines are being redrawn.”</p>
<p>As fears of a new war emerge, I have delved into the newspaper print archives to explore how journalists reported the risk of conflict during the years before the world wars of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Press coverage in the years preceding the second world war served a generation of readers haunted by the appalling death toll of mechanised trench warfare between 1914 and 1918. Public concern was reinforced by fear of bombing, which newspapers and cinema newsreels depicted in searing images from the civil war in Spain between 1936 and 1939 and the Japanese bombing of China in 1931.</p>
<p>Despite the nature of Hitler’s regime in Germany, the Conservative prime minister of the time, Neville Chamberlain, was determined that British newspapers must promote appeasement. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-neville-chamberlains-adviser-took-spinning-for-the-pm-to-new-and-dangerous-levels-147533">Press management</a> became a political priority for Chamberlain. </p>
<p>He was helped to achieve it by two key lieutenants. Downing Street press secretary George Steward and Sir Joseph Ball, the chairman of the Conservative Research Department, worked closely with the prime minister to persuade British newspapers that appeasement was in the national interest. Chamberlain insisted that hostility to his approach would weaken Britain’s influence abroad.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-neville-chamberlains-adviser-took-spinning-for-the-pm-to-new-and-dangerous-levels-147533">How Neville Chamberlain's adviser took spinning for the PM to new and dangerous levels</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Munich agreement</h2>
<p>When Chamberlain negotiated the notorious <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/znxdnrd/revision/9">Munich agreement</a> with Hitler in September 1938, The Times did not oppose the transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany without Czech consent. Instead, Britain’s most prestigious establishment broadsheet <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24402688">declared that</a>: “The volume of applause for Mr Chamberlain, which continues to grow throughout the globe, registers a popular judgement that neither politicians nor historians are likely to reverse.” </p>
<p>It predicted that Chamberlain’s diplomacy would end in “an era when the race for armaments will be seen for the madness that it is and will be abandoned because it has ceased even to be profitable”.</p>
<p>The mass market Conservative Daily Mail chastised Labour’s Clement Attlee for complaining about the “shameless betrayal” of the Czechs and accused Attlee of issuing “frothy diatribes”. It promoted Conservative optimism that the agreement would guarantee peace.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571149/original/file-20240124-17-ecipr0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Tear-out of Guardian coverage of Munich agreement" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571149/original/file-20240124-17-ecipr0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571149/original/file-20240124-17-ecipr0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571149/original/file-20240124-17-ecipr0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571149/original/file-20240124-17-ecipr0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571149/original/file-20240124-17-ecipr0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571149/original/file-20240124-17-ecipr0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571149/original/file-20240124-17-ecipr0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Guardian was unimpressed by the Munich Agreement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Manchester Guardian, 1 October 1938.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The liberal Manchester Guardian loathed Hitler and harboured grave doubts about appeasement, but it could see no practical alternative. In a leader column on October 3 1938, it cautioned: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now that the first flush of emotion is over it is the duty of all of us to see where the ‘peace with honour’ has brought us. The Prime Minister claims that it has brought us ‘peace for our time’. It is an inspiring claim, and if it proves to be a just one, he will have earned a place in history.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The following day’s edition of the popular left wing Daily Mirror was similarly unconvinced. It feared the “further strengthening until it becomes invincible of the Nazi domination of Europe”. The Mirror believed peace could only be secured by military strength brought about by rapid rearmament, but it could identify no alternative to compromise and deterrence. It feared a “world so armed and so explosive that it will blow itself to bits”.</p>
<p>In a subsequent leader on October 7, 1938, The Guardian hoped new weapons and additional recruitment to the armed forces might reinforce British diplomatic influence. However, it warned that if British foreign policy did not change substantially, “ordinary men and women” would not be persuaded that “the diplomacy our armaments are to serve” would work.</p>
<h2>Doomed to repeat mistakes?</h2>
<p>Journalism’s failures between 1936 and 1939 were less appalling than the jingoistic press campaigns that preceded the first world war and continued throughout it. </p>
<p>Between 1914 and 1918, newspapers downplayed misery and extolled victory. Soldiers found their behaviour hard to forgive. Such reporting promoted the belief that newspapers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/27/first-world-war-state-press-reporting">could not be trusted to tell the truth</a>. It won newspapers a reputation as the main backer, and perhaps even an instigator, of conflict. </p>
<p>Later, their failures during the era of appeasement meant that British newspapers were not entirely trusted by their readers when the second world war was declared in September 1939. They were widely read but little loved.</p>
<p>In highlighting the risks facing the world as Ukraine resists Russian aggression and fighting rages in Gaza, newspapers suggest that they have learned from conflicts of the past. They are neither encouraging war nor disguising the possibility that Nato may be called upon to defend borders and democracy. </p>
<p>Britain has better newspapers than it had in 1914 or 1939. Would their editorial strengths survive the outbreak of war? I fear that now – as it was in the past – truth may still be the first casualty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Luckhurst has received research funding from News UK and Ireland Ltd. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Society of Editors and the Free Speech Union</span></em></p>How newspapers reported the risk of war in the age of appeasement.Tim Luckhurst, Principal of South College, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2209652024-01-12T12:45:18Z2024-01-12T12:45:18ZWhat One Life gets wrong about Nicholas Winton and the Kindertransport story<p>Barbara Winton self-published a <a href="https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/barbara-winton/if-its-not-impossible/9781472148650/">biography</a> of her father, Nicholas Winton, in 2014, which has now become a new major biopic, One Life. Already dubbed “the British Schindler” for his role in the rescue of 669, mainly Jewish, children from Czechoslovakia in 1939, with this new film Nicholas Winton’s fame is firmly established.</p>
<p>The film has a quality cast, including Anthony Hopkins as an aged Winton (the humanitarian died in 2015 aged 106), Helena Bonham Carter as his impressive mother, Babette, and Johnny Flynn as the young Winton. Romola Garai and Alex Sharp star as Doreen Warriner and Trevor Chadwick, the workers for the Czech Refugee Committee, who did all the dangerous and extensive rescue work in Prague. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6ethollg-PI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for One Life.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One Life is a useful beginners guide to the 1930s Jewish refugee crisis, of which few details are widely known. As late as 2002, former mayor of London Ken Livingstone, attending a Holocaust memorial event at Liverpool Street station where many of the refugee children arrived, was honest enough to <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719068836/">state that</a>: “Until today, I did not know that Jewish children had escaped to London before the second world war.” </p>
<p>Since then, the Kindertransport, through which 10,000 children came to the UK on temporary permits from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, has become the most famous refugee movement in British history. The intended UK Holocaust Memorial next to the Houses of Parliament, which was confirmed in the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67351175">2023 king’s speech</a>, will feature it prominently. </p>
<p>There are, however, several elements of the Kindertransport story that have proved unpalatable, especially as they undermine the presentation of Britain as the saviour of the Jews during the Nazi era. </p>
<p>That reassuring narrative was at the forefront in 2015 when the <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/398645/Holocaust_Commission_Report_Britains_promise_to_remember.pdf">British government announced</a> the creation of a national Holocaust memorial: “Ensuring that the memory and the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten lies at the heart of Britain’s values as a nation. In commemorating the Holocaust, Britain remembers the way it proudly stood up to Hitler and provided a home to tens of thousands of survivors and refugees, including almost 10,000 children who came on the Kindertransports.”</p>
<h2>The reality of Kindertransport</h2>
<p>Recent <a href="https://assets.cambridge.org/97805215/34499/frontmatter/9780521534499_frontmatter.pdf">researchers</a>, <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719068836/">including myself</a>, have <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253042217/the-kindertransport/">highlighted</a> one particular and obvious flaw in the Kindertransport scheme: that the children were separated from their parents. </p>
<p>Many (perhaps the majority, though there are no definitive figures) would subsequently lose at least one parent through the Holocaust. Indeed, as home secretary at the time, Sir Samuel Hoare, <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1938-11-21/debates/133ef530-1ea4-4835-839b-c9889e0481c0/RacialReligiousAndPoliticalMinorities">acknowledged</a> when announcing the scheme in the House of Commons in November 1938, it would create a terrible dilemma for the parents who were aware that they might never see their children again. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568874/original/file-20240111-29-6il859.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="statue of a girl standing and boy sitting down." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568874/original/file-20240111-29-6il859.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568874/original/file-20240111-29-6il859.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568874/original/file-20240111-29-6il859.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568874/original/file-20240111-29-6il859.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568874/original/file-20240111-29-6il859.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568874/original/file-20240111-29-6il859.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568874/original/file-20240111-29-6il859.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The kindertransport memorial at Liverpool Street station, by Flor Kent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Für_das_Kind.JPG">Wiki Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The other major critique of the Kindertransport is there was insufficient care to make sure that the Jewish children kept their religious identity in the UK. Both problems are raised in One Life, but only fleetingly so. </p>
<p>When the young Winton asks a Prague rabbi to hand over lists of vulnerable Jewish children, the rabbi is reluctant. He asks: “What about the parents?” and queries the future Jewishness of the children who are entrusted to Winton. Rather than dwell further, the scene is used to present the Jewish past of the Winton family and Winton’s true British values.</p>
