The effect of World War II on the development of knowledge in the physical sciences

The first effect of the outbreak of war in 1939 was greatly to reduce work in pure science and to direct effort to projects relevant to the war. After the war there was a very rapid expansion to a level much exceeding that of the 1930s. The work done during the war in nuclear physics, electronics, instrumentation, radar and rocketry was the basis of this expansion. Successes during the war had given science a new image with the public and with the government; money and facilities were available for fundamental science on a scale more than 10 times that of pre-war days. Wartime work had also had a profound effect on the expectations and style of work of physicists. They had learnt how to obtain and handle large resources.

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2/2021) ◽  
pp. 415-434
Author(s):  
Slobodan Selinić

Serbia’s political status after the death of Josip Broz was determined by two kinds of efforts by the state. Firstly, the Serbian leaders aimed to change its unequal status in federal Yugoslavia. Secondly, they aimed to stop fragmentation within Serbia, which grew steadily after the 1974 Constitution. Political relations between Serbian leaders on the one hand, and some political circles and leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and the autonomous provinces on the other, were strained. They worsened even more after several clashes in 1983. Despite the opposition of politicians in Bosnia, Croatia, and Vojvodina to Dragoslav Marković (who was described as a strong advocate of Serbian political unity), he was elected as chairman of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (CK SKJ) in 1983. Serbo-Croatian relationships were further damaged after the publication of the book Enigma Kopinič in Belgrade. The Croatian leaders were against this publication because it revealed – as far as the Party was concerned – undesirable information about the interwar years and the period during World War II. The major confrontation came over the interpretation of events that occurred at the funeral of Aleksandar Ranković (mainly over who was responsible for the mass gathering and the respectful attitude toward the deceased). Federal party units, as well as those from the Yugoslav republics and from Belgrade, jointly condemned those events as a political rally against the government. However, they disagreed over who was responsible for the incident and what had caused the public outcry. The CK SKJ chairmanship members from the autonomous provinces, Croatia, and Bosnia accused Serbia and the Serbian Communist Party for the display of nationalism. They also held the Belgrade City Party Committee responsible for letting the rally happen. Contrary to this, the Belgrade City Committee led by Ivan Stambolić, whom the Serbian leadership supported, felt that the uproar was caused by the overall political, economic, and social crisis, for which the Federal government was to blame.


1957 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-236
Author(s):  
Franklyn D. Holzman

The Mongolian People's Republic, or Outer Mongolia as it is more commonly known, is a country of some 600,000 square mile area which is bounded on the north by Soviet Siberia, on the south by China, with Manchuria to the east and Sinkiang to the west. Many centuries ago, the western world lived in fear of the Mongol hordes which swept westward as far as the Danube laying waste to all which lay before them. Over the years, the power and importance of Mongolia declined and it fell, at different times, under Russian and Chinese influence respectively. More recently it was under Chinese domination in the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1911, as a result of internal disorders within China, the Mongolians were able to break loose and set themselves up as an autonomous nation. This so-called period of autonomy lasted until 1921 at which time the Soviets gained de facto control of the government. Actual power still resided legally in the hands of a local theocratic ruler. Upon his death in 1924, the present government was established. Since 1924, Outer Mongolia has been a Soviet satellite in the same sense that the eastern European nations have been since the end of World War II. In fact, Outer Mongolia has the dubious distinction of having been the first “People's Republic” to survive as an “independent” nation. Recently, this small nation has been in the public eye as a result of the Soviet Union's unsuccessful attempt to secure for it UN status.


2020 ◽  
pp. 149-156
Author(s):  
Mikhail Y. Lavrentev ◽  

The present article describes the phono documents of the Russian State Archives of Sound Recordings related to World War II. The work covers the specifics of these documents and their value for the war history research as well as for understanding of the war-time atmosphere and its reflection in people’s minds during and after the war. The paper analyses the audio recordings made both during World War II and the following years. The examples of most important documents are presented. The existence of phono documents created before the start of World War II and after its end is indicated. The article informs on the sound recordings created during the years of World War II. It also states the existence of captured phono documents created by Nazi Germany and sound recordings of war criminals court processes. The author describes the work done by archivists to provide easy access of the public to phono documents. The article specifies the thematic catalogues of war history documents dating from 1929 to 1946 that can be found on the RSASR’s website. The titles and the short descriptions of the Internet projects that include fragments of the World War II history audio recordings are also given. The article notes a presence in the Archives of the numerous artistic recordings pertaining to the War and indicates their importance.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.


Author(s):  
Joia S. Mukherjee

This chapter outlines the historical roots of health inequities. It focuses on the African continent, where life expectancy is the shortest and health systems are weakest. The chapter describes the impoverishment of countries by colonial powers, the development of the global human rights framework in the post-World War II era, the impact of the Cold War on African liberation struggles, and the challenges faced by newly liberated African governments to deliver health care through the public sector. The influence of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund’s neoliberal economic policies is also discussed. The chapter highlights the shift from the aspiration of “health for all” voiced at the Alma Ata Conference on Primary Health Care in 1978, to the more narrowly defined “selective primary health care.” Finally, the chