world history (WW2 era, mainly)

[vdeane]

The French, of course, are overly proud of their language, and hate English, even if they can speak it they choose not to (especially in Paris) unless in an English-speaking place. A friend sometimes goes to Paris, and while having OK French, tries Afrikaans and then German (which are better than his French), before the French person reluctantly tries English to have a common language.

I can't think of anything more true.  I suspect many French refuse to learn more than a basic level of English as a matter of pride.  You can always find them on the internet as when the post in English they will insert deliberate errors and will get extremely angry if these errors are pointed out (I have even seen one post that it is their right to deliberately make errors as English isn't their native language).

[N9JIG]

The French, of course, are overly proud of their language, and hate English, even if they can speak it they choose not to (especially in Paris) unless in an English-speaking place. A friend sometimes goes to Paris, and while having OK French, tries Afrikaans and then German (which are better than his French), before the French person reluctantly tries English to have a common language.

I can't think of anything more true.  I suspect many French refuse to learn more than a basic level of English as a matter of pride.  You can always find them on the internet as when the post in English they will insert deliberate errors and will get extremely angry if these errors are pointed out (I have even seen one post that it is their right to deliberately make errors as English isn't their native language).

And if it weren't for the Brits and Americans the French would be speaking German for the last 65 years or so...

[agentsteel53]

65?  2009 minus 1873... hmm ... seems a bit more than that!

[english si]

Don't forget that it wasn't until rather late on that the French all spoke French. I guess had the terms of the treaty of Frankfurt not been kind to the French, and the Prussians fully taken over, they would have stopped the active suppression of regional (ie non-Parisian) languages like Catalan, Basque, Breton, Occitan, etc, in favour of French (in fact, the active suppression of French, the only real thing uniting the people, would have been the Prussians aim, above making everyone speak German).

However, the Prussians, having taken back for Germany (a country created during the war, through union of several places) the bits that were German-ish (Alsace, Lorraine) had all they wanted, so left it at that. No British or US involvement.

However, if it was for the British defeat of the first French Empire, then most of Germany (all except Prussia), would have been French vassel states, or part of France.

I don't think the Germans' aim in either world war (1914-1918 and 1939-1945, not 1916-1918 and 1941-1945 ) were to make France part of Germany - have it as a vassal state, yes; neutralise it as a military power, yes; make it German, no. In WW1, it was to stop there being a two front war if the French were to join the Russians in fighting the Central powers (and to neutralise them as a hostile power for good), but walking through Belgium got the Brits involved and a 4-year near stalemate ensued. In WW2, it was to minimise land invasion possibilities, claim back Alsace and Lorraine (again) and neutralise an enemy.

[N9JIG]

This brings up that most Americans don't understand how fragmented Europe was prior to the 20th Century compared to the way it is now. The 19th and early 20th century maps were in great flux until after WWII when things finally stabilized somewhat, at least until after the Cold War.

As for WWII, if Hitler had held off on attacking Russia and England, he may have lasted longer and had been successful in retaining his territorial gains into France and Poland and kept the Americans out of the war. It is possible that, even after Pearl Harbor, that America may not have interceded in the European war had Germany not been actively engaging the Brits. This has been hashed out in countless Alternate History writings and discussion groups.

Another thing us Americans fail to understand is that it was the British who made the Allied victory possible in the European war. Americans think of WWII as starting on December 7, 1941 when in reality it started in 1939. If the Brits didn't hold off Hitler in the Battle of Britain or if Hitler wasn't so greedy the map of Europe would be a whole lot different. While the European war could not have ultimately been won without the American intervention after Pearl Harbor (or the Lend-Lease and other behind the scenes assistance before active participation started in 1942) it would have already been over by then if Britain fell or Hitler had not moved on Russia and Britain.

Had Hitler been successful in Europe, I think France would have been a puppet state with nominal independence. Same for Belgium and other middle European states, kind of similar to the Eastern Bloc of the Cold War.

[Chris]

If the Brits didn't hold off Hitler in the Battle of Britain or if Hitler wasn't so greedy the map of Europe would be a whole lot different.

Yeah, we would all be speaking Russian... If the Americans and British didn't invade Normandy, the Russians could have let the war last a few years longer, let the Germans waste their resources in the Russian winters, and then push them back into Germany, and eventually conquer all of Europe.

[N9JIG]

If the Brits didn't hold off Hitler in the Battle of Britain or if Hitler wasn't so greedy the map of Europe would be a whole lot different.

Yeah, we would all be speaking Russian... If the Americans and British didn't invade Normandy, the Russians could have let the war last a few years longer, let the Germans waste their resources in the Russian winters, and then push them back into Germany, and eventually conquer all of Europe.

Quite possible or even probable...