<p>In fact, in his desire to place the children somewhere, Winton accepted the offer from the Barbican Mission to the Jews to house a group of the Czech Jewish children. It took the efforts of <a href="https://ccj.org.uk/sites/ccj.hocext.co.uk/files/2020-06/Common%20Ground%202020.pdf">Reverend James Parkes</a>, a Church of England clergyman who worked ceaselessly against antisemitism, to rescue them from conversion.</p>
<h2>Unsung heroes</h2>
<p>Nicholas Winton was undoubtedly a decent man who insisted himself that he did not do that much and that others should get more credit. At least the film allows this, with some attention given to two humanitarians, the maverick Trevor Chadwick and the formidable Doreen Warriner. </p>
<p>It was these two young British refugee workers, among others, who looked after the children in Prague, arranging first their flights and then their train journeys and also gathering the necessary documentation for them to both leave Czechoslovakia and enter the UK.</p>
<p>Many others could have been included, but at least One Life makes a start. The film presents Winton as haunted by his failure to do more and frames his lifelong philanthropy as a way of not confronting the full horrors of the Holocaust. It would be better to see his supportive role in 1939 as a part of, rather than apart from, his other humanitarian work. </p>
<p>It was, very belatedly, the interest of others and the need for a secular saint in the rescue of the Jews that pushed Winton into the unwanted limelight and into mythical status as the British Schindler. What this fails to allow for is the agency of the former refugee children themselves. </p>
<p>In 1966, poet and former child refugee Karen Gershon curated <a href="https://archive.org/details/wecameaschildren00gers">We Came as Children</a>, a collective autobiography of the Kindertransport. It is one of the most important articulations of refugee status and its legacy ever published. </p>
<p>This was widely and positively received some 20 odd years before Nicholas Winton was “rediscovered” on the BBC television show That’s Life (1988). In two episodes, host Esther Rantzen introduced Nicholas Winton to many of the children he’d helped, now grown adults, in emotional scenes. </p>
<p>It is significant that while the alcoholic, womanising and child-abandoning Trevor Chadwick <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vyKVuRfLiQ8C&printsec=copyright&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">wrote an account</a> of his remarkable work in Prague and London in We Came as Children, Nicholas Winton was not mentioned. Ultimately I believe Chadwick would make a more fitting cinematic subject matter when dealing with the messy subject of Britain and the Holocaust – despite, or perhaps in part because of, his own messy private life. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
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<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Kushner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent researchers, including myself, have highlighted one particular and obvious flaw in the Kindertransport scheme: that the children were separated from their parents.Tony Kushner, James Parkes Professor of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2173782024-01-04T20:03:04Z2024-01-04T20:03:04ZAustralia is still reckoning with a shameful legacy: the resettlement of suspected war criminals after WWII<p>In the Canadian parliament last year, an outcry erupted after 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian Yaroslav Hunka was presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a hero of the second world war. </p>
<p>It turned out Hunka had fought against the Allies as a voluntary member of the Nazi German Waffen-SS Galizien division. The incident was deeply embarrassing for Canada; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was forced to <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/27/americas/trudeau-apology-nazi-unit-intl/index.html">publicly apologise</a>. </p>
<p>The incident also highlighted the ignorance of many Canadians when it comes to world history, as well as the makeup of their own post-war immigration schemes. </p>
<p>As I discuss in my new book, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Fascists-in-Exile-Post-War-Displaced-Persons-in-Australia/Persian/p/book/9780367696962#:%7E:text=Description,Organisation%20between%201947%20and%201952.">Fascists in Exile</a>, Canada isn’t the only country where former Nazis fled after the second world war. And in many of these countries, families continue to grapple with the legacies of this turbulent time in history.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561743/original/file-20231127-17-ym0xyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561743/original/file-20231127-17-ym0xyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561743/original/file-20231127-17-ym0xyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561743/original/file-20231127-17-ym0xyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561743/original/file-20231127-17-ym0xyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561743/original/file-20231127-17-ym0xyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561743/original/file-20231127-17-ym0xyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The author’s new book, published in December.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Routledge</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Australia, for instance, when a Lithuanian immigrant named Bronius “Bob” Šredersas died in 1982, he bequeathed a significant art collection to the city of Wollongong. Last year, however, his secret history was <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-20/bob-sredersas-a-nazi-report-concludes/101166634">revealed</a>: he was found to be a member of Nazi intelligence in occupied Lithuania during the second world war. He was almost certainly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/21/i-am-bob-just-bob-could-a-wollongong-folk-hero-have-had-a-nazi-past">involved</a> in the persecution and murders of Jews. </p>
<p>In response to a report by Professor Konrad Kwiet of the Sydney Jewish Museum, the Wollongong City Council <a href="https://wollongong.nsw.gov.au/my-community/news-and-alerts/news/news/2022/june-2022/wollongong-art-gallery-removes-sredersas-plaque#:%7E:text=Wollongong%20City%20Council%20has%20removed,artworks%2C%20is%20a%20Nazi%20collaborator.">removed a plaque</a> acknowledging the donation and updated its website with the new information about Šredersas’ past. </p>
<p>These may seem to be isolated, rare cases. They are not. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564128/original/file-20231207-23-qvfuqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man on a bench" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564128/original/file-20231207-23-qvfuqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564128/original/file-20231207-23-qvfuqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564128/original/file-20231207-23-qvfuqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564128/original/file-20231207-23-qvfuqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564128/original/file-20231207-23-qvfuqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564128/original/file-20231207-23-qvfuqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564128/original/file-20231207-23-qvfuqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bronius ‘Bob’ Šredersas photographed in 1950.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wollongong.spydus.com/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/FULL/WPAC/BIBENQ/36933577/27943663,1?FMT=IMG&IMGNUM=3">Wollongong City Libraries</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Denial, then investigations</h2>
<p>Around one million Central and Eastern European “displaced persons” were resettled by the United Nations after the second world war in countries such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. This group included soldiers who had fought in German military units, as well as civilian collaborators. The Nazi-led Holocaust had relied on their firepower and administrative skills. </p>
<p>Many of these people should have been charged with war crimes. But their resettlement in any country that would take them was a matter of political expediency in the fraught post-war and early Cold War period.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564134/original/file-20231207-23-abbr9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564134/original/file-20231207-23-abbr9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564134/original/file-20231207-23-abbr9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564134/original/file-20231207-23-abbr9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564134/original/file-20231207-23-abbr9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564134/original/file-20231207-23-abbr9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564134/original/file-20231207-23-abbr9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564134/original/file-20231207-23-abbr9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arthur Calwell and Ben Chifley welcoming new migrants to Australia in 1947.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chifley Research Centre/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some 170,000 displaced persons were resettled in Australia between 1947 and 1952. Jewish groups immediately protested that this group included Nazi collaborators. The then immigration minister, Arthur Calwell, dismissed their claims as a “farrago of nonsense”. </p>
<p>The migrants were used as labourers under a two-year indentured labour scheme and transformed into what the government called “New Australians”. </p>
<p>Australia received at least eight extradition requests between 1950 and the mid-1960s for individuals suspected of WWII-era crimes from Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. These were all refused with the justification that the judicial systems could not be trusted. </p>
<p>In 1961, the then attorney-general, Garfield Barwick, publicly stated he was “closing the chapter” on allegations of war crimes stemming from the second world war. As a result, there would be no further official discussions about any alleged perpetrators residing in Australia. </p>
<p>Decades later, though, all four of these main resettlement countries begin judicial proceedings against the same alleged war criminals they had ignored for so long. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-long-dark-history-of-antisemitism-in-australia-217908">The long, dark history of antisemitism in Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Scholars have attributed this change to numerous factors, including the trial of former Nazi leader <a href="https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/survival-and-legacy/postwar-trials-and-denazification/the-trial-of-adolf-eichmann/">Adolf Eichmann</a> in 1961 and the publication of <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/information/press/in-memoriam/raul-hilberg-1926-2007">Raul Hilberg</a>’s comprehensive history of the Holocaust, as well as more generally to the cultural shift of the 1960s and generational change. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/cabinet-papers-199293-hunting-war-criminals-hits-a-snag-20161216-gtd1fn.html">wide-ranging Australian investigation</a>, established by the Hawke government, was later carried out between 1987 and 1992. Among the immigrants who were investigated were 238 Lithuanians, 111 Latvians, 84 Ukrainians, 45 Hungarians and 44 Croatians. </p>
<p>Allegations against 27 men were found to be substantiated, but only three were formally charged: Ukrainians <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/07/30/Second-Australian-war-crimes-prosecution-fails/5160754928180/">Mikolay Berezowsky</a>, <a href="https://search.library.uq.edu.au/primo-explore/fulldisplay?vid=61UQ&search_scope=61UQ_All&tab=61uq_all&docid=61UQ_ALMA2182744060003131&lang=en_US&context=L">Heinrich Wagner</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-20/nazi-war-criminals-in-australia-and-the-case-of-polyukhovich/9756454">Ivan Polyukhovich</a>. None was convicted.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1707332604129894704"}"></div></p>
<h2>Family histories unearthed</h2>
<p>This was not the end of the story, though. </p>
