A Continent Bristling With Arms: Continuity and Change In Western European Security Policies After the Second World War

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leopoldo Nuti
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Security Policies ◽  
European Security ◽  
World War ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The North ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Stability

Since the end of World War II, Europe has known an unprecedented period of peace that has profoundly altered the political landscape of the continent. Yet at the same time, for much of the postwar period, this peace has been accompanied by frightening preparations for a global nuclear war – in the 1960s, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) planned to deploy in Western Europe 7,000 tactical atomic warheads of different yields – and by a number of recurrent crises that repeatedly threatened the stability of the postwar order. Nor should one neglect the fact that two European powers – France and Britain – still field the third and fifth largest nuclear arsenals in the whole world respectively. This article explores the post World War II evolution of defence and security policies in Western Europe, as well as the role of nuclear weapons in European security and the shifting perceptions of war in European public opinion and mentality. After considering colonial empires, decolonisation and nuclear issues, it discusses the last years of the Cold War.

Boom's Blues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim Verbei
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
North American ◽  
World War ◽  
English Version ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
The North ◽  
The 1960S

This book stands as both a remarkable biography of J. Frank G. Boom (1920–1953) and a recovery of his incredible contribution to blues scholarship originally titled The Blues: Satirical Songs of the North American Negro. The book tells how and when the Netherlands was introduced to African American blues music and describes the equally dramatic and peculiar friendship that existed between Boom and jazz critic and musicologist Will Gilbert, who worked for the Kultuurkamer during World War II and had been charged with the task of formulating the Nazi's Jazzverbod, the decree prohibiting the public performance of jazz. The book ends with the annotated and complete text of Boom's The Blues, providing the international world at last with an English version of the first book-length study of the blues. At the end of the 1960s, a series of 13 blues paperbacks edited by Paul Oliver for the London publisher November Books began appearing. One manuscript landed on his desk that had been written in 1943 by a then 23-year-old Frank (Frans) Boom. Its publication was announced on the back jacket of the last three Blues Paperbacks in 1971 and 1972. Yet it never was published and the manuscript once more disappeared. In October 1996, Dutch blues expert and publicist Verbei went in search of the presumably lost manuscript and the story behind its author. It only took him a couple of months to track down the manuscript, but it took another ten years to glean the full story behind the extraordinary Frans Boom, who passed away in 1953 in Indonesia.

NATO and Its Commentators: The First Five Years

1954 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence S. Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
North America ◽  
United Nations ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
North Atlantic Treaty Organization ◽  
World War ◽  
Armed Attack ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

The signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949, gave rise to a number of books and articles on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the volume of which will probably continue for some time. The treaty and the organization that it created represent the clearest challenge to Soviet expansionism since the end of World War II. Through this action twelve nations of North America and western Europe resolved to consider an armed attack against one member an attack against them all, and to create sufficient stiength within the alliance to deter potential aggressors. But NATO's continuing interest to commentators stems from reasons other than its value as a weapon against the spread of communism. To some writers NATO appears to be a stimulant that would revive a moribund United Nations, to others it is the beginning of a new kind of alliance unprecedented in history, to still others, it is a symbol of America's rejection of isolationism. So vague are some of the treaty's articles and so rapid has been the evolution of the organization that almost any observer could derive whatever meaning he wishes out of NATO's development.

Conventional Deterrence: Predictive Uncertainty and Policy Confidence

1985 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Betts
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Predictive Uncertainty ◽  
The North ◽  
Flexible Response ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Military Balance

For over three decades the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has based its deterrent on the principle that the United States would retaliate with nuclear weapons if a Soviet conventional attack against Western Europe succeeded. This notion has long troubled most strategic analysts. It remained generally acceptable to political elites, however, when U.S. nuclear superiority appeared massive enough to make the doctrine credible (as in the 1950s); when the conventional military balance in Europe improved markedly (as in the 1960s); or when détente appeared to be making the credibility of deterrence a less pressing concern (as in the 1970s). None of these conditions exists in the 1980s, and anxiety over the danger of nuclear war has prompted renewed attention to the possibility of replacing NATO's Flexible Response doctrine (a mixture of nuclear and conventional deterrence) with a reliable conventional deterrence posture that might justify a nuclear no-first-use (NFU) doctrine.1

France-US Relations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn C. Statler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Security ◽  
World War ◽  
The North

U.S.-French relations are long-standing, complex, and primarily cooperative in nature. Various crises have punctuated long periods of stability in the alliance, but after each conflict the Franco-American friendship emerged stronger than ever. Official U.S.-French relations began during the early stages of the American Revolution, when Louis XVI’s regime came to America’s aid by providing money, arms, and military advisers. French assistance, best symbolized by the Marquis de Lafayette, was essential in the revolution’s success. The subsequent French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power also benefitted the United States when Napoleon’s woes in Europe and the Caribbean forced him to sell the entire Louisiana territory to the United States, in 1803. Franco-American economic and cultural contacts increased throughout the 19th century, as trade between the two countries prospered and as Americans flocked to France to study art, architecture, music, and medicine. The French gift of the Statue of Liberty in the late 19th century solidified Franco-American bonds, which became even more secure during World War I. Indeed, during the war, the United States provided France with trade, loans, military assistance, and millions of soldiers, viewing such aid as repayment for French help during the American Revolution. World War II once again saw the United States fighting in France to liberate the country from Nazi control. The Cold War complicated the Franco-American relationship in new ways as American power waxed and French power waned. Washington and Paris clashed over military conflict in Vietnam, the Suez Crisis, and European security (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, in particular) during the 1950s and 1960s. Ultimately, after French President Charles de Gaulle’s retirement, the Franco-American alliance stabilized by the mid-1970s and has flourished ever since, despite brief moments of crisis, such as the 2003 Second Gulf War in Iraq.

Metamorphoses of memory of the the Russian-Serbian Brotherhood of War in Modern Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Timofeev
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Party System ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Second World

The article considers the perception of World War II in modern Serbian society. Despite the stability of Serbian-Russian shared historical memory, the attitudes of both countries towards World wars differ. There is a huge contrast in the perception of the First and Second World War in Russian and Serbian societies. For the Serbs the events of World War II are obscured by the memories of the Civil War, which broke out in the country immediately after the occupation in 1941 and continued several years after 1945. Over 70% of Yugoslavs killed during the Second World War were slaughtered by the citizens of former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror unleashed by Tito in the first postwar decade in 1944-1954 was proportionally bloodier than Stalin repressions in the postwar USSR. The number of emigrants from Yugoslavia after the establishment of the Tito's dictatorship was proportionally equal to the number of refugees from Russia after the Civil War (1,5-2% of prewar population). In the post-war years, open manipulations with the obvious facts of World War II took place in Tito's Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the memories repressed during the communist years were set free and publicly debated. After the fall of the one-party system the memory of World War II was devalued. The memory of the Russian-Serbian military fraternity forged during the World War II began to revive in Serbia due to the foreign policy changes in 2008. In October 2008 the President of Russia paid a visit to Serbia which began the process of (re) construction of World War II in Serbian historical memory. According to the public opinion surveys, a positive attitude towards Russia and Russians in Serbia strengthens the memories on general resistance to Nazism with memories of fratricide during the civil conflict events of 1941-1945 still dominating in Serbian society.

Arctic meteorological operations and counter-operations during world War II

Polar Record ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 21 (135) ◽  
pp. 559-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Selinger ◽  
Alexander Glen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
The United States ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Free Access ◽  
World War ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Northern Atlantic ◽  
Northern Atlantic Ocean

By autumn 1940 the first round of fighting in World War II was over. In northern Europe, German forces occupied Poland, Norway and Denmark. Both sides recognized that further operations demanded naval and air superiority in northern waters. Germany needed free access to the Atlantic Ocean through the North Sea; Britain had to prevent that access, which threatened the lifeline to the United States. More than ever before, it became essential for both sides to have meteorological information from the northern Atlantic Ocean area. Germany's need was especially acute, for the routes for her shipping from ports in Scandinavia traversed enemy-patrolled waters, where foul weather was essential for evasion.

United Front: Partisans of the Leningrad Region and their connections with the Central Asian Soviet Republics

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (02) ◽  
pp. 214-225
Author(s):  
Sergey Kulik ◽  
Аnatoliy Kashevarov ◽  
Zamira Ishankhodjaeva
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Leningrad Region ◽  
World War ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Occupied Territory ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Almost All

During World War II, representatives of almost all the Soviet Republics fought in partisan detachments in the occupied territory of the Leningrad Region. Among them were many representatives of the Central Asian republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Many Leningrad citizens, including relatives of partisans, had been evacuated to Central Asia by that time. However, representatives of Asian workers’ collectives came to meet with the partisans. The huge distance, the difference in cultures and even completely different weather conditions did not become an obstacle to those patriots-Turkestanis who joined the resistance forces in the North-West of Russia.

scholarly journals A Wealth of Evidence: The Identity of the Man Commemorated at Sutton Hoo

Elements ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitri Phillips
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Round Table ◽  
King Arthur ◽  
Burial Mound ◽  
World War ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

The history of England did not begin with the Industrial Revolution and not everything supposed about the Anglo-Saxons reduces to the myth of King Arthur and the Round Table. Contrary to commonly held beliefs, the Dark Ages of the North were full of splendor and brilliance; the only thing dark about them is their enshrouded history, but that only makes them all the more fascinating. The great burial mound at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia, discovered just before World War II, shines as one of the most grandiose sepulchers in history, yet the identity of its occupant remains a mystery. Was it a wealthy merchant, a warrior from overseas, or a great king? This paper gathers, presents, and scrutinizes the evidence and arguments from ancient records, opulate grave-goods, and contemporary investigations in an attempt to determine the most likely candidate for the individual interred in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo.

scholarly journals ‘Little Gunshots, but with the blaze of lightning’: Xavier Herbert, Visuality and Human Rights

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Jane Lydon
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
Northern Territory ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
World War ◽  
Major Work ◽  
The North ◽  
Significant Difference

Xavier Herbert published his bestseller Capricornia in 1938, following two periods spent in the Northern Territory. His next major work, Poor Fellow My Country (1975), was not published until thirty-seven years later, but was also set in the north during the 1930s. One significant difference between the two novels is that by 1975 photo-journalism had become a significant force for influencing public opinion and reforming Aboriginal policy. Herbert’s novel, centring upon Prindy as vulnerable Aboriginal child, marks a sea change in perceptions of Aboriginal people and their place in Australian society, and a radical shift toward use of photography as a means of revealing the violation of human rights after World War II. In this article I review Herbert’s visual narrative strategies in the context of debates about this key historical shift and the growing impact of photography in human rights campaigns. I argue that Poor Fellow My Country should be seen as a textual re-enactment, set in Herbert’s and the nation’s past, yet coloured by more recent social changes that were facilitated and communicated through the camera’s lens. Like all re-enactments, it is written in the past conditional: it asks, what if things had been different? It poses a profound challenge to the state project of scientific modernity that was the Northern Territory over the first decades of the twentieth century.

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