20th Century Archives - Page 14 of 19

The Israeli Republic, by Jalal Al-e Ahmad (2014)

In 1963 Jalal Al-e Ahmad, accompanied by his wife, the renowned Iranian novelist, Simin Daneshvar, traveled to Israel as an official guest of the country. He later wrote a travelogue about the journey, published in Iran under the title, Safr beh vilayet esrail (Journey to the Land of Israel). Two years earlier the author had gained his leftist internationalist credentials when he published one of the most important Third World manifestos, known as “Gharbzadegi” (Plague from the West). Al-e Ahmad is perceived to have laid the intellectual and ideological foundations of the 1979 revolution in Iran; both the leader of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Iran’s current Supreme Leader considered Al-e Ahmad to be an influence and role model. This article reviews the most recent translation of Al-e Ahmad’s travelogue, and will be useful to anyone wants to know more about modern Iran.

Translator Samuel Thrope’s introduction allows the reader to understand the profound complexity that characterized Al-e Ahmad throughout his career. Thrope provides excellent biographical and historical contextualization of the text. He also confronts one of the profound dilemmas confronting Al-e Ahmad’s reader. The use of Vilayet in the title can be translated in two different ways. One is charged with religious meaning as “Guardianship of Israel,” while the second carries the more prosaic meaning of Territory. As the travelogue itself makes clear, Al-e Ahmad himself was divided about Israel’s role in that land.

Like a large section of the Iranian left, Al-e Ahmad viewed Israel as part of the Third World. Al-e Ahmad juxtaposes East versus West and draws the borders of the East from “Tel Aviv to Tokyo,” acknowledging Israel’s ability to create an indigenous culture (unlike in Iran, as he analyzed in Gharbzadegi), that did not blindly mimic other cultures but was based on the ancient Hebraic Jewish culture. Al-e Ahmad was especially impressed with the revival of the Hebrew language. His admiration for almost everything he saw in Israel, did not prevent him from arguing that the Palestinians, and by extension the East in general and the Arabs and Muslims in particular, paid the price for the sins committed by Europeans in the Holocaust.

Al-e Ahmad and Daneshvar spent some time in the north Israel kibbutz “Ayelet Ha’Shahar,” which allowed the couple to get a first hand experience of kibbutz life. They saw a play, hung out with kibbutz members, and immersed themselves in conversations about China, the USSR, and Cuba over glasses of beer. Just before leaving, Al-e Ahmad wrote in the kibbutz guest book: “not only were they hospitable, but I met people here that I never expected to meet. Learned people, understanding and open-minded. In a sense, they are implementing Plato. Honestly speaking, I always identified Israel with the Kibbutz, and now I understand why.” Simin Daneshvar added: “as I see it the Kibbutz is the answer to the problem of all the countries, including our own.

This text opens a window to the mindset of the Iranian left. Al-e Ahmad’s praise of Israel articulates his (and other Iranians’) dispute with the Arabs, his harsh criticism of Arab governments, and refutes Arab ideas about Iran’s inferiority.

800px-PikiWiki_Israel_3290_Picking_Cotton

Cotton fields of a kibbutz in Shamir, Israel, circa 1958 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The last chapter of the travelogue shifts tone and criticizes Israel for abandoning its Third World position and becoming a colonial power in its own right. The origin of the chapter is the subject of some controversy. Some believe that it was written in 1968 after the 1967 war and just before Al-e Ahmad’s death (in 1969), and reflects his own and the Iranian left’s disillusion with Israel. During the 1967 war, when Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights and then imposed military control over the entire population of non-citizen Palestinians., it became impossible for observers like Al-e Ahmad to view it as a nation that had taken part in a postcolonial struggle. The other explanation is that after his death, this chapter was written by his brother, Shams Al-e Ahmad, in order to get it approved in the radical revolutionary circles, for publication in Iran in 1984. Thrope adds some useful comments about this controversy as well. Thrope’s suggests that it was Jalal Al-e Ahmad himself who wrote this chapter, and that the voice expressed there is one of a literary character (a friend who wrote a letter to Al-e Ahmad). By presenting this fictional dialogue, Al-e Ahmad contemplates his ambiguous stand towards Israel and Zionism, or as Thrope writes: “Could Zionism really serve as a model for the remedy that Iran required? Just as importantly, as a Muslim, an Easterner, and an intellectual opposed to the Shah’s policies, which included close relationship with Israel, how should he relate to the Jewish State’s existence in the heart of the Muslim Middle East?” In this chapter, Al-e Ahmad not only criticized Israel as a colonial power, he harshly criticized the European intellectual left and singled it out for what he sees as double standards. While they vehemently fought against the colonization of Algiers and were outspoken in their criticism of the colonial project as a whole, they could live peacefully with the colonization of the territories gained by Israel in 1967. Al-e Ahmad blames Jean-Paul Sartre and Claude Lanzmann for leading this dreadful trend. He also blames the military regimes of the Arab countries for their incompetence in facing the changing reality of Israeli policy, and the “Petrodollar Empires” of the Persian Gulf for myopic political and economic goals in only caring about the oil industry.

Jalal Al-e Ahmad (r) with his wife, writer and intellectual Simin Daneshvar (l), in an undated photograph (probably from the early 1960s).