<p>Many alleged perpetrators of crimes never appeared on any official, or unofficial, list, either before or after the Australian investigation. But stories about individuals have come out in other ways.</p>
<p>My own research, for example, has resulted in the compiling of hundreds of such names by painstakingly piecing together various archival fragments.</p>
<p>For example, a colleague and I were alerted to some suspicious phrasing when the family of Hungarian migrant Ferenc Molnar, now deceased, placed a <a href="https://immigrationplace.com.au/story/ferenc-kalman-frank-molnar-2/">commemorative biography</a> on the website Immigration Place Australia. This biography noted Molnar’s authorship of “a small book about the Holocaust”. It turned out the “small book” was a strident denial of the Holocaust, titled <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/1294393">The Big Lie: Six Million Murdered Jews</a>. Molnar himself had claimed to have visited the Dachau concentration camp during the war. </p>
<p>The SBS television show <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/every-family-has-a-secret">Every Family Has a Secret</a> has been approached by at least four people who have suspected a deceased family member was a Holocaust perpetrator or collaborator. The show investigated these allegations, using overseas archival researchers. All four suspects were shown to have been allegedly complicit in crimes. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-woman-in-the-usual-sense-ilse-koch-the-bitch-of-buchenwald-was-a-holocaust-war-criminal-but-was-she-also-an-easy-target-203960">'No woman in the usual sense': Ilse Koch, the 'Bitch of Buchenwald', was a Holocaust war criminal – but was she also an easy target?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Angela Hamilton, for example, suspected her deceased Romanian father, Pál Roszy, had been “helping the Nazis” because he was a violent man and rabid anti-Semite. In fact, he had been <a href="https://www.mamamia.com.au/angela-hamilton-no-filter/">convicted</a> in absentia in post-war Romania of killing 31 elderly Jews.</p>
<p>While some families have always either known or suspected the truth, others have been shocked to find a loved one’s name in the files of the 1987-1992 Special Investigations Unit. </p>
<p>My husband’s now-deceased grandfather’s name appears in the files due to an anonymous allegation submitted after a public appeal for information. While the allegation was vague and unlikely, it was not impossible a 19-year-old Ukrainian nationalist could have participated in the wave of anti-Jewish violence that <a href="https://www.routledge.com/European-Fascist-Movements-A-Sourcebook/Clark-Grady/p/book/9780367262860">claimed the lives</a> of some 10,000 Jews in western Ukraine in 1941. </p>
<p>Australian families will continue to reckon with stories like these, perhaps for many years to come. And more than 70 years after the first displaced persons arrived from Europe and 30 years after the Australian war crimes investigations, the Australian public is perhaps finally willing to accept that, just as Holocaust survivors resettled in Australia, so did the alleged perpetrators of atrocities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217378/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Jayne Persian receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Official investigations of suspected Nazi collaborators have long closed. But families are still grappling with the hidden secrets of loved ones, a new book details.Jayne Persian, Associate Professor in History, University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186722024-01-03T13:19:02Z2024-01-03T13:19:02ZHow second world war bomb rubble was used to make 135 football pitches in east London<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564885/original/file-20231211-15-t8k7r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C4785%2C2622&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hackney Marshes football pitches with the city of London on the horizon.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alandenney/26288830431/"> Alan Denney|Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During the second world war, German forces dropped 28,000 bombs and almost 3,000 V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets on London. Nearly 30,000 people were killed. The damage to the built environment was extensive. </p>
<p>Within the London County Council area (roughly covering today’s inner London), more than 73,000 structures were totally destroyed. Local surveyors, construction workers, architects and engineers documented the destruction as it happened on hand-coloured maps, which are now held at the London Metropolitan Archives. Some 43,400 structures recorded on these maps were categorised as “<a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/bomb-damage-maps-reveal-londons-world-war-ii-devastation">damaged beyond repair</a>”. </p>
<p>City authorities were faced with the gargantuan task of figuring out quite where to put the millions of tonnes of rubble. My <a href="https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCA/article/view/25782">recent study</a> looks at the largest of these rubble dumps – at Hackney and Leyton Marshes in east London – and the remarkable afterlife it has had, as the wellspring of English grassroots football. </p>
<h2>When rubble choked the city of London</h2>
<p>Between December 1940 and 1946, 2.2 million cubic metres of concrete, brick and stone rubble were dumped on Hackney Marsh and 270,000 cubic metres on Leyton Marsh, raising the ground level by three metres. If piled together, the volume would have <a href="https://www.themeasureofthings.com/singleresult.php?comp=volume&unit=cm&amt=2470000&i=451">exceeded the Great Pyramid</a>. </p>
<p>In 2021 and 2022, I conducted an archaeological walkover and photographic surveys of the marshes. I struggled to find obvious evidence of the conflict. The rubble lies hidden under plants and soil with only occasional surface fragments of concrete and the odd brick hinting at the site’s wartime origins. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="An overhead shot of bricks on a dirt path." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564896/original/file-20231211-23-uw2x9d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564896/original/file-20231211-23-uw2x9d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564896/original/file-20231211-23-uw2x9d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564896/original/file-20231211-23-uw2x9d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564896/original/file-20231211-23-uw2x9d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564896/original/file-20231211-23-uw2x9d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564896/original/file-20231211-23-uw2x9d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bomb rubble fragments of stock bricks and granite setts eroding from pathways on Leyton Marsh, 2023 (10cm scale).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Gardner</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Comparing images from surveys by aerial <a href="https://www.lidarfinder.com/">lidar</a> (a laser-light technology used for 3D mapping) with historic maps shows how both sites are now marshes in name only. The elevation created by the rubble is visible both in sharp breaks of slope on the maps and, on the ground, in the unexpectedly steep staircases you have to climb in order to reach the football pitches from the bank of the River Lea.</p>
<p>Venture to neighbouring Leyton and Clapton and where the rubble came from becomes far more visible. Street after street showcase gaps where houses are missing in otherwise neat terraces. Modernist blocks abut awkwardly against Victorian townhouses. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A portrait shot of an east London street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564899/original/file-20231211-15-tydx76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564899/original/file-20231211-15-tydx76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564899/original/file-20231211-15-tydx76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564899/original/file-20231211-15-tydx76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564899/original/file-20231211-15-tydx76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564899/original/file-20231211-15-tydx76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564899/original/file-20231211-15-tydx76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gaps in Victorian terraces, in Leyton, make visible the extent of the bombing suffered during the war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Gardner</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first weeks of the Blitz, in September 1940, saw London’s 29 borough councils increasingly unable to cope with a <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Blitz_and_its_Legacy/zBeoDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">backlog of 2.7 million tonnes</a> of rubble. It effectively choked the city, blocking miles of roads and rendering vital services inoperable. </p>
<p>By the end of September, the city-wide War Debris Survey and Disposal Service was established. Early dump locations it selected included disused gravel pits on Hampstead Heath and the site of the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, which had <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv23wf3ft.8?seq=30#:%7E:text=sand%20quarrying%20in%20the%20Second%20World%20War%20">been quarried</a> for sand to fill sandbags in the first years of the war. </p>
<p>As the bombing intensified, larger spaces were soon needed. The service turned its sights eastwards, to the wide-open marshland of east London.</p>
<p>The infilling was primarily undertaken to clear London’s bombed streets. It also had a more constructive purpose. A 1942 memo written by the Ministry of Home Security (now held in the <a href="https://search.lma.gov.uk/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/LMA_OPAC/web_detail?SESSIONSEARCH&exp=refd%20LCC/CL/CD/03/115">London Metropolitan Archives</a>) notes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sites for tips should be studied and selected. The opportunity may be taken to make up to new levels land which is subject to flooding or to improve other waste and uneven sites. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How Hackney Marshes became a footballing utopia</h2>
<p>At the east London site, 250,000 cubic metres of soil from upriver reservoir construction was added to the rubble. This was then seeded to create 135 football pitches, as well as numerous cricket pitches and changing rooms. </p>
<p>This transformation represented a remarkable turnaround for the jumbled debris of a violent conflict and was noted as such, during the war itself. In 1942, the leader of the London County Council, Lord Latham, remarked that “the battle of London has helped to win a new playing field for future generations of Londoners”. </p>
<p>Though unmarked by commemorative plaques, the pitches themselves have become a vast footballing heritage site, the “utopia,” as founder of Hackney Wick Football Club Bobby Kasanga <a href="https://londonist.com/london/sport/hackney-marshes-a-sunday-morning-mecca">has put it</a>, “of grassroots football”. </p>
<p>In 1953, seven years after the pitches opened, a British Pathé <a href="https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/189053/">newsreel</a> reported a “six to ten month” wait for a booking: “A team lucky enough to get a dressing room shares it with their opponents – typical, this, of the sporting spirit of these Londoners.” </p>
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<p>The popularity of the site stemmed from it not only being the largest agglomeration of football pitches in the world, but also from its accessibility. It was a place where locals and recent immigrants to London alike could share their love for the beautiful game. </p>
<p>The Hackney and Leyton Football League, founded when the pitches opened in 1946, remains London’s largest and oldest league. It has cemented the reputation of the site, with legendary England players, including Bobby Moore and David Beckham, having trained there. </p>
<p>In 1997, Ian Wright featured along with Eric Cantona, Robbie Fowler and David Seaman, in a Nike <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gvTS_bZisQ">ad</a> soundtracked by Blur’s smash hit Parklife and shot on the marshes. Adidas, meanwhile, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgBZGyAW3Zk">flew Lionel Messi</a> on to the pitches by helicopter for a promo match, in 2010, only to have to drive him away by van when he was mobbed by fans. </p>
<p>As more rugby and cricket pitches have been added, the number of pitches has reduced down from the original 135 to 70. Hundreds of players from <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/gv4x3m/the-art-of-hackney-marshes-photographing-the-home-of-sunday-league-football">diverse, working-class communities</a> across London still flock there each weekend though. </p>
<p>UK photographer Simon Di Principe used to go to the marshes as a kid, with his mother, to watch his father play. His 2016 book, <a href="https://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/32632/1/capturing-hopes-and-dreams-on-east-london-s-football-pitches">Grass Roots</a>, documents a full season of these amateur Sunday league games, in what Di Principe has said is “a contemporary testament and celebration of what makes London a multicultural city”. </p>
<p>The marshes endure as a subtle reminder of the losses the people of London incurred during the second world war.</p>
<p>The successive grassroots campaigns that have thwarted a variety of proposed developments in recent years are a testament to the value the site continues to hold, for those future generations of post-war Londoners that Latham foresaw.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218672/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Gardner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>East London’s fabled football destination is the best example of how wartime rubble was repurposed to improve the city for its residents.Jonathan Gardner, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Archeology, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2194692024-01-02T19:05:55Z2024-01-02T19:05:55ZWill Biden’s ego bring Trump back to the White House?<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/will-bidens-ego-bring-trump-back-to-the-white-house" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Even President Joe Biden’s admirers are worrying about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/us/politics/biden-trump-2024-poll.html">polls showing a close 2024 election</a>, with one party insider fearing a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/democratic-frustrations-biden-spill-open-five-alarm-fire-rcna123841">“five-alarm fire.”</a></p>
<p>While Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, Jim Messina, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/06/biden-reelection-democrats-jim-messina-obama">has urged calm, telling party leaders to stop “bed-wetting,”</a> Democrat old pro James Carville <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILdUHvMOIf8">has said his Republican wife has already changed his bedding to rubber sheets.</a></p>
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<p>Is Biden’s evergreen ego — <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/21/politics/scranton-street-name-biden-trnd/index.html">his scrappy Scranton Joe determination</a> — outpacing his ability to win a tough election, much less govern a bitterly divided country until 2029? </p>
<p>Will there be dire consequences because <a href="https://time.com/5636715/biden-1988-presidential-campaign/">the man who had been yearning to be president since he was 46</a> resists giving up the job at 81? Should he have stepped aside for someone younger?</p>
<h2>Biden’s impressive record</h2>
<p>Given Biden’s legislative achievements over just three years, these are difficult questions to answer.</p>
<p>Condemnation of new eruptions of egomania in leaders with limited accomplishments — or malignant damage (<a href="https://www.mediaite.com/politics/im-rubber-youre-glue-trump-employs-school-yard-reply-to-biden-calling-him-an-insurrectionist/">does the aggrieved 45th president come to mind?)</a> — makes sense.</p>
<p>But Biden’s situation is more complex, especially since his high levels of self-confidence have undoubtedly contributed to his strong performance on social, economic and foreign policy. </p>
<p>The president has had enough ego to dream big — and enough stamina to achieve legislation pouring trillions of dollars into major initiatives. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/12/biden-economic-plan-pillars-impact/">High points:</a> 2021’s American Rescue Plan and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law; the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. </p>
<p>He also announced measures aimed at helping or protecting those <a href="https://blog.dol.gov/2023/06/30/bidenomics-is-about-creating-good-jobs-and-empowering-americas-workers">seeking better jobs</a>, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/12/06/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-another-nearly-5-billion-in-debt-relief-for-over-80000-student-loan-borrowers/">students</a>, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/11/10/fact-sheet-to-mark-veterans-day-biden-harris-administration-highlights-historic-care-benefits-new-actions-to-support-veterans-and-their-families/">veterans</a> and members of the <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/president-bidens-pro-lgbtq-timeline">LGBTQ+ community.</a> </p>
<p>He even reached out to those who disagreed with him, allowing him to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-28/white-house-republicans-reach-deal-to-avert-historic-us-default">forge deals with obstreperous Republicans and prickly Democrats.</a> </p>
<p>But his self-confidence has also had guardrails. He’s taken flak in stride as an inevitable consequence of democratic leadership. He didn’t let denunciations <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/08/16/1028081817/congressional-reaction-to-bidens-afghanistan-withdrawal-has-been-scathing">prevent the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan</a> or stop him from taking on a tortuous <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/us/politics/biden-israel-gaza-poll.html">tightrope walk through the Gaza cataclysm’s horrors</a>.</p>
<h2>Ego or hubris?</h2>
<p>High-achieving leaders are always at risk of crossing a line that separates self-confidence from over-confidence, ego from hubris. Has Biden crossed this line as he hungers for a second term, leading him to potentially disastrous decisions? </p>
<p>If so, critics — sympathetic or otherwise — should note two important qualifiers.</p>
<p>First, even great leaders are inevitably subject to emotions and appetites that can veer in problematic as well as positive directions. Plato once examined the competing impulses of human nature — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksPYAW6fruk">reason, spirit and appetite</a> — echoed later in <a href="https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/understanding-sigmund-freuds-id-ego-and-superego">Sigmund Freud’s id and superego theories</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/ben006">William James, a pioneering analyst of rationality and pragmatism</a>, insisted that sentiment and emotions <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/">were also in “the very flour of which our mental bread is kneaded.”</a> </p>
<p>None of them would have been surprised if a 21st century president resisted cool calculations based on the arithmetic of polling numbers — and age.</p>
<h2>Egos in the White House</h2>
<p>Biden is far from the first American president whose great achievements could be tarnished with hubris. </p>
<p>George Washington combined sterling leadership qualities <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/levees-receptions/">with the elitism of a slave-owning aristocrat (including the institution of exclusive presidential levees)</a>. Theodore Roosevelt’s “progressive” activism went hand in hand with a desire <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/from-a-white-house-wedding-to-a-pet-snake-alice-roosevelts-escapades-captivated-america-180981139/">“to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening,” according to his daughter.</a> </p>
<p>Franklin D. Roosevelt’s self-confidence was as crucial to his success as it’s been to Biden. <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/impact-and-legacy">FDR’s 12 years in the White House saw monumental results</a>, especially the New Deal’s transformation of the federal government’s social welfare responsibilities. </p>
<p>The 32nd president radiated assurance, even after the onset of polio in 1921. Like the 46th president, FDR was confident enough to think big, to focus emphatically on “the forgotten man” and to pursue results <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/new-deal">that would be beneficial, even if they weren’t always perfect.</a> </p>
<p>FDR burnished his reputation by successfully leading the United States during the Second World War, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franklin-D-Roosevelt/Relations-with-the-Allies">building a powerful wartime coalition with the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union that ultimately defeated Nazi Germany.</a></p>
<p>Roosevelt marshalled the strengths of millions of Americans in the military, industry and agriculture sectors, inspiring the citizenry with a vision of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199376216.003.0002">a “Four Freedoms” post-war world that would hopefully avoid the mistakes made after the First World War</a>. He forged the triumphant “Big Three” grand alliance that recognized the limits of U.S. power and <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/reviews/roosevelt-real-deal">compromised with the different priorities of British and Soviet partners.</a> </p>
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<h2>FDR/Biden similarities?</h2>
<p>Ironically, it was during those years that FDR experienced his own most problematic encounter with an outsized ego. In 1944-45 — as both the war and his own life were nearing their end — Roosevelt undercut his own successes by sliding into hubris.</p>
<p>Increasing strains on his health <a href="https://www.biography.com/political-figures/franklin-roosevelt-health">created tensions between ego and pragmatism.</a> Roosevelt imagined he could remain a national and global leader in Olympian fashion, even undertaking a debilitating journey in 1945 <a href="https://www.fdrlibrary.org/documents/356632/390886/7.4+FDR+at+Yalta+FINAL+3.18.14.pdf/23bff8f2-dd7c-4e2b-a435-24a279d6a9e2">to the Yalta conference, the meeting of the heads of government of the U.S., the U.K. and the Soviet Union to discuss the post-war reorganization of Germany and Europe.</a> He died a few weeks later. </p>
<p>Roosevelt seemingly began to believe that only he could make many moving parts proceed in the desired direction. Long-time colleague and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes once grumbled: <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/essays/ickes-1933-harold-secretary-of-the-interior">“You won’t talk frankly even with people who are loyal to you … you keep your cards closely up against your belly.”</a> </p>
<p>Upon his death, there was no Roosevelt team fully briefed or experienced enough to ensure his vision lived on.</p>
<p>Neither Vice-President Harry Truman nor recently appointed Secretary of State Edward Stettinius <a href="https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/manhattan-project/p5s1.html">had been fully consulted about the atomic bomb, for example, as well as complex plans for post-war Big Three collaboration.</a> This paved the way for shifts to <a href="https://www.fau.edu/artsandletters/osullivan/images/wilson-d-miscamble-pub.pdf">more unilateral policies and style that Roosevelt would almost certainly have bemoaned.</a> </p>
<p>If Biden in 2023 does not precisely echo FDR’s 1944-45 mindset, there is a common denominator: the challenge of shielding bold, even brilliant leadership from the creeping debilitation of hubris.</p>
<p>Voters will do their cost accounting in 2024. Ironically, their calculations will also be subject to the complex tensions between personal emotions and pragmatism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronald W. Pruessen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Biden’s self-confidence has powered impressive achievements. But has it become too much of a good thing?Ronald W. Pruessen, Emeritus Professor of History, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2195252023-12-21T11:58:09Z2023-12-21T11:58:09Z‘It’ll all be over by next year’ − how Britain celebrated Christmas in 1943<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565175/original/file-20231212-25-cvmrru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C613%2C457&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A bit of Christmas cheer: members of the Women's Royal Naval Service taste the pudding at Greenock in Scotland, December 1943.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Admiralty official collection</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain’s popular newspapers greeted Christmas 1943 with the fond hope that it would be the last Christmas of the war. Daily Mail columnist Simon Harcourt-Smith wrote: “We will have only ourselves to blame if by Christmas 1944 our victory in Europe is not several months old.”</p>
<p>The popular left-wing weekly Picture Post was equally optimistic: “Christmas 1943 brings promise,” it declared, adding: “The day we are looking for is coming – perhaps sooner than we all expect.” And writing for Picture Post, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1989/07/30/dorothy-hazard-dies-at-78/1b414e1e-05b2-40e6-b909-9a2fb8847a40/">Dorothy Crook</a>, an American experiencing her first Christmas in England, thought Britons were enjoying “the brightest and most hopeful Christmas season in five years”.</p>
<p>Having spent one career as a journalist, my main research area these days is the history of journalism, to find out more about how the UK press reported important events. It’s interesting to look back at Christmas 80 years ago, when Britons thought – with some good reasons – that an end to the second world war was in sight.</p>
<p>The year 1943 had seen significant military success. The Red Army had pushed invading Germans back to the banks of the Dnieper. British and American forces had made landings in Italy and its fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, had been removed from office. Intense bombing raids had obliterated much of Hamburg, dealt colossal damage to industry in the Ruhr valley, and destroyed 40% of Berlin. Indeed, the Daily Telegraph relayed reports from neutral Swedish newspapers that Joseph Goebbels, Reich minister for propaganda, wanted to evacuate the German capital entirely.</p>
<p>But if victory appeared certain, Allied success was yet to deliver material rewards to war-weary Britons. With factories converted to war work, the Daily Mirror reported intense competition for second-hand toys.</p>
<p>In Newcastle, auction rooms had closed because they were “ashamed to take the money which frantic bidders were prepared to pay”. Auctioneers blamed the parents – one told the Mirror that once children had “set their minds on” toys such as a toy train or doll, the parents “fight for the article because they haven’t the heart to disappoint the child”.</p>
<h2>Rationing out the joy</h2>
<p>Many titles focused on the shortage of traditional food. The Listener, a weekly magazine published by the BBC, acknowledged that there would be no extra rations – but it said things would be much worse for the Germans, who were led by “pre-Christian barbarians opposed to the Christian way of life”.</p>
<p>The Daily Telegraph poured scorn on the minister for food’s prediction that “a substantial proportion of the population will get their turkey”. Butchers made it plain that this was unlikely. The Telegraph concluded that: “Roast pork without apple sauce and simplified plumb pudding (ie, what housewives can make from sultanas, prunes and raisins they may have saved from rations) will be the mainstay in many homes.”</p>
<p>A <a href="https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C786">ministry of food</a> advertisement in the national press encouraged the “resourceful housewife” to “make Christmas meals different by serving something usual in an unusual manner”. It advised readers to “s-t-r-e-t-c-h the meat ration with delicious new stuffings and make it a real feast”. Suggestions included parsley and celery stuffing and “bacon olives” made by wrapping lumps of stuffing in bacon.</p>
<p>The Daily Mirror was equally determined to encourage innovation. It lamented the failure of communities “to club together” and make toys. The popular left-wing daily title was certain that “no part of the country” lacked “people able to use a saw, chisel and paintbrush”. Advertising its commitment to post-war reform, it warned that: “If we can’t produce a few homemade toys, the outlook for a whole new world is pretty grim.”</p>
<h2>Songs of thanksgiving?</h2>
<p>The Times offered a picture of choristers rehearsing for the Christmas Eve festival of nine lessons and carols in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. The Daily Telegraph offered a competition for junior readers – they could win book tokens by finding toys hidden in a picture of Father Christmas.</p>
<p>But the Conservative broadsheet’s editorial offered a more sobering thought. There was “no power on Earth” that could now prevent the allies achieving the destruction of German fighting forces. However, it went on:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>British and American forces may have to endure the greatest sacrifice of life which they have yet suffered.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>From the US, the Economist reported that the festive season was not offering President Franklin D. Roosevelt tranquillity. Striking rail workers’ trade unions had expressed “deep dissatisfaction with the economic management of the war”. Among the causes was white workers’ hostility to the employment or promotion of black colleagues on southern railroads.</p>
<p>The Daily Mirror found a more personal story about Britain’s American allies. Columnist <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nephew-hero-journalist-who-died-26833646">Ian Fyfe</a> (who was to die while covering the D-Day landings the following year) met Private Hank Burnett of Ohio at an American Forces club in London.</p>
<p>Burnett missed his children but was sure his beloved wife, Myrtle, would fill their Christmas stockings. His concern was that he could not find a suitable present for her. “She’s gonna get the best and London ought to be able to give it to her,” Hank explained. The problem, in this fifth Christmas of war, was that London could not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Luckhurst has received funding from News UK and Ireland Ltd. He is a member of the Free Speech Union and the Society of Editors.</span></em></p>In 1943, Britons thought the war was nearly over − but another 18 months of hardship and a decade of rationing lay ahead.Tim Luckhurst, Principal of South College, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2200192023-12-20T01:28:46Z2023-12-20T01:28:46ZWith ‘White Christmas,’ Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby helped make Christmas a holiday that all Americans could celebrate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566447/original/file-20231218-29-3t65vi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=451%2C37%2C5721%2C3895&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After Irving Berlin, left, penned 'White Christmas,' he pegged Bing Crosby as the ideal singer for what would become a holiday classic.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-composer-lyricist-and-songwriter-irving-berlin-and-news-photo/1296904202?adppopup=true">Irving Haberman/IH Images via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/23/obituaries/irving-berlin-nation-s-songwriter-dies.html">Irving Berlin</a> was a Jewish immigrant who loved America. As his 1938 song “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200000007/">God Bless America</a>” suggests, he believed deeply in the nation’s potential for goodness, unity and global leadership. </p>
<p>In 1940, he wrote another quintessential American song, “<a href="https://achristmasclassic.org/">White Christmas</a>,” which the popular entertainer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/10/15/archives/bing-crosby-73-dies-in-madrid-at-golf-course-bing-crosby-73-dies-at.html">Bing Crosby</a> eventually made famous.</p>
<p>But this was a profoundly sad time for humanity. World War II – what would become <a href="https://www.highpointnc.gov/2111/World-War-II">the deadliest war in human history</a> – had begun in Europe and Asia, just as Americans were starting to pick up the pieces from the Great Depression.</p>
<p>Today, it can seem like humanity is at another tipping point: <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-depolarise-deeply-divided-societies-podcast-193427">political polarization</a>, war in <a href="https://theconversation.com/west-banks-settler-violence-problem-is-a-second-sign-that-israels-policy-of-ignoring-palestinians-drive-for-a-homeland-isnt-a-long-term-solution-217177">the Middle East</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/russian-attempt-to-control-narrative-in-ukraine-employs-age-old-tactic-of-othering-the-enemy-206154">and Europe</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/2023s-extreme-storms-heat-and-wildfires-broke-records-a-scientist-explains-how-global-warming-fuels-climate-disasters-217500">a global climate crisis</a>. Yet like other historians, I’ve long thought that <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pGEB0QIAAAAJ&hl=en">the study of the past</a> can help point the way forward.</p>
<p>“White Christmas” has resonated for more than 80 years, and I think the reasons why are worth understanding.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bing Crosby sings ‘White Christmas’ in the 1942 musical ‘Holiday Inn.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Yearning for unity</h2>
<p>Christmas in America had always reflected a mix of influences, from ancient Roman <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-christmas-tree-is-a-tradition-older-than-christmas-195636">celebrations of the winter solstice</a> to the Norse festival <a href="https://theconversation.com/yule-a-celebration-of-the-return-of-light-and-warmth-218779">known as Yule</a>. </p>
<p>Catholics in Europe had celebrated Christmas with public merriment since the Middle Ages, but Protestants often denounced the holiday as a vestige of paganism. These religious tensions <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-puritans-cracked-down-on-celebrating-christmas-151359">spilled over to the American colonies</a> and persisted after the Revolutionary War, when slavery divided the nation even further.</p>
<p>After the Civil War, many Americans pined for national traditions that could unify the country. Protestant opposition to Christmas celebrations had relaxed, so Congress finally <a href="https://time.com/4608452/christmas-america-national-holiday/">declared Christmas a federal holiday in 1870</a>. Millions of Americans soon adopted <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-christmas-tree-is-a-tradition-older-than-christmas-195636">the German tradition of decorating trees</a>. They also exchanged presents, sent cards and shared stories of Santa Claus, a figure whose image the cartoonist <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-cartoonist-created-modern-image-santa-claus-union-propaganda-180971074/">Thomas Nast</a> perfected in the late 19th century.</p>
<p>The Christmases that Berlin and Crosby “used to know” were those of the 1910s and 1920s, when the season expanded to include <a href="https://madisonsquarepark.org/community/news/2021/04/holiday-tree/">the nation’s first public Christmas tree lighting ceremony</a> and <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-first-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade">the appearance of Santa Claus</a> at the end of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. </p>
<p>Despite these evolving secular influences, Christmas music and entertainment continued to emphasize Christianity. Churchgoers and carolers often sang “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World.”</p>
<h2>‘The best song anybody ever wrote’</h2>
<p>Berlin’s inspiration for the song came in 1937, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/White-Christmas/Jody-Rosen/9780743218764">when he spent Christmas in Beverly Hills</a>. He was near the film studios where he worked but far from his wife, Ellin – a devout Catholic – and the New York City home in Manhattan where they had always celebrated the holiday with their three daughters. </p>
<p>Being apart from Ellin that Christmas was particularly difficult: Their infant son had died on Dec. 26, 1928. Irving knew his wife would have to make the annual visit to their son’s grave by herself.</p>
<p>By 1940, Berlin had come up with his lyrics. In his Manhattan office, he sat at his piano and asked his arranger to take down the notes.</p>
<p>“Not only is it the best song I ever wrote,” <a href="https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/laurence-bergreen/as-thousands-cheer/9780306806759/">he promised</a>, “it’s the best song anybody ever wrote.”</p>
<p>Berlin had connected his lonesome Christmas to the broader turmoil of the time, including the outbreak of World War II and fraught debates about America’s role in the world. </p>
<p>This new song reflected his response: a dream of better times and places. It evoked a small town of yesteryear in which horse-drawn sleighs crossed freshly fallen snow. It also imagined a future in which dark days would be “merry and bright” once again.</p>
<p>This was a new kind of Christmas carol. It did not mention the birth of Jesus, angels or wise men – and it was a song that all Americans, including Jewish immigrants, could embrace.</p>
<p>Berlin soon took “White Christmas” back to Hollywood. He wanted it to appear in his newest musical, one that would tell the story of a retired singer whose hotel offered rooms and entertainment, but only on American holidays. He titled the film “Holiday Inn” and pitched it to Paramount Pictures, with Crosby as the lead.</p>
<h2>Fighting for ‘the right to dream’</h2>
<p>Raised in Spokane, Washington, Crosby had launched his music career in the 1920s. A weekly radio show and a contract with Paramount led to stardom during the 1930s. </p>
<p>With his slim build and protruding ears, Crosby did not look the part of a leading man. But his easygoing demeanor and mellow voice made him immensely popular. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034862/">Holiday Inn</a>” premiered in August 1942. Reviewers barely mentioned the song, but ordinary Americans couldn’t get enough of it. By December it was on every radio, in every jukebox and, as the Christian Science Monitor newspaper noted, in nearly “every home and heart” in the country.</p>
<p>The key reason was the nation’s entry into World War II.</p>
<p>“White Christmas” was not overtly patriotic, but it made Americans think about why they fought, sacrificed and endured separation from their loved ones. <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/White-Christmas/Jody-Rosen/9780743218764">As an editorial</a> in the Buffalo Courier-Express concluded, the song “provided a forcible reminder that we are fighting for the right to dream and for memories to dream about.”</p>
<p>This made it a song all Americans could embrace, including those not always treated like Americans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting of Santa Clause wearing a stars-and-stripes hat as a young boy and girl sit on his lap." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During World War II, aspects of the Christmas holiday – family, home, comfort and safety – took on greater meaning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/retro-santa-claus-wearing-a-stars-and-stripes-tophat-with-a-news-photo/525363617?adppopup=true">GraphicaArtis/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Affirming faith in humanity</h2>
<p>Berlin and Crosby didn’t set out to change how Americans celebrate Christmas. But that’s what they ended up doing.</p>
<p>Their song’s universal appeal and phenomenal success launched a new era of holiday entertainment – traditions that helped Americanize the Christmas season.</p>
<p>Like “White Christmas,” popular songs such as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (1943) tapped into a longing for being with friends and family. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (1949) and other new songs celebrated snow, sleigh rides and Santa Claus, not the birth of Jesus.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Red and blue cover for sheet music featuring photographs of two smiling young men and two smiling young women." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The sheet music for Irving Berlin’s ‘White Christmas.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sheet-music-for-irving-berlins-white-christmas-new-york-news-photo/455915107?adppopup=true">Robert R. McElroy/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“White Christmas” <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Bing_Crosby_a_Pocketful_of_Dreams.html?id=2DRE2U_8WJIC">had already sold 5 million copies by 1947</a> when Crosby recorded “Merry Christmas,” the first Christmas album ever produced. On the album, “White Christmas” appeared alongside holiday classics such as “Jingle Bells” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”</p>
<p>Hollywood followed suit. In the popular 1946 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/">It’s a Wonderful Life</a>,” for example, bonds of family and friendship proved their value just in time for Christmas. </p>
<p>Faith was affirmed, but it was a faith in humanity. </p>
<p>Over the coming decades, Christmas entertainment continued to reach new audiences.</p>
<p>The upbeat songs of Phil Spector’s 1963 album “A Christmas Gift for You,” for example, appealed to baby boomers. Producers also catered to younger audiences with television specials such as “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”</p>
<p>Hollywood then rediscovered Christmas during the 1980s, largely because of “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_7_nm_0_q_christmas%2520story">A Christmas Story</a>,” a film that didn’t exactly view Christmas through rose-colored glasses. While satirizing the chaos and angst of the holiday season, the film nonetheless embraced Christmas, warts and all. A steady stream of Christmas films followed – “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096061/">Scrooged</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099785/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_7_nm_0_q_home%2520alone">Home Alone</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319343/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_7_nm_0_q_elf">Elf</a>” – where themes of nostalgia, family and togetherness were ever-present.</p>
<p>Since the 1940s, the Christmas season has become even more inclusive. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/12/23/christmas-also-celebrated-by-many-non-christians/">A 2013 Pew Research survey</a> found that 81% of non-Christians in the U.S. celebrate Christmas. Yes, the holiday has also <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/122132/the-battle-for-christmas-by-stephen-nissenbaum/">become more commercial</a>. But that, too, has made it all the more American.</p>
<p>Amid these changes, Irving Berlin’s song has been a holiday mainstay, reminding listeners of what makes them not just American, but human: the importance of home, a longing for togetherness and a shared hope for a better future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220019/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ray Rast does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The secular carol doesn’t mention Jesus, angels or wise men, while reminding listeners of what makes them not just American, but human.Ray Rast, Associate Professor of History, Gonzaga UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2193532023-12-15T11:02:40Z2023-12-15T11:02:40ZThe Shepherd: Disney’s ghostly new Christmas tale evokes the eerie qualities of Britain’s abandoned second world war airfields<p>From <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/A-Christmas-Carol-novel">Charles Dickens</a> to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/01/collected-ghost-stories-mr-james-review">M.R. James</a>, Christmas has a long association with ghost stories. In The Shepherd – part of Disney+’s festive fare for this year – we have an evocative addition to the genre. </p>
<p>Based on a short story by acclaimed thriller writer, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frederick-Forsyth">Frederick Forsyth</a>, and set in 1957, The Shepherd explores the links between flight and the spectral.</p>
<p>As Forsyth explained in the forward to a <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/350617/the-shepherd-by-forsyth-frederick/9781804943908">new edition of the story</a>, it was written as a gift to his wife “in a single afternoon” on Christmas Eve 1974. It draws on his first-hand experiences as a Royal Air Force (RAF) National Service pilot during which he had flown the <a href="https://www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk/aircraft/de-havilland-dh100-vampire-fb-6/">Vampire</a>.</p>
<p>The film, which is largely true to Forsyth’s original, sees young RAF pilot Freddie (played by Ben Radcliffe) take-off on Christmas Eve from a British airfield deep in the German countryside bound for England. Freddie’s route should be straight-forward – a direct flight across the North Sea to the RAF base at Lakenheath, in Suffolk in east England.</p>
<p>Not long after he crosses the Dutch coast, however, he runs into problems – his compass fails and his radio malfunctions. With mere minutes of fuel left, salvation arrives. From out of the clouds comes an ageing <a href="https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/collections/de-havilland-mosquito-b35/">Mosquito</a>, a type of fighter-bomber from the second world war, and its pilot “shepherds” him home to a rather eerie and apparently deserted RAF base. </p>
<p>The Shepherd is a ghost story of a sort that became familiar in the post-second world war period. In this time, several storytellers found inspiration in the ghostly old airfields dotted around the UK. Many of these bases, once teaming with action and central to the war effort, had been left to decay – places full of ghosts and memories.</p>
<h2>Abandoned airfields</h2>
<p>The military airfields that were abandoned in the 1940s and 1950s were shaped by one of the most pivotal events of modern history: the second world war. Hundreds were hastily constructed throughout the country in what was one of the largest civil engineering projects in <a href="https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/redirect/15802">British history</a>.</p>
<p>For a few short years, these bases were home to thousands of service men and women. They were places in which life was lived intensely, and which were also marked by tragedy, trauma and death. And then, with the victory of 1945, many became surplus to requirements. Abandoned, they were returned to farming and their buildings were left to moulder.</p>
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<p>It’s not clear when the post-war cultural fascination with ghostly old airfields began, but two early examples are the films <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbjVrazpjzU&ab_channel=slardbigmoney">The Way to the Stars</a> (1945) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8GRkgb7bfU&ab_channel=JimmyJoseph">Twelve O’Clock High</a> (1949).</p>
<p>The Way to the Stars opens with scenes of an abandoned wartime airfield – the fictional RAF Halfpenny Field – before a flashback returns us to the dark days of 1940. Released in the US under the title Johnny in the Clouds, the film is a celebration of Anglo-American comradeship and common purpose. </p>
<p>Its opening sequence clearly inspired director Henry King as he set about filming Twelve O’Clock High. Starring Gregory Peck as a tough and experienced American air force officer “broken” by the strains of combat command, King’s film is set at another fictional wartime airfield in England, this time Archbury. </p>
<p>Just like The Way to the Stars, Twelve O’Clock High opens with scenes of an abandoned old airfield, lost to the weather and weeds. The runways are cracked and crumbling, the old buildings deserted and derelict. Into the scene walks an American airman who was stationed there during the war and through whose eyes we see the present fall away and the ghostly past return.</p>
<h2>Haunted by history</h2>
<p>By the time Forsyth was writing in 1974, the idea of the abandoned second world war airfield as a ghostly, memory-laden landscape had become firmly established. </p>
<p>Ghostly airfields are powerfully present, for instance, in publications like <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1500027152">Airfields of the Eighth: Then and Now</a> (1978) which provides an evocative photographic record of wartime airfields reclaimed by nature. Shots of the airfield “back then” are accompanied by those taken in the 1970s and the effect is suggestive of the lingering – if not ghostly – presence of the past.</p>
