The Night Stalin and Churchill Divided Europe: The View from Washington

1981 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Siracusa

Of the many fascinating episodes that punctuate the diplomatic history of World War II, few have intrigued scholars more than the secret Balkan spheres-of-action agreement worked out by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Marshal Josef Stalin at the Anglo-Soviet conference (British code-named TOLSTOY) held in Moscow in the autumn of 1944. It was late in the evening of 9 October. In his first encounter with Stalin since the meeting of the Big Three at Teheran in 1943, Churchill, believing “the moment … apt for business,” appealed to the Soviet dictator to “Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans.” Specifically, he went on, “We have interests, missions, and agents there. Don't let us get at cross-purposes in small ways.

Author(s):  
Michele K. Troy

This chapter examines how the Allied bombings of Germany affected the lives of people in the Albatross-Tauchnitz fold, particularly Max Christian Wegner and Walter Gey. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Adolf Hitler's reign, the Nazi elite gathered with thousands of party loyalists on January 30, 1943 for an evening of rousing speeches at the Berlin Sportpalast. The Allies commemorated Hitler's tenth anniversary by sending Royal Air Force Mosquito light bombers on a daylight air raid on the German capital. For Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin Roosevelt, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this attack marked the beginning of the “strategic bombing” campaign they had agreed upon at the Casablanca Conference days earlier. This chapter considers Wegner's arrest and imprisonment at the height of World War II as well as Gey's efforts to make the best of the Albatross Press's ever-shrinking terrain.


2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-282
Author(s):  
Laura Emmery

Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music (edited by Danijela Špirić Beard and Ljerka Rasmussen) is a fascinating study of how popular music developed in post-World War II Yugoslavia, eventually reaching both unsurpassable popularity in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and critical acclaim in the West. Through the comprehensive discussion of all popular music trends in Yugoslavia − commercial pop (zabavna-pop), rock, punk, new wave, disco, folk (narodna), and neofolk (novokomponovana) − across all six socialist Yugoslav republics, the reader is given the engrossing socio-cultural and political history of the country, providing the audience with a much-needed and riveting context for understanding the formation and the eventual demise of Tito’s Yugoslavia.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ku Daeyeol

This important new study by one of Korea’s leading historians focuses on the international relations of colonial Korea – from the Japanese rule of the peninsula and its foreign relations (1905–1945) to the ultimate liberation of the country at the end of the Second World War. In addition, it fills a significant gap – the ‘blank space’ – in Korean diplomatic history. Furthermore, it highlights several other fundamental aspects in the history of modern Korea, such as the historical perception of the policy-making process and the attitudes of both China and Britain which influenced US policy regarding Korea at the end of World War II.


Aspasia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-154
Author(s):  
Maria Bucur

Alin Ciupală, Bătălia lor: Femeile din România în Primul Război Mondial (Their batt le: Women in Romania during World War I), Iași: Polirom, 2017, 392 pp., 48 illustrations, RON 39.95 (paperback), ISBN: 978-9-73466-577-8.Jelena Batinić, Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, 287 pp., 11 illustrations, GBP 24.99 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-31611-862-7.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-339
Author(s):  
Cezary Zalewski

Roman Ingarden (1893–1970) was a prominent Polish philosopher, phenomenologist, and student of Edmund Husserl. A characteristic feature of his works was the almost complete absence of analyzes from the history of philosophy. That is why it is so surprising that right after the end of World War II, the first text analyzed when Ingarden started working at the Jagiellonian University was Aristotle’s “Poetics.” Ingarden published the results of his research in Polish in 1948 in “Kwartalnik Filozoficzny” and in the early 1960s his essay was translated and published in the renowned American magazine “The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism” as “A Marginal Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics.” As far as I know today, this text does not arouse much interest among the many commentators and followers of Ingarden’s philosophy. Perhaps this state of affairs is justified: Ingarden’s own ideas are only repeated here, and their usefulness in the meaning of “Poetics” remains far from obvious. However, I think that this relative obscurity is worth considering now, because it shows how modern reason tries to control ancient concepts. The main purpose of this article is therefore to recon- struct the strategy by which philosophy tames the text of “Poetics,” especially its concepts such as catharsis and mimesis. The discovery and presentation of these treatments would not have been possible were it not for the mimetic theory of René Girad, which provides anthropological foundations for a critique of philosophical discourse.