This book recounts a fascinating journey undertaken by an Iranian intellectual to an Israel that existed primarily in the author’s mind. The kind of utopia Al-e Ahmad saw would strike many Israelis as odd. Yet, I am sure that every reader would find this book (and its excellent translation) to be a window on the prerevolutionary Iranian left at a time when it was possible for an Iranian intellectual to embrace certain aspects of Israeli society; to get a glimpse of the history of the Israel-Iran relations and the greater Middle East too.

Listen to an interview with translator Samuel Thrope on 15 Minute History

Image of kibbutz guest book reproduced with the kind assistance of archivist Noa Herman at the archive of Kibbutz Ayelet Ha’Shahar.

Sound Maps: The New Archive (No. 6)

By Henry Wiencek

In the study of history, it’s easy to fall back on national identities: “Irish music,” an “English accent,” “American Exceptionalism” are just a few examples. But a closer examination of the local cultures—music, dialects, history—that exist within nations demonstrates how misleading those generalizations can be. Just look through one of the British Library’s “Sound Maps” and you’ll be convinced. This remarkable site takes many of the library’s 50,000 recordings of music, regional accents, and oral histories and arranges them geographically on Google Maps. The project is at once global and local—each sound map is an aural window into a unique part of the world. You can hear birds chirping in Algarve, Portugal, a folksinger perform in Carlistrane, Ireland, or the local dialect in Morton, Mississippi.

One of the most fascinating—and addictive—features on the site is “Your Accents,” a global map of the world’s seemingly endless variety of dialects. The map features recordings of people from across the globe reading the same English phrases, allowing listeners to discern how each locality articulates “scone,” “garage” and “schedule” among other richly pronounceable words. The most immediate differences are apparent along national lines, as English, Indian, American, and various other accents contour the words in unique ways. But the map goes even deeper—revealing the astonishing regional differences that exist within those nations. Although people from Brighton and Leeds ostensibly share an “English” accent, the sonic differences between them are vast.

Other sound maps use the same technology to tell far more sobering stories. “Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust” archives oral histories of that traumatic epoch. Again using Google Maps, the page arranges survival stories based on geographic origins: individuals from France, England, Germany, Poland and even Azerbaijan are all represented. These unique and deeply affecting histories underscore the striking heterogeneity of the Holocaust’s victims and survivors. They were rich and poor; came from big cities and small towns; and identified as religiously devout and irreligious. By mapping their oral histories, the British Library visually captures that geographic and experiential diversity. And by letting them speak, reinforces the kinds of variations that get flattened out or even erased when reading text on a page.

The British Library’s “Sound Maps” is an invaluable tool for anyone interested in hearing what the world sounds like. Cultural historians and preservationists will take particular interest in the collections of music and dialects—time capsules of old folkways quietly vanishing in a globalizing world. Readers may note the site’s emphasis on English speaking regions, especially the UK, but the geographic breadth of its collection remains deeply impressive. These maps do not just capture the sounds of the world, they capture its most compelling minutiae: the small town pubs, the remote jungles, and the fascinating people.

Explore the latest finds in the NEW ARCHIVE:

Charley Binkow on iTunes’s salute to Black History Month

And Henry Wiencek finds a new way of looking at Emancipation

Photo Credits:

Screenshot from “Your Accents” sound map (Image courtesy of the British Library)

Screenshot from “Jewish Survivors Of The Holocaust” sound map (Image courtesy of the British Library)

Quebecois lumbermen making music with a violin and sticks, 1943 (Image courtesy of National Film Board of Canada)

Getz/Gilberto Fifty Years Later: A Retrospective

by Edward Shore

“I’m not a sociologist but it was a time when people in the States wanted to turn to something other than their troubles,” Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto mused in 1996. “There was a feeling of dissatisfaction, possibly the hint of war to come, and people needed some romance, something dreamy for distraction.” This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of 1964’s Getz/Gilberto, the triumphant collaboration between North American jazz saxophonist Stanley Getz (1927-1991), Brazilian singer and guitarist João Gilberto (b. 1931), his then-wife, Astrud Gilberto (b. 1940), and their friend and compatriot, the composer Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim (1927-1994).

Getz/Gilberto was not North America’s first encounter with bossa nova, the lyrical fusion of samba and cool jazz emanating from the smoky nightclubs, recording studios, and performance halls of Rio de Janeiro in the mid-1950s. Yet the eight-track LP was by far the most successful. Propelled by the genre-defining single, “The Girl From Ipanema,” Getz/Gilberto spent ninety-six weeks on the charts and won four Grammy awards, including Best Album of the Year in 1965. Other tracks, including “Para Machucar Meu Coração,” “Desafinado,” and “Corcovado/Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars,” also became jazz standards. “Americans are generally not very curious about the styles of other countries,” Astrud Gilberto insisted. “But our music was Brazilian music in a modern form. It was very pretty and it was exceptional for managing to infiltrate America’s musical culture.”

What explains Americans’ love affair with bossa nova in the winter of 1964? Part of the answer lies in the power of popular music to relieve a broken heart. Critics associated Getz/Gilberto’s cool, sophisticated sound with the Kennedy White House, where music, high fashion, and glamorous parties had been hallmarks of “Camelot” on Pennsylvania Avenue during the early 1960s. Perhaps audiences sought to recapture a bit of the mystique that had vanished when President Kennedy was slain in Dallas, Texas, only five months before the record’s release.