<p>Similar sentiment is apparent in the series of books written by Bruce Halpenny from the 1980s onwards. Called <a href="http://www.ghoststations.com/">Ghost Stations</a>, these volumes are full of spooky and spectral encounters among the ruined remains of airfields.</p>
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<img alt="An abandoned control tower surrounded by gorse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565982/original/file-20231215-19-9ky8oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565982/original/file-20231215-19-9ky8oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565982/original/file-20231215-19-9ky8oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565982/original/file-20231215-19-9ky8oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565982/original/file-20231215-19-9ky8oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565982/original/file-20231215-19-9ky8oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565982/original/file-20231215-19-9ky8oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Vegetation has grown around an abandoned control tower on the disused airfield at Winkleigh, Devon in south-west England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/gorse-surrounding-abandoned-control-tower-on-272590388">Peter Turner Photography/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>I even encountered stories like this when researching the visits to their old bases made in the 1970s and 1980s by many second world war veterans <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/allies-in-memory/05A4421543030D7D1B3BD54AF9D5C27B">Allies in Memory</a>. Stood on the balcony of an old control tower, or walking the concrete runways, more than one veteran experienced the past as a powerful and distinctly ghostly presence. </p>
<p>Indeed, during the dedication of the memorials established on many wartime airfields in the 1990s, this sense that the dead remained present was often remarked upon. </p>
<p>In the ghosts that many have encountered within such landscapes – as well as in evocative productions like The Way to the Stars, Twelve O’Clock High, and now The Shepherd – we can see the profound impact made by airfields on quiet corners of the rural landscape. These are places marked by the life and death of war, and in their ghosts we can see the long shadow of history.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Edwards has previously received funding from the ESRC, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, the US Army Military History Institute, and the US Naval War College. Sam is a Trustee of Sulgrave Manor (Northamptonshire) and of The American Library (Norwich).</span></em></p>Once teeming with life, many of Britain’s wartime airfields are abandoned and full of the ghostly memories.Sam Edwards, Reader in Modern Political History, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2032342023-12-13T19:04:18Z2023-12-13T19:04:18ZSchindler’s List at 30: a look back at Steven Spielberg’s shattering masterpiece<p>Schindler’s List, released 30 years ago, remains Steven Spielberg’s most <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108052/awards/">highly acclaimed</a> and emotionally sapping film. Winning seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, it was widely praised for its portrayal of the horrors of the Holocaust.</p>
<p>Schindler’s List marked a turning point in Spielberg’s career. The director later said making the film <a href="https://nofilmschool.com/schindlers-list-american-history">changed his life</a>. </p>
<p>Up to this point, he was known as a thrilling blockbuster director. With Schindler’s List, Spielberg turned his attention to darker, conflicted characters and shifted his focus to bigger themes of good and evil, heroism in adversity and the human cost of war.</p>
<p>His later work is still exciting and still jolts the senses in ways that very few contemporary filmmakers can, as in the musical showmanship of West Side Story (2021) or the fantastical realism of War Horse (2011). But Schindler’s List outshines them all with its detached focus on the sheer brutality and its steadfast refusal to look away. </p>
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<h2>Retelling the Holocaust</h2>
<p>Schindler’s List tells the true story of <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/oskar-schindler">Oskar Schindler</a>, the German businessman who saved 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunition factories. </p>
<p>Prior to Schindler’s List, accounts of the Holocaust on film had been reserved for documentary, such as Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog (1956) and Claude Lanzmann’s monumental <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/claude-lanzmann-shoah">Shoah</a> (1985), which lasts nine hours and was composed of interviews with survivors and perpetrators of the Nazi death camps. </p>
<p>Hollywood had always shied away from dramatising the Holocaust, feeling such a devastating subject could not be depicted dramatically in the name of entertainment. </p>
<p>Recounting historical events in film is <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/238611/pdf">fraught with tension</a>. Creative liberties are taken, timelines are condensed, characters combined and fictional elements added to enhance the dramatic quality of the narrative. </p>
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<p>Spielberg acquired the rights to Thomas Keneally’s <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/thomas-keneally-on-how-he-wrote-schindlers-ark-i-knew-where-the-good">Booker Prize-winning novel</a> in 1983, but was initially reluctant to take on the film. Instead, he <a href="https://collider.com/steven-spielberg-schindlers-list-martin-scorsese/">offered it</a> to the likes of Billy Wilder and Martin Scorsese. </p>
<p>By the early 1990s, dismayed by what he perceived as a rising tide of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, Spielberg understood it was finally <a href="https://goldenglobes.com/articles/out-of-the-archives-1993-steven-spielberg-on-schindlers-list/">time to make the film</a>.</p>
<p>Despite containing a few <a href="https://schindlerslisteight.wordpress.com/historical-accuracy/inaccuracies/">historical inaccuracies</a>, Schindler’s List was instrumental in creating what historian Peter Novick called a “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4467615">Holocaust consciousness</a>”.</p>
<h2>An anti-Spielberg film</h2>
<p>Spielberg wanted to avoid casting stars. He picked the then largely unknown Liam Neeson as the charismatic Schindler and Ralph Fiennes as Amon Göth, the vicious SS commandant. </p>
<p>Much of the film details the personal interactions between the two men as Schindler observes the cruelties visited upon Polish Jews and sacrifices his fortune to save as many of them as he can.</p>
<p>At over three hours long, Schindler’s List remains Spielberg’s longest film. </p>
<p>The director’s <a href="https://theasc.com/articles/schindlers-list-finds-heroism-amidst-holocaust">trademark flourishes</a> are absent. There are no zooms or dolly shots, no smooth Steadicam tracking shots or soaring soundtrack. Apart from a brief opening and coda, the film remains the only black and white film Spielberg has ever shot. </p>
<p>He and his trusted cinematographer, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlFOBCxZwKs">Janusz Kamiński</a>, wanted the film to resemble archival footage. But the choice of black and white did not just suggest “the past”. It also suited the sober approach to the unfolding of devastating historical events. </p>
<p>Famously, the film’s centrepiece – a shattering 15-minute scene in which the Nazis ferociously liquidate the Kraków ghetto – contains the film’s only use of colour. As Schindler looks on in horror, he spots a young girl in a <a href="https://screenrant.com/schindlers-list-girl-red-coat-meaning-explained/">red raincoat</a>. It marks a radical turning point in Schindler’s moral development. </p>
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<p>Spielberg’s use of cross-cutting is meticulous. A mass killing scene is interspersed with footage of an SS officer playing Bach on a piano. In another, Schindler celebrates his birthday while Göth beats his maid and a wedding takes place inside a labour camp.</p>
<p>Spielberg shot on location just outside Auschwitz in the winter of 1992 during the day, and at night worked on the post-production for Jurassic Park, which he had shot in Hawaii six months earlier. Spielberg was <a href="https://ew.com/oscars/2018/04/27/steven-spielberg-schindlers-list-jurassic-park-tribeca-film-festival/">working on two epoch-defining films simultaneously</a>, yet they were completely different in tone, visual style and cultural impact.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/jurassic-park-at-30-how-its-cgi-revolutionised-the-film-industry-204592">Jurassic Park at 30: how its CGI revolutionised the film industry</a>
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<h2>Critical acclaim … and reproach</h2>
<p>The film was widely praised on its release. <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/schindlers-list-1993">Roger Ebert</a> called it the best Spielberg had ever made. <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1994/01/04/schindler-has-a-fan-in-president/">Bill Clinton</a> implored audiences to see it. </p>
<p>But it was also condemned for being didactic, emotionally manipulative and a crass oversimplification of history. <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/answer-man/movie-answer-man-06032001">Jean-Luc Godard</a> was particularly caustic, while <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/stanley-kubrick-steven-spielberg-schindlers-list/">Stanley Kubrick</a> argued the film’s chief failing was its humanising of Oskar Schindler and Spielberg’s relentless need to create a flawed, but human, hero. </p>
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<p>In 1994, with the proceeds from the film, Spielberg established the <a href="https://sfi.usc.edu/about">USC Shoah Foundation</a>, an institute dedicated to collecting interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust. </p>
<p>He also became a vocal champion for the <a href="https://www.edweek.org/education/schindlers-list-spurring-calls-for-holocaust-education/1994/03">teaching of history in American schools</a>, with the film used to illustrate the importance of bearing witness to historical atrocities and hatred.</p>
<h2>Spielberg after Schindler</h2>
<p>Schindler’s List paved the way for Spielberg to engage with other important historical events in Saving Private Ryan (1998), Amistad (1997) and Bridge of Spies (2015). </p>
<p>Spielberg has not entirely turned entirely turned his back on his blockbuster entertainment roots. War of the Worlds (2005), The Adventure of Tintin (2011) and Ready Player One (2018) all remind us of “early Spielberg”, but Schindler’s List was the film that <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994/03/21/steven-spielberg-profile-schindlers-list">finally convinced Hollywood</a> to take Spielberg seriously.</p>
<p>Its message of courage in the face of tyranny seems just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. </p>
<p>And it would have another role to play for Spielberg. When he returned to college in 2002 to completed a bachelor of arts he had started – but never finished – in 1969, he <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-may-31-me-graduate31-story.html">submitted Schindler’s List</a> for course credit.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/1973-a-golden-year-for-film-that-rewrote-the-rules-of-cinema-211638">1973: a golden year for film that rewrote the rules of cinema</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203234/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben McCann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Steven Spielberg was Hollywood’s wonder boy, best known for films about sharks, aliens and archeologists. Then he turned his attention to the Holocaust.Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2178622023-12-12T13:24:00Z2023-12-12T13:24:00ZIsraelis and Palestinians warring over a homeland is far from unique<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563731/original/file-20231205-25-889iop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The golden Dome of the Rock Islamic shrine, a holy site for Muslims, stands close to the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, in an aerial view of Jerusalem's Old City. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-golden-dome-of-the-rock-islamic-shrine-dominates-the-news-photo/55972333?adppopup=true">David Silverman/Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ongoing horrors unfolding in Israel and Gaza have deep-rooted origins that stem from a complex and contested question: Who has rights to the same territory? </p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HPHREV0AAAAJ&hl=en">scholar of international affairs</a>, as well as territory and nationalism. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24480555">Territory has been a central cause of conflict throughout history</a>. </p>