Author(s):  
Otto Kircheimer

This chapter focuses on the “Statement on Atrocities,” which contains a joint declaration concerning war crimes and war criminals. Issued by the Tripartite Conference over the signatures of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, the report details that the declaration constitutes the first common announcement of intentions on the part of all three major powers. The chapter considers parallel statements issued on October 25, 1941, by Roosevelt and Churchill, which drew the attention of the world to the shooting of hostages during World War II and announced that retribution would be exacted from the guilty. It also addresses the question of the effect of the Moscow Declaration on Germany and the use which can be made of it in psychological warfare operations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 66 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 395-422
Author(s):  
Dragan Djukanovic

The history of Montenegro in the 20th and the early 21st century shows that the divisions were very prominent, these including the moment when the Kingdom of Montenegro had been created (after 1918), the period during World War II (1941-1945) as well as the time when its state and legal position was to be resolved. Similar lines of divisions in the Montenegrin society became dominant again during the dissolution of former SFR Yugoslavia (1991-1999) as well as immediately before and after the referendum on the status of the state in 2006 concerning primarily the set of the so-called identity issues. Those issues include the images and contents of Montenegro?s state symbols, the official language (the Montenegrin language since 2007) and the status of the canonically unrecognised Montenegrin Orthodox Church. At the same time, the author points to the disagreements of political actors in Montenegro regarding its membership in the NATO. This prevents the possibility of achieving as broad as possible consensus on the foreign policy identity and orientation of this country. Finally, the author concludes that it is necessary to achieve a broad internal consensus and make a compromise in Montenegro concerning the set of identity issues mentioned above in order to prevent the traditional division in the society.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Malcolm Arthur McKinnon

<p>This study is a diplomatic history of Anglo-New Zealand economic relations through World War II and the postwar decade. During this tine Britain's priorities were such as to sharply alter her economic interests in New Zealand, compared both with the pre-war and post-1954 eras. It is this transformation which gives the period its distinctive coloration. Throughout these years Britain wanted New Zealand to conserve and direct her resources, initially to assist in the war effort, subsequently to aid the tasks of reconstruction. New Zealand gave active support to Britain. Nonetheless, she could not completely disregard her own interests. In the short-term, there was always pressure to buy on the cheapest and sell on the dearest market. In the long-term, New Zealand faced more fundamental decisions. Should she seek economic security through close association with Britain? Should she diversify her economic relations? Should she try to insulate her domestic from the international economy? These longstanding concerns can be traced through the period. They, too, moulded the course of events. Chapter one looks at the record of economic diplomacy before 1939. Chapters two to five look at the World War II period. Chapter two examines the period from the perspectives of the restraint Britain sought to impose on New Zealand in the consumption of resources. Chapters three to five trace the history of New Zealand's export industries - her major contribution to the struggle - through the war. Chapters six to ten span the post-war decade. Chapter six follows the theme of chapter two through to 1949. Chapter seven looks at Britain's concern about the commercial implications of New Zealand's import policies - a concern which had taken a back seat through the war. Chapters eight and ten take the history of the food export industries through to 1954. Chapter nine picks up the themes of chapters six and seven and takes them through to 1954, and also looks at the wool trade after 1946. Lastly, chapter eleven looks at how the relationship between the two countries evolved after 1954. The end of the long period of stringency meant a return in some, but certainly not in all, respects to pre-war conditions.</p>


Aletheia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Hu

Grievabilty, as Judith Butler outlines in Precarious Life, is when individuals are valued, loved, and respected. When they are of value, and thus when they pass, they are worthy of being grieved for. Throughout history, including the present day, we are constantly reminded of those who are ungrievable and those who have been derealized, whether that be Indigenous people, those who died in the war, those exploited by corporations, those who endured slavery, the list is endless. One group, in particular, is that of ‘comfort women’ these are women who were captured by the Japanese military during World War II and unwillingly become sex slaves for the entire army, they are among the many who were lost to this war. Therefore, this paper will be examining the history of ‘comfort women’ during World War II through the lens of Judith Butler's Precarious Life. By applying the concept of greivability, and understanding the process of derealization, this paper was able to not only critically recognize that the circumstances of war and the cruel nature of the Japanese military led to the derealization of ‘comfort women’, but that the survivors were also able to use their trauma as strength, empowering them in a new era, with the help of media and women’s rights groups, to undo their derealization and reclaim their power.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dierk Hagedorn

In this paper I will describe the adventurous history of an important late medieval German fechtbuch—a fighting manual—that belongs to a number of manuscripts known as the Gladiatoria group. In the beginning, the extent and the characteristics of this group of codices are explained; later on I will deal with one specific specimen that formerly belonged to a library in Germany—the Herzogliche Bibliothek in Gotha—from where it vanished during or after World War II. Until quite recently this manuscript was believed to be lost. I was able to identify a Gladiatoria manuscript from the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, as that missing manuscript. The article presents a detailed description of the manuscript; it follows the path of the many places the codex passed through from the days of its creation until the present time; it offers a thorough line of argument that proves on one hand that the manuscript from New Haven is in fact identical to the one that disappeared from Gotha, and that verifies on the other hand an assumption by the renowned researcher Hans-Peter Hils that it is identical to yet another believed-to-be-lost manuscript that was sold by auction in Heidelberg in the 1950s and 1960s as single leaves; and finally it makes an attempt to reconstruct the original structure of the manuscript after it had been pulled apart.


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