For jazz critic Howard Mandel, Getz/Gilberto was like “another tonic for the assassination’s disruption, akin for adults to the salve upbeat the Beatles had provided for teenagers’ after their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964.” Gilberto’s hushed vocals and understated guitar, Jobim’s gentle piano, and Getz’s lush saxophone transported weary listeners to a sun soaked, tropical paradise light years removed from the turmoil confronting the United States in the winter of 1964.

Yet the Brazil of North American fantasy–languid, exotic, and serene–contrasted sharply with reality. By late 1963, the United States had declared Brazil a “trouble spot” in its hemispheric crusade against communism. Traditional elites and U.S. Cold Warriors opposed Brazilian President João “Jango” Goulart and his center-left agenda, which extended voting rights to illiterates, taxed foreign corporations, and introduced land reform. Meanwhile, peasant agitation in the Brazilian Northeast, the fulcrum of the global sugar trade, deepened the anxieties of U.S. policymakers who feared that Latin America’s largest economy might soon follow in Cuba’s footsteps. In March 1964, the Lyndon Johnson administration and the Brazilian military secretly began plotting Goulart’s overthrow.

While “The Girl from Ipanema” climbed to the top of the Billboard charts, U.S. warships penetrated Brazilian waters to support a military coup d’état on April 1, 1964, terminating the country’s brief flirtation with social reform. The United States had once again intervened in Latin America to preserve an illusion of tropical tranquility that existed only in the imaginations of ruling elites, intelligence agencies, and North American consumers. The military dictators who succeeded Jango and controlled Brazil for the next two decades understood the uses of music just as well and embraced bossa nova for its commercial appeal, apolitical subject matter, and potential to smooth over the nation’s deep-seated socio-political divisions.

Yet the marriage between bossa nova and the dictatorship was not to last. A younger generation of Brazilian artists, including Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Rita Lee, and Tom Zé, fused elements of bossa nova with rock n’roll, psychedelia, experimental theatre, and Brazilian folk music into the colorful, exuberant countercultural movement known as Tropicália. Gone was the “tall, tan, young, and lovely” morena of Ipanema Beach. By 1968, the regime’s censors raced to cleanse Brazilian popular music of anti-establishment themes, even forcing Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, two of the country’s most visible stars, into exile in the United Kingdom. The coup government ultimately turned its back on bossa nova, too. In 1969, the regime sacked Vinícius de Moraes from his post in the Foreign Ministry after the legendary composer, playwright, and original author of “The Girl from Ipanema” criticized the dictatorship’s restraints on artistic freedom.

Popular interest in bossa nova continued to wane over the course of the 1970s. Outraged by U.S. sponsorship of the military regime, Brazilian musicians distanced themselves from a style that enjoyed intimate ties to the “giant from the North.” A blend of rock, samba, and jazz known as MPB, or “música popular brasileira,”eclipsed bossa nova as Brazil’s national sound. MPB artists like Chico Buarque, Jorge Ben, and Novos Baianos camouflaged criticisms of government repression, social injustice, and imperialism with irresistible melodies, appealing to a growing audience of middle-class youth. Meanwhile, in the slums and favelas of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador, a young generation of Afro-Brazilians challenged the nation’s vaunted reputation as a “racial democracy,” while embracing cultural symbols of Black Power and the African Diaspora, including soul, funk, and reggae. Amid this rising tide of popular protest against the regime, bossa nova, with its dreamy, cool detachment, appeared painfully at odds with the struggles of ordinary Brazilians.

Still, the genre remains a major force in Brazilian pop culture and “world” music. The millions of tourists who visit Rio de Janeiro every year arrive at an airport named after Tom Jobim. Inevitably, more than a few vacationers board their flights home in “Girl from Ipanema” t-shirts purchased at the airport gift shop. Bossa nova also experienced a brief resurgence in the mid-1990s. Red Hot+Rio, a compilation album produced by the AIDS-awareness organization Red Hot in 1996, paid tribute to the musical career of Tom Jobim and featured covers by artists including Sting, Astrud Gilberto, and David Byrne. Today, pop stars like Marisa Monte, Celso Fonseca, and Uruguay’s Jorge Drexler refashion bossa nova sounds for contemporary audiences. And what about the song that made bossa nova an international sensation? “The Girl From Ipanema” currently ranks as the second-most-recorded pop song of all time, after the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Amid the pageantry surrounding the upcoming FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, look for “The Girl From Ipanema” to sway gently back into the spotlight.

Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto perform “The Girl From Ipanema” in 1964:

Hear more Bossa Nova:

João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim in a 1992 live concert

Elis Regina and Tom Jobim performing “Aguas de Março” in 1974

Astrud Gilberto’s comments can be found in “Interview with Astrud Gilberto,” by Howard Mandel, Verve Records, Re-issue of Getz/Gilberto, 1996, liner notes.

Howard Mandel’s comments come from correspondence with the author, January 2014. A special thanks to him from the author.