The "What if" game on differing outcomes of WWII is probably only surpassed (on this side of the pond anyway) by postulations on what if the South had won the (US) Civil War. Harry Turtledove and others have made an industry of Alternate History novels on this premise alone, it seems to be the leading topic of Alternate History authors.

[Chris]

Can you believe I never learned about the US Civil War in high school? All I know of it, I learned it on wikipeda. It's a pretty significant historical event, I can't believe they found woman emancipation or 19th century industrialization more important

[Dougtone]

Can you believe I never learned about the US Civil War in high school? All I know of it, I learned it on wikipeda. It's a pretty significant historical event, I can't believe they found woman emancipation or 19th century industrialization more important

My understanding is that in teaching history, a lot of emphasis is being placed on social history these days.  In the U.S., of course they teach about the Civil War, but from what I remember from my school days, the social root causes of the war were emphasized just as much as the war itself.

[N9JIG]

Assuming you went to HS in Europe, I am not surprised. In my Midwestern US high school we spent several weeks studying the US Civil War, I even won a history contest with a paper about it. Of course that was 30 years ago and in an optional history class I took. The regular curriculum of the time usually had a week of classes on the Civil War, more time was devoted to WWII, and WWI was usually mentioned as it related to the run-up to WWII. Since many of the teachers of the time spent time in Korea or Viet Nam, these conflicts got even more time devoted to them.

[mightyace]

It is possible that, even after Pearl Harbor, that America may not have interceded in the European war had Germany not been actively engaging the Brits. This has been hashed out in countless Alternate History writings and discussion groups.

Certainly true because, officially, Germany declared war on the U.S.A. after Pearl Harbor "in support" of their Japanese allies.  I agree if Germany hadn't done that we would have not entered the European theater at that time.

[agentsteel53]

Can you believe I never learned about the US Civil War in high school? All I know of it, I learned it on wikipeda. It's a pretty significant historical event, I can't believe they found woman emancipation or 19th century industrialization more important

wow, and here I thought only US education sucked!!!

gonna split this topic in a minute ...

[agentsteel53]

Assuming you went to HS in Europe, I am not surprised. In my Midwestern US high school we spent several weeks studying the US Civil War, I even won a history contest with a paper about it. Of course that was 30 years ago and in an optional history class I took. The regular curriculum of the time usually had a week of classes on the Civil War, more time was devoted to WWII, and WWI was usually mentioned as it related to the run-up to WWII. Since many of the teachers of the time spent time in Korea or Viet Nam, these conflicts got even more time devoted to them.

heh I got a 5/5 on my Advanced Placement exam on history because I have been a Civil War buff - my teacher was born in 1948 or so, served in Vietnam (drafted in '70, served til '72 I think), and definitely taught 1950-1998 as the major aspects of the curriculum... so they really did not teach much from 960 (Viking exploration of North America? I'm guessing on the year,) to the colonial era (1498-1776) to the Civil War and its causes (1820-1865-ish)... lucky I read up on it independently of what the class made me do!

as Mark Twain said: never let your education be an impediment to your learning!

edit: found the exact quote... Mark Twain in the 1880s:

I never let my schooling interfere with my education.

[Chris]

wow, and here I thought only US education sucked!!!

Well, our history education does not suck per se, but it is focused on a limited range of subjects. Nobody in school taught me about the Korean War or the Vietnam War for instance.

I am quite interested in statistics, like demographics of the United States, the development of population per county or state, for instance. It's amazing how much population cities like Buffalo, St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago or Cleveland have lost since the 1950's.

[agentsteel53]

Well, our history education does not suck per se, but it is focused on a limited range of subjects. Nobody in school taught me about the Korean War or the Vietnam War for instance.

I am quite interested in statistics, like demographics of the United States, the development of population per county or state, for instance. It's amazing how much population cities like Buffalo, St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago or Cleveland have lost since the 1950's.

they definitely did not teach that when I was in school... do they teach those demographics in the Netherlands?  In the US, anything past 1877 (official end of Reconstruction) or so is completely ignored, with a brief mention of prohibition (1919-1933) and the Harding administration, and maybe a note about the fact that Kennedy was shot in 1963 without detailing the effects of that on the population. 

As far as I believe, the shooting of Kennedy definitely is the barrier between the Baby Boom era (1945-1963) and the hippie ("don't trust anyone over 30") era (1963-1973 or so - the next era being the gas conservation between 1973 and 1987 or so)... and they definitely don't teach that! 

[Chris]

they definitely did not teach that when I was in school... do they teach those demographics in the Netherlands?

Not really, it's just a personal interest of me. It helps me understand a lot of things, because I am also interested in the urban environment.

IMO, history of the last 150 years is much more relevant than stuff that happened 400 or 1000 years ago. For instance, the Balkans in Europe are a hotbed of nationalism and violence, but I never really learned about that in school, while it's quite important. Now I have read up about those things on wikipedia, and it helps me understand why things happen the way they happen over there.