<p>Today, Israelis and Palestinians both claim the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-10-20/israel-gaza-how-big-maps-california">same swath of land</a> as their own. Each group has its own historical narratives, its own names for the territory – Israel or Palestine, depending on whom you ask – and many people from each group <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080002/israel-palestine-conflict-history-overview-map">believe strongly</a> that sharing the land is impossible. </p>
<p>Palestinians and Israelis also look to this same land as a way to define their identities and protect their futures. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563733/original/file-20231205-23-6idb0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A fence divides rural, arid land, with trees and grass all around, and small mountains in the distance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563733/original/file-20231205-23-6idb0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563733/original/file-20231205-23-6idb0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563733/original/file-20231205-23-6idb0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563733/original/file-20231205-23-6idb0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563733/original/file-20231205-23-6idb0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563733/original/file-20231205-23-6idb0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563733/original/file-20231205-23-6idb0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A fence on Israel’s border with Gaza is seen on Nov. 24, 2023, during a temporary humanitarian truce between Hamas and Israel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-photo-shows-a-fence-seen-from-israels-border-with-gaza-news-photo/1801721901?adppopup=true">Chen Junqing/Xinhua via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>The benefits of controlling territory</h2>
<p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691123837/the-geography-of-ethnic-violence">Virtually every country serves as a designated homeland</a> to many of its citizens – a place that is tied to people’s ancestries, cultural histories and legends. </p>
<p>The idea of a homeland is kept alive as each generation tries to teach children about the significance of the land they inhabit or come from.</p>
<p>Controlling territory and claiming it as a homeland is vital for people for a number of reasons. First, it helps ensure a stable supply of essential items like food, water and shelter. It can help provide security against external threats, like hostile neighbors. It also fosters a sense of identity and belonging within a community. </p>
<p>When people control their own territory, it helps them form and maintain a government and preserve their culture, shaping their values and ways of life.</p>
<p>Controlling territory can also affect people’s social status, help create new economic opportunities and improve their psychological well-being. </p>
<p>In many cultures, peoples’ identities are literally attached to territory in their names. In Europe, many aristocrats are named for the lands they controlled, as in “von Bismarck,” in Germany, or “York,” a region in England. </p>
<p>This differs from middle- or working-class people, who are traditionally named for their professions – like Hunter, Smith and Taylor. </p>
<p>At its most basic level, <a href="https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/38/3/7/12099/Grounds-for-War-The-Evolution-of-Territorial">territorial control is about survival and reproduction</a>, and it has influenced human behavior in other ways. Disputes over who controls or has the legal right to a territory has consistently fueled wars. </p>
<h2>Fighting over territory isn’t rare</h2>
<p>Seen from the perspective of territorial conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is far from unique. Consider the ongoing war over which government should control parts of Ukraine, for example. </p>
<p>One of the most contentious territorial disputes in history involved Alsace-Lorraine, a region that was once part of the German empire in the late 1870s. Both France and Germany had cultural and historical ties to the region, leading to frequent conflicts and changes in sovereignty until World War II, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/summary/Alsace-Lorraine">after which it legally became part of France</a>. </p>
<p>After World War II ended in 1945, Germany and France’s joint commitment to rebuilding Europe bound their destinies economically and politically. Leaders in Europe, joined by a vision for unity, peace and the imperative to prevent another world war, played a crucial role in transforming Europe. Historical foes became close allies, marking the start of a unified European identity.</p>
<p>Had you asked people in the 1920s and 1930s whether Franco-German coexistence and peace would have been possible, they would have likely said no.</p>
<h2>The divide over Northern Ireland</h2>
<p>Northern Ireland’s dueling Protestants and Roman Catholics would have given an even more emphatic “no” if asked during much of the 20th century whether they could live together peacefully. This conflict, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/The-Troubles-Northern-Ireland-history">known as the Troubles</a>, began with <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/irish-partition/">Great Britain’s partition of Ireland</a> from itself in 1921. Northern Ireland, however, remained part of Great Britain. </p>
<p>Fighting over what should happen with Northern Ireland fully erupted in the late 1960s and continued until the 1990s. </p>
<p>At its core, the conflict involved competing national identities and allegiances between the predominantly Protestant unionists, who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the mainly Catholic nationalists, who wanted a united Ireland. <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-troubles-northern-ireland">Protests and marches, car bombings,</a> riots, sectarian attacks and revenge killings marked this explosive period, resulting in the <a href="https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/troubledgeogs/chap10.htm#:%7E:text=The%20violence%20led%20to%20over,of%20the%20conflict%20are%20controversial">deaths of more than 3,500 people</a>.</p>
<p>Yet in 1998, the Troubles came to an end when both sides signed the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-61968177">Good Friday Agreement,</a> keeping Northern Ireland part of the United Kingdom but giving residents there the chance to have either British or Irish citizenship, or both. No one prior to 1998 would have imagined this agreement would create the opportunity for reconciliation and peace. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563756/original/file-20231205-19-y7hu0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three men wear dark suits and smile, together holding a white document and looking at the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563756/original/file-20231205-19-y7hu0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563756/original/file-20231205-19-y7hu0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563756/original/file-20231205-19-y7hu0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563756/original/file-20231205-19-y7hu0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563756/original/file-20231205-19-y7hu0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563756/original/file-20231205-19-y7hu0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563756/original/file-20231205-19-y7hu0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British Prime Minister Tony Blair, right, U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, center, and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern smile on April 10, 1998, after they signed the Good Friday Agreement, ending the conflict over Northern Ireland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/file-picture-of-british-prime-minister-tony-blair-us-news-photo/80561700?adppopup=true">Dan Chung/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Similarities across the conflicts</h2>
<p>Just as happened in Europe after World War II and in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, Israelis and Palestinians would also need to find a renewed commitment to dialogue, diplomacy and international cooperation in order to make lasting peace. </p>
<p>But the region has a history of conflict dating back centuries, with both sides experiencing immense suffering and loss. This history creates a deeply rooted mistrust that hampers efforts to find a common understanding that each group of people has long ties to the land. </p>
<p>Contestation over the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/jerusalem-middle-east-lifestyle-government-and-politics-43d4cab031c28da0abf98d694dd169ac">city of Jerusalem</a> is not simply a city-planning problem, as it encompasses major holy sites from the three Abrahamic traditions. It is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest place for Muslims worldwide, and the Western Wall, part of the holiest site for Jews globally. </p>
<p>The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or Church of the Resurrection, is also in Jerusalem. It’s the holiest site for Christians who believe this is where Jesus was crucified, entombed and later resurrected. This helps explain why Jews, Muslims and Christians all feel as if they have a vital stake in who controls Jerusalem. </p>
<h2>Unraveling pain and loss</h2>
<p>There was a time, including <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo">in the 1990s</a>, when <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjRnfybh_mCAxXfGFkFHRVGD08QFnoECBYQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.britannica.com%2Ftopic%2Ftwo-state-solution&usg=AOvVaw0Wru6PyBCkPBbb1v4liw1i&opi=89978449">Israeli and Palestinian political leaders</a> discussed a two-state solution, with a shared capital in Jerusalem, as a way out of the conflict and into a common future. <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiDwuuLh_mCAxWuElkFHf76AUY4ChAWegQIAxAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pewresearch.org%2Fshort-reads%2F2023%2F09%2F26%2Fisraelis-have-grown-more-skeptical-of-a-two-state-solution%2F&usg=AOvVaw16rmnbo9updobQX0IwGbzy&opi=89978449">No longer</a>.</p>
<p>The current violence in Gaza and Israel – and escalating <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/12/2/23984104/west-bank-israel-palestine-settler-violence">conflict over the West Bank</a> – only deepens the entrenched homeland narratives on both sides, with each side fearing the survival of their homeland is at stake in any potential compromise.</p>
<p>It will take years – or even generations – to unravel the pain and loss that each side is experiencing in the current war.</p>
<p>Unless Palestinians and Israelis can find a way to detach the disputed land from their identities, there are no straightforward solutions. This is what happened in Alsace-Lorraine and Northern Ireland – but it’s not clear that such a transformation in thinking will take place anytime soon in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the tragedy of deep attachment to a homeland territory lies in the fact that while it can create a sense of belonging for one group, it too often comes at the expense of another.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monica Duffy Toft does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Conflicts over the Alsace-Lorraine region and Northern Ireland offer examples of how territory is often at the center of a conflict − and what is necessary to pave the path to peace.Monica Duffy Toft, Professor of International Politics and Director of the Center for Strategic Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.