Photo Credits:

1964 LP cover of Getz/Gilberto (Image courtesy of Verve Records)

Creed Taylor, Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim, João Gilberto and Stan Getz recording together (Image courtesy of last.fm)

Brazilians marching against the country’s military dictatorship, 1964 (Image courtesy of Mount Holyoke College)

Musical team on Getz/Gilberto: (from left) Stan Getz, Milton Banana, Tom Creed Taylor, João Gilberto and Astrud Gilberto (Image courtesy of last.fm)

Images used under Fair Use Guidelines

The 1980 Moscow Olympics and my Family

by Andrew Straw

My mother, Rae Straw, and her friend Pam had an odd assignment in 1979 for two travel agents from Houston: selling the Soviet Union to American tourists. For travel agents, such familiarization or “FAM” trips were a regular occurrence, but going to the Soviet Union during the preparations for the 1980 Moscow Olympics was a unique experience. While Red Square, the red stars on Stalinist buildings, the Moscow Metro, and the Hermitage dazzled my mother, her biggest impression was the shear excitement of Soviet citizens at hosting the world. In fact, despite Cold War tensions, since Khrushchev’s “Thaw” Soviets had enjoyed hosting foreigners at a number of international festivals. American citizens and culture were literally transported to Moscow during the World Youth Festival in 1957, and the 1959 “American Exhibition” in Moscow attracted several million Soviet citizens who came to gaze at American consumerism.

Similar to the ongoing Sochi Winter Olympics, impressive preparations for the 1980 Moscow games were surrounded by domestic repressions, corruption, and strained international relations with the West. Despite these similarities, there are obvious differences, particularly the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent American-led boycott of the Olympics. However, most reporting (aside from The Daily Show’s Jason Jones) has missed another big difference between the atmosphere surrounding both events: the fact that American consumer goods no longer have the potential to transform the way Russians view their state in comparison to the rest of the world.

The irony of the 1980 boycott was that it nixed an influx of American products, people, and ideas into Moscow just at the time a younger and more liberal generation of Soviet politicians and “Baby Boomers” were rising through the ranks of the Soviet system and the growing middle class desired an increase in opportunities, freedoms, leisure activities, and consumer goods. Even if most did not actively challenge the Soviet system, many wanted to experience Western culture and comforts. In this Cold War context, promoting American consumerism, music, high wages and a “life without queues” was the most attractive part of U.S. modernity. While there is no consensus on how crucial “soft power” was in deciding the outcome of the Cold War, many Americans understood the Soviet affinity for U.S. consumerism and pop-culture. Both U.S. government and businesses sponsored the post-Stalin “American invasion” that included Jazz radio programming, political propaganda, tours of musicians, student exchanges, and exhibits of American goods.

Even though travelers such as my mother had little intention of converting communists to capitalists, they loaded suitcases with cigarettes, chewing gum, pens, and blue jeans. Once in Moscow, my mother and her companions sold and bartered their Western-made goods a few blocks from the Rossiya Hotel in central Moscow. But after my mother returned to the U.S., the boycott was announced and her work of selling the Olympic host to Americans and the chance for going back to the USSR ended.

Meanwhile, my future father-in-law, Nail Aminevich Izmaylov, was a driver with the Academy of Sciences Institute in Moscow, and through connections he got a job as a stand-by driver for foreign tourists at the Olympics. While the American-led boycott was a huge disappointment for sports fans, he described the most depressing part as knowing that “business opportunities” for buying Western goods and then profiting on the black market would be limited. Still, the games went on, and drivers prepared by keeping a “driver’s komplekt” of terrible Soviet cigarettes, damp matches, and a broken pen. The idea was, once the chauffeured visitors tried one of these Soviet items, they would immediately offer their own or treat the driver to a shopping spree of Western goods in one of the stores where only foreigners were allowed to shop.

This dynamic of the event as an influx of superior consumer goods is absent in Sochi. Instead, Bosco, the Russian designer brand with ties to the Kremlin, designed the high-quality team uniforms, which are available in shopping centers throughout the country. In general, U.S. fashion and music have largely lost the subversive appeal as Putin’s “Sushi Years” have led to a continued consumerist bonanza that the majority of Russians have enjoyed to varying degrees. In short, Putin has replaced the one-party communist state with a one-party consumerist state.

As my mother and father-in-law watched the Sochi opening ceremony, they reflected on the boycott and 1980 Moscow Olympics with both nostalgia and disappointment. On the one hand, it was a period when adventurous visitors provided a profitable opportunity to savvy Soviets by transporting everyday Western goods into the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the boycott and disappointment of not being able to show Americans around Moscow remains for both my mother and father-in-law. While not shying away from acknowledging the current issues from Ukrainian protests to corruption to anti-LGBT laws, both were pleased that athletes and fans from across the world were participating in the games.

More reading on the Cold War and the Soviet Union:

Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation

Walter Hixon, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War 1945-1961

Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000

Photo Credits:

Rae Straw standing alongside the Moscow River

A queue of Russians in St. Petersburg

A limo parked in Moscow’s Red Square

Rae Straw (far right) pictured with her tour group in Moscow

All images courtesy of Andrew Straw

iTunes Remembers Black History: The New Archive (No. 5)

By Charley S. Binkow

February is Black History month. It is a time for remembrance and reflection for all Americans, but for Historians it is also a rich period for study and research. iTunes U, the academic branch of Apple’s iTunes store, is featuring a vast collection of first-hand oral histories, interviews, and lectures on the extensive history of African Americans.

There are over two dozen podcasts and each one offers a unique perspective on black history: “The Louis Armstrong Jazz Oral History Project” explores the world of African American Jazz, The Gilder Lehrman Institute offers a diverse lecture series on the post Civil War age, and Stanford’s “Modern Freedom Struggle” collects videos on political thought during the Civil Rights movement. The most powerful, collection is Duke University’s “Behind the Veil,” which compiles 100 interviews with African Americans who experienced firsthand the world of segregation in places like Birmingham, New Orleans, Memphis, Albany (GA), and Muhlenberg County. These interviews are as personal and interesting as they are diverse. All the podcasts are free on iTunes and are well worth perusing.

The collection is of value for everyone, from professional historians to amateur history buffs. On top of the primary sources, subscribers can hear engaging and thought provoking lectures from renowned scholars like Eric Foner and James O. Horton. iTunes, is also offering customers a wide selection of outside reading options relating to the topic of Black History, with titles such as The Color Purple, Beloved, Fredrick Douglass’s My Escape from Slavery and Howard Zinn’s On Race.

Overall, the collection does a great job of honoring, remembering, and respecting the struggle of African Americans. The podcasts will keep listeners engaged for days and the interviews give historians hours of first-hand accounts.

If you enjoy these iTunes U collections, be sure to check out our own podcast, 15 Minute History

And explore the latest finds in the NEW ARCHIVE:

Maps and primary documents that change before your very eyes

Harry Houdini’s weird and wild scrapbook collection

Photo Credits:

Screenshot of the iTunes U podcasts and books being featured for Black History History Month

1867 engraving of African American freedmen in New Orleans voting for the first time (Image courtesy of New York Public Library Digital Collection)

Participants in the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)

The Hadamar Trial: Inadequacies of Postwar Justice

By Madeline Schlesinger

Download “The Hadamar Trial”

The UT history department has announced that Madeline Schlesinger is the winner of this year’s Claudio Segre Prize, which recognizes each year’s best History Honors Thesis. For her award-winning project, Madeline researched the infamous Hadamar Institution, a German hospital in which Nazi officials undertook a mass sterilization and euthanasia program against “undesirable” elements of society. Madeline’s project specifically focuses on the legal proceedings that took place after Allied Forces discovered the facility and placed its personnel on trial for crimes against humanity. You can read her project’s abstract below or download the entire paper in the link above.

Abstract:

Throughout the Second World War, the Third Reich used facilities at the Hadamar institution to carry out the Nazi euthanasia program—an operation that targeted German citizens suffering from mental illness and physical disabilities. Just months after Allied victory and the American liberation of Hadamar, a United States Military Commission led by the young Leon Jaworski tried personnel from Hadamar for violation of international law in the murder of 476 Soviet and Polish forced laborers. The Hadamar War Crimes Case, formally known as United States of America v. Alfons Klein et al., commenced in early October of 1945 and figured as the first postwar mass atrocity trial prosecuted in the American-occupied zone of Germany.

Smoke rising from the crematoria at Hadamar, probably 1941 (Image courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Hadamar Institute personnel socializing, sometime between 1940 and 1942 (Image courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Although often overlooked in the shadow of the subsequent events at Nuremberg, the Hadamar Trial set precedent for war crimes trials and the rewriting of international law to include the charge of crimes against humanity. In its historical context, the Hadamar trial tells a story much larger than the conviction of seven German citizens. It tells the story of the Third Reich’s murderous euthanasia program, one of the United States’ first confrontations with the crimes of the Holocaust, the inadequacies of international law in the immediate postwar period, the impossibility of true retribution in the aftermath of Nazi atrocities, and the slow erosion of justice in the years following the war.

Three inmates of the Hadamar Institute soon after the U.S. military discovered the facility, April 5, 1945 (Image courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Irmgard Huber, chief nurse at Hadamar Institute, after American soldiers liberated the facility (Image courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

My thesis aims to accurately depict the crimes committed at Hadamar, present the collision of German and international law during the proceedings, and prove the inadequacy of contemporary legal infrastructure to prosecute the crimes against humanity committed during World War II.

Fire and Ice: How a Handshake in Space Turned Cold War Agendas from Competition to Cooperation

By Kacey Manlove

Read the full paper here
See more images here
Annotated bibliography, including author interviews with former NASA officials

What role did space exploration assume in the history of Soviet-American relations? For her Texas History Day research paper, Kacey Manlove argues that it represented the “fire” of mutual distrust and fear, but also the “ice” of cooperation and détente:

Time Magazine Cover "Space Spectacular: Science, Politics, & Show Biz" over two hands shaking, each is painted to represent a different flag (the U.S. and U.S.S.R)

“Between 1945 and 1991, Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’ presented sobering possibilities as Cold War confrontations dominated world politics. Both America and the Soviet Union postured for superiority in nuclear strength, building armories with potential to annihilate the world in fiery holocaust. October 4, 1957, marked the first major turning point when Sputnik’s launch catapulted the possibility of destruction into space. Their tense competition for nuclear dominance on earth and control of activities in space appeared unsolvable until 1975, when their Cold War space agencies initiated the next major turning point, symbolically transforming American-Soviet relations from conflict to détente as the commanders of their joint Apollo-Soyuz mission reached across space to shake hands. That handshake planted the seed for other cooperative events, first Shuttle-Mir and later the International Space Station, today’s symbol of international cooperation.”

You can follow the links above to read all of Kacey’s fascinating paper, see more images and read her first person interviews with former NASA officials.

Kacey Manlove
Rockport-Fulton High School
Senior Division
Individual Paper

Photo Credits:

1975 issue of Time examining American-Soviet cooperation in space (Image courtesy of “Fire and Ice: How a Handshake in Space Turned Cold War Agendas from Competition to Cooperation”)

The Prisoner of Events in Vietnam

by Mark Atwood Lawrence

In the months following his resounding electoral triumph over Barry Goldwater in November 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson made momentous decisions to escalate U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. Most consequentially, he ordered the bombing of North Vietnam: first retaliatory strikes following a National Liberation Front attack on the U.S. base at Pleiku and then a sustained bombing campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder. Critics of the administration’s decision-making feared that these steps would commit the United States to a difficult and unnecessary war and appealed urgently for a change of course. One such appeal came from Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, who focused not just on geostrategic dangers but also, more unusually, on the domestic political risks. In a memorandum to the president ten days after the Pleiku attack, Humphrey warned that the American public had little enthusiasm for a major war and that escalation might damage the administration and the Democratic Party more generally. Although there is no definitive evidence that Johnson read the memo, one of Johnson’s aides, Bill Moyers, later stated that he had given it to the president.

I would like to share with you my views on the political consequences of certain courses of action that have been proposed in regard to U.S. policy in Southeast Asia. I refer both to the domestic political consequences here in the United States and to the international political consequences.

A. Domestic Political Consequences.

1. 1964 Campaign.

Although the question of U.S. involvement in Vietnam is and should be a non-partisan question, there have always been significant differences in approach to the Asian question between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. These came out in the 1964 campaign. The Republicans represented both by Goldwater, and the top Republican leaders in Congress, favored a quick, total military solution in Vietnam, to be achieved through military escalation of the war.

The Democratic position emphasized the complexity of a Vietnam situation involving both political, social and military factors; the necessity of staying in Vietnam as long as necessary; recognition that the war will be won or lost chiefly in South Vietnam.

In Vietnam, as in Korea, the Republicans have attacked the Democrats either for failure to use our military power to “win” a total victory, or alternatively for losing the country to the Communists. The Democratic position has always been one of firmness in the face of Communist pressure but restraint in the use of military force; it has sought to obtain the best possible settlement without provoking a nuclear World War III; it has sought to leave open face-saving options to an opponent when necessary to avoid a nuclear show-down. When grave risks have been necessary, as in the case of Cuba, they have been taken. But here again a face-saving option was permitted the opponent. In all instances the Democratic position has included a balancing of both political and military factors.

Today the Administration is being charged by some of its critics with adopting the Goldwater position on Vietnam. While this is not true of the Administration’s position as defined by the President, it is true that many key advisors in the Government are advocating a policy markedly similar to the Republican policy as defined by Goldwater.

2. Consequences for other policies advocated by a Democratic Administration.

The Johnson Administration is associated both at home and abroad with a policy of progress toward detente with the Soviet bloc, a policy of limited arms control, and a policy of new initiatives for peace. A full-scale military attack on North Vietnam – with the attendant risk of an open military clash with Communist China – would risk gravely undermining other U.S. policies. It would eliminate for the time being any possible exchange between the President and Soviet leaders; it would postpone any progress on arms control; it would encourage the Soviet Union and China to end their rift; it would seriously hamper our efforts to strengthen relations with our European allies; it would weaken our position in the United Nations; it might require a call-up of reservists if we were to get involved in a large-scale land war–and a consequent increase in defense expenditures; it would tend to shift the Administration’s emphasis from its Great Society oriented programs to further military outlays; finally and most important it would damage the image of the President of the United States – and that of the United States itself.

3. Involvement in a full scale war with North Vietnam would not make sense to the majority of the American people.

American wars have to be politically understandable by the American public. There has to be a cogent, convincing case if we are to have sustained public support. In World Wars I and II we had this. In Korea we were moving under UN auspices to defend South Korea against dramatic, across-the-border conventional aggression. Yet even with those advantages, we could not sustain American political support for fighting the Chinese in Korea in 1952.

Today in Vietnam we lack the very advantages we had in Korea. The public is worried and confused. Our rationale for action has shifted away now even from the notion that we are there as advisors on request of a free government – to the simple argument of our “national interest.” We have not succeeded in making this “national interest” interesting enough at home or abroad to generate support.

4. From a political viewpoint, the American people find it hard to understand why we risk World War III by enlarging a war under terms we found unacceptable 12 years ago in Korea, particularly since the chances of success are slimmer….

5. Absence of confidence in the Government of South Vietnam.

Politically, people can’t understand why we would run grave risks to support a country which is totally unable to put its own house in order. The chronic instability in Saigon directly undermines American political support for our policy.

6. Politically, it is hard to justify over a long period of time sustained, large-scale U.S. air bombardments across a border as a response to camouflaged, often non-sensational, elusive, small-scale terror which has been going on for 10 years in what looks like a civil war in the South.