World War II had huge consequences in Europe, especially the eastern part which was more or less occupied by the Soviet Union. Many people in Western Europe still have memories about the "eastern bloc", but have no idea about how it looks right now. Central/Eastern Europe is really "the new world", especially in road construction. Next year, in Poland, a country of 40 million people (about the state of California), has 600 miles of freeway under construction. Now that's almost as significant as the 1960's Interstate Highway construction, on a relative scale. These countries, from Estonia to Bulgaria, really begin to catch up with western Europe, and some have already achieved that level, like Slovenia.

[J N Winkler]

History is my biz, though I operate at the graduate-level end rather than the high-school end.  It is my impression that secondary school teaching of history in Europe tends to focus more on the economic and social aspects because that is more relevant to an understanding of the dynamic of present-day institutions.  For example, if you want to know what the big deal is about "New" Labour in Britain, you have to know about Clause Four and the circumstances under which it was introduced.

Also, narrating history through the lens of economics and sociology makes it easier to keep nonspecialists from getting bogged down in details of political history.  I personally find the dying days of the Valois dynasty in France interesting, but from the standpoint of soap opera rather than "serious" history.  In fact, the political history of any medieval European region is akin to a long-running telenovela, while an approach which focuses on the economic history gives you a synopsis for everything and allows you to understand how it all played into the development of the European continent as a whole.  Then, if you want, you can go from the general to the particular and, say, watch Isabelle Adjani in La Reine Margot.

The teaching of American history in the US is skewed for a number of reasons.  First, the US prides itself on being a capitalistic democracy and thus material which challenges the discreet embourgeoisement of the American public tends to be glided over.  You don't usually hear, for example, about things like the Ludlow massacre, the Bread and Roses strike, or the Palmer raids.  Thorstein Veblen gets a nod, but no real detail.  Emma Goldman gets a mention, but nobody says why you should care about her.  Socialist International?  Forget it.

Second, there is a general weakness where historical demographics or pure cliometric approaches are concerned.  For example, even an AP US History class would not delve into the question of the economic efficiency of slavery.  You might hear that Frederick Jackson Turner was a "great" historian, but not why (I found out on my own when I got one of his books out of the public library--his major contribution is an analysis of what the closing of the frontier meant in demographic terms).  Fogel's controversial railroad thesis is conceptually accessible to high-schoolers but I never heard of it until much later, when I was starting my doctorate.

Third, US history classes are used as a vehicle for civics education.  My AP history class was taught from a more objectivist perspective, but before that I had to take a required US history class in which the teacher frequently resorted to the first-person plural when talking about America and Americans--"our frontier," "our rights," "our Constitution," etc.  There is much discussion of the US as a crucible of basic human rights but because this coexists with a kind of reluctance to acknowledge that the US has also been party to some of the most appalling violations of those rights, the overall pedagogical approach tends to feed a conception of the US and its institutions as a perfect child of Enlightenment rationalism.  The unamended Constitution of 1787 is sacred and must never be touched, "Our Union must be preserved," and so on and so forth.

The US is also a highly diverse country and that leads to a regionalism which makes certain aspects of historical experience very difficult to understand.  For example, I grew up in Kansas, which still retains traces of a frontier mentality and has no really large cities.  Therefore I found it very hard to engage with late nineteenth-century labor history, because that occurred largely in a densely urbanized milieu with ghetto neighborhoods.  I got five out of five on my AP US History exam but I learned far more about the history of the US simply from travelling around it, and reading books about the places I visited, than I did in my formal schooling.

[agentsteel53]

yep, JN Winkler - I remember my US history classes and they totally overlooked the socialists.  Eugene Debs?  Just another "minor candidate for office" who went to prison so clearly he is a Bad Guy and his ideas are worthless - that's how it works, that there are two parties, there have always been two parties (we've always been at war with Eurasia, yada yada), sure the names have changed over time but the quantities never have.  Federalists vs. Democratic-Republicans (1804) to Democrats vs Republicans (2000s) - the standard high school curriculum just does not admit other view points - look at how the term "third party" has always implied a fringe minority, because they assume high schoolers are dumb shits and they need to have a dumbened down history fed to them.

I believe it was George Washington who warned against political parties (farewell speech, 1796), based on what he knew of the mathematics of Leonhard Euler (1732 or so) where, based on the "simple majority" rules of the US Constitution, the two-party system would collapse upon itself and yield what we know today... given how the Constitution laid out the electoral rules (see Euler and also Arrows' Theorem), it was inevitable that there would arise two parties at the most, to the detriment of the ideas that the "third", "fourth" etc parties would bring to the discussion.

yep, Ralph Nader blew the 2000 election in favor of the Republicans because the mathematics of the US are just too simplistic to allow for the electoral results that the people actually want.