7. Politically, in Washington and across the country, the opposition is more Democratic than Republican.

8. Politically, it is always hard to cut losses. But the Johnson Administration is in a stronger position to do so than any Administration in this century. 1965 is the year of minimum political risk for the Johnson Administration. Indeed it is the first year when we can face the Vietnam problem without being preoccupied with the political repercussions from the Republican right. As indicated earlier, the political problems are likely to come from new and different sources if we pursue an enlarged military policy very long (Democratic liberals, Independents, Labor, Church groups).

9. Politically, we now risk creating the impression that we are the prisoner of events in Vietnam. This blurs the Administration’s leadership role and has spill-over effects across the board. It also helps erode confidence and credibility in our policies.

10. The President is personally identified with, and admired for, political ingenuity. He will be expected to put all his great political sense to work now for international political solutions. People will be counting upon him to use on the world scene his unrivalled talents as a political leader.

They will be watching to see how he makes this transition. The best possible outcome a year from now would be a Vietnam settlement which turns out to be better than was in the cards because the President’s political talents for the first time came to grips with a fateful world crisis and so successfully. It goes without saying that the subsequent domestic political benefits of such an outcome, and such a new dimension for the President, would be enormous.

11. If on the other hand, we find ourselves leading from frustration to escalation, and end up short of a war with China but embroiled deeper in fighting with Vietnam over the next few months, political opposition will steadily mount. It will underwrite all the negativism and disillusionment which we already have about foreign involvement generally – with direct spill-over effects politically for all the Democratic internationalist programs to which we are committed – AID, UN, disarmament, and activist world policies generally.

B. International Political Implications of Vietnam.

1. What is our goal, our ultimate objective in Vietnam? Is our goal to restore a military balance between North and South Vietnam so as to go to the conference table later to negotiate a settlement? I believe it is the latter. If so, what is the optimum time for achieving the most favorable combination of factors to achieve this goal?

If ultimately a negotiated settlement is our aim, when do we start developing a political track, in addition to the military one, that might lead us to the conference table? I believe we should develop the political track earlier rather than later. We should take the initiative on the political side and not end up being dragged to a conference as an unwilling participant. This does not mean we should cease all programs of military pressure. But we should distinguish carefully between those military actions necessary to reach our political goal of a negotiated settlement, and those likely to provoke open Chinese military intervention.

We should not underestimate the likelihood of Chinese intervention and repeat the mistake of the Korean War. If we begin to bomb further north in Vietnam, the likelihood is great of an encounter with the Chinese Air Force operating from sanctuary bases across the border. Once the Chinese Air Force is involved, Peking’s full prestige will be involved as she cannot afford to permit her Air Force to be destroyed. To do so would undermine, if not end, her role as a great power in Asia.

Confrontation with the Chinese Air Force can easily lead to massive retaliation by the Chinese in South Vietnam. What is our response to this? Do we bomb Chinese air bases and nuclear installations? If so, will not the Soviet Union honor its treaty of friendship and come to China’s assistance? I believe there is a good chance that it would–thereby involving us in a war with both China and the Soviet Union. Here again, we must remember the consequences for the Soviet Union of not intervening if China’s military power is destroyed by the U.S.

Photo Credits:

Lyndon Johnson examining a model of the Khe Sanh region of Vietnam in the White House Situation Room, 1968 (Image courtesy of the U.S. Federal Government)

President Johnson meets U.S. troops in Vietnam, 1966 (Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of State)

Man surveying the damage from a Viet Cong bomb attack against a multi-story U.S. officers billet in Saigon, 1966 (Image courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration)

Members of the 101st Airborn Division aboard a USAF C-130 at Pham Thiet Air Base, Republic of Vietnam, for airlift to Phi Troung Air Base (Image courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration)

U.S. pilots bomb a military target over North Vietnam, 1966 (Image courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration)

“Her Program’s Progress”

This Associated Press photograph was taken in 1966 to accompany an article by Frances Lewine about Lady Bird Johnson’s beautification project, entitled, “Her Program’s Progress.”

“Mrs. Lyndon Johnson has begun a national movement to eradicate blighted and ugly scenery from America, feeling ‘ugliness is an eroding force on the people of the land.’ On visits to small towns, large cities, national parks and points of scenic and historic interest, she related such visits to the benefits of natural beauty. She has been instrumental in legislation and donations to improve, clean up or renovate national eyesores everywhere. Here, before a backdrop of Lake Powell, Mrs. Lyndon Johnson speaks at dedication ceremonies of the Glen Canyon Dam near Page, Arizona, in late September 1966.”

When Lady Bird took the podium, as one of a host of national and local politicians, she pointed out that the region surrounding the dam “consists of eons of time laid bare – on stone pages and in the treasure troves of Indian myths and artifacts” that would make the resulting Lake Powell “a magnet for tourists.” Evoking the genius of technology, the conservation of water, and the spirituality of nature, she remarked, “To me, the appealing genius of conservation is that it combines the energetic feats of technology – like this dam – with the gentle humility that leaves some corners of the earth untouched – alone – free of technology – to be a spiritual touchstone and a recreation asset.”