[shoptb1]

look at how the term "third party" has always implied a fringe minority, because they assume high schoolers are dumb shits and they need to have a dumbened down history fed to them.

I believe it was George Washington who warned against political parties (farewell speech, 1796), based on what he knew of the mathematics of Leonhard Euler (1732 or so) where, based on the "simple majority" rules of the US Constitution, the two-party system would collapse upon itself and yield what we know today... given how the Constitution laid out the electoral rules (see Euler and also Arrows' Theorem), it was inevitable that there would arise two parties at the most, to the detriment of the ideas that the "third", "fourth" etc parties would bring to the discussion.

yep, Ralph Nader blew the 2000 election in favor of the Republicans because the mathematics of the US are just too simplistic to allow for the electoral results that the people actually want.

I couldn't agree more!  I absolutely HATE how contemporary American politics has a system that doesn't allow for coalitions of parties to work together in order to achieve a common goal.  Compare this to the German government, where typically no one party can ever achieve the majority on its own, so they must align themselves with smaller parties in a coalition to come to power.  This, in turn, allows the smaller parties to bring minority viewpoints to the table, and thus you see a place where the Greens and other small groups can actually get legislation passed and/or have representatives on the executive cabinet. 

Strange thing is that the current German government was actually devised based upon the better ideas of the British, French, and American governments at the close of WWII, while preserving some of positive aspects of the Weimar Republic and lessons learned from the Third Reich.  In this respect, it is a newer, and probably more efficient government than the United States, and to an extent, designed in part BY the United States. 

Can't we just scrap this crap in the US and start over again?   

[mightyace]

Personally, I LIKE the fact that our government is inefficient.  The constitution designed it that way!

There is WAY TOO MUCH government interference in our lives today!  A "more efficient" government would make it easier for the government to get bigger and more controlling than it already is!

In some ways, I agree with previous posters that the "two party system" doesn't work well, but even so, you do have different blocks of voters in each major party.  While conservatives, like myself, tend to vote with the Republican party and liberals/socialists tend to vote with the Democratic party, the "moderates" can be found in both parties.  And, there are multiple special interest groups in the Democratic Party such as the Environmentalists, the "Politically Correct" movement, Pro-Choice, etc.  The main difference from the multi-party system is that if a group in the coalition becomes dissatisfied there is nowhere for them to go.

As for the socialists, there were ignored in my school history as well, but once I learned about them on my own, I concluded that their effect on American history was minor and leaving them out of the cursory history that is taught in schools does not distort the picture too much.  (i.e. Putting them in would mean leaving out some bigger things.)  But, my history classes also left out the Chicago political "machine" and how Mayor Richard Daley basically rigged the Chicago returns to ensure that JFK would get elected.

[Chris]

The Netherlands has way too many political parties.

Right now the polls show no reasonable government can be formed, at least 4 parties of very opposing policies are needed to get a majority.

Germany is somewhat better, 2 parties are usually enough to form a government. But I wouldn't recommend the fragmentation of the political landscape some European countries have. Any coalition of 3 parties or more tend to be unstable.

One of the worst examples of European politics are Italy and Belgium, on average, governments last less than 1.5 years. They had 50-or so governments since WWII.

[agentsteel53]

As for the socialists, there were ignored in my school history as well, but once I learned about them on my own, I concluded that their effect on American history was minor

a lot of reforms of the 20s (see: meatpacking industry, for example) were due to the effect of the socialists.  Next thing you know, the social climate is such that FDR gets elected... some of that is due to Herbert Hoover being perceived to have not done nearly enough to stop the depression, but the Democrats could've run anyone against him and beaten him - the fact that they ran the most left-leaning guy anyone had seen up to that point (significantly more so than Teddy or Abe Lincoln) was because left-leaning ideas were very much in the public eye at the time.

[agentsteel53]

And, there are multiple special interest groups in the Democratic Party such as the Environmentalists, the "Politically Correct" movement, Pro-Choice, etc.  

same with the Republicans - you've got the "leave me alone" libertarian types, the religious right, the pro-war faction, the people that still think it's the party of Lincoln, the people that still think it's the party of Reagan, etc etc...

[mightyace]

the fact that they ran the most left-leaning guy anyone had seen up to that point (significantly more so than Teddy or Abe Lincoln) was because left-leaning ideas were very much in the public eye at the time.

And we've been paying for that mistake, literally, since then.  It was the FDR era when we started running budget deficits, got the Ponzi scheme called Social Security, etc.  The only reason the economy recovered, IMHO, is WWII.

[agentsteel53]

And we've been paying for that mistake, literally, since then.  It was the FDR era when we started running budget deficits, got the Ponzi scheme called Social Security, etc.  The only reason the economy recovered, IMHO, is WWII.

oddly, the same trick is not working twice.  lousy economy? check.  foreign war? check.  something's just not clicking, though...