Only a decade earlier, the area that Lake Powell flooded had been a vast, arid desert, peppered with ancient American Indian cliff dwellings and majestic rock structures, like Rainbow Bridge. The resulting reservoir was impressive given that it filled up a network of side, slot, and crater canyons measuring more than 150 miles long and with a shoreline longer than the east coast of the United States. The dam — a barrier of five million cubic yards of reinforced concrete (more concrete than was used in Hoover Dam) — was hailed as one the “the engineering wonders of the world” by the Bureau of Reclamation as well as local newspapers, and state and local officials in both Arizona and Utah. It was honored as “the outstanding engineering project” by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Yet, among environmentalists it was (and is) considered one of the nation’s most controversial projects. Flooding the canyon disrupted the free flow of the Colorado River, destroyed the original natural beauty of the site, and made dozens of plant and wildlife species extinct.

Clearly, beautification was in the eye of the beholder. For Lady Bird Johnson, as well as many other Americans, technology did not necessarily ruin nature. Later on this leg of her 1966 Beautification tour, she also paid a brief visit to San Ildefonso Indian Pueblo, dedicating a highway and a park and planting seedlings. All of this earned her the nickname: “Our First Lady of National Beautification” from the New York News on November 13, 1966.

Often when thinking about Lady Bird Johnson’s Beautification Program, we overlook the ways she celebrated technology as much as nature — especially if it aided people’s access to nature or natural resources.

For more, see Erika Bsumek’s book: The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau (University of Texas Press, 2023)

The text of the speech may be found: Lady Bird Johnson, “Glen Canyon Dam Dedication Ceremony,” item display 75982, Cline Library, Northern Arizona University.

Photograph: from the author’s private collection.

2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse by Matthew Restall and Amara Solari (2011)

by Kristie Flannery

While many in the US thought the world would end on November 6 when the guy they didn’t vote for won the Presidency, another whole section of the population is convinced that the apocalypse will come on December 21, 2012; the fast approaching winter solstice, in accordance with predictions made by ancient Mayans. A Reuter’s poll of 16,262 people in 20 countries conducted in May this year showed that “nearly fifteen per cent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime and ten per cent think the Mayan calendar could signify it will happen in 2012.”

These are striking figures, and ones that you might find easier to believe after scanning the results of a Google search for the terms “Maya prophecy.” Only last week the electrician visiting my apartment told me that he thinks something like the apocalypse is coming: according to 70 year old Austinite Sonny, there will be a big earthquake on the east coast of the USA, and something like 9/11, but bigger, pretty soon.

Why are so many people convinced of the world’s impending destruction? There is no doubt that pop-culture has nurtured the apparently widespread fears of the looming end of the world. Roland Emmerich’s blockbuster disaster film 2012 (released in late 2009) surely played a role in translating the Mayan apocalypse from a fringe discourse into the mainstream. Furthermore, in the past twelve months, serious news-media outlets including The Guardian have discussed the end of days as predicted by the ancient Mayans (this British newspaper published the comforting words of expert archaeologists who reassure us that “the end of the world is not quite nigh”).

What is going on here? Should we start filling the bathtub with water and hoarding stocks of canned food, flashlights, and medical supplies as December 21 approaches?

Clay rendering of a Mayan priest (Image courtesy of Wolfgang Sauber/Wikimedia Commons)

Thankfully two historians, Mathew Restall and Amara Solari, have come to the rescue with the publication of a new book 2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse. In the authors’ own words, this study “takes seriously a potentially silly topic.” Restall and Solari provide an interesting discussion of pre-conquest Maya texts, including the famous but poorly understood Long Count calendar and “Monument 6” that form the basis of the present-day “2012-ology,” a the authors call it, which anyone interested in the approaching end of the world will want to read.

Albrecht Dürer’s 15th century woodcut, “The Revelation of St John: 4. The Four Riders of the Apocalypse” (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Restall and Solari’s most important contribution is showing that the belief in a near apocalypse is a deeply-rooted tradition in Western society. Drawing upon the Bible, the writings of the twelfth-century theologian Joachim di Diore, and Albrecht Dürer’s beautiful set of fifteen engravings of the apocalypse, Restall and Solari make a compelling argument that the origins of the Maya Apocalypse lie in the medieval European millenarian tradition. “Whereas millenarianism is not easily and clearly found in ancient Maya civilization, it is deeply rooted and ubiquitous in Western civilization. Whereas Maya notions of world-ending Apocalypse – with a capital A – was a profound and pervasive presence in the medieval West.”

A 1701 transcription of the “Popol Vuh,” a compilation of Mayan K’iche’ creation myths (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

This book examines the survival of the apocalypse discourse from the early-modern period through to today. Restall and Solari make the bold claim that Chilism (the specifically Christian version of the belief that an impending transformation will dramatically change society), is at the heart of Western modernity – in Christianity as much as in Marxism.

A Mayan alter excavated in Caracol, Belize. (Image courtesy of Suraj/Wikimedia Commons)

Those interested in colonial New Spain will appreciate Restall and Solari’s analysis of Mayan documents such as the books of Chilam Balam (the Books of the Jaguar Prophet), which reveal how the Western apocalyptical discourse influenced Mayan conceptions of time and the world.

Watch for our December post on Milestones on the Mayan calendar and the history of the concept of Apocalypse

« Previous Page

Recent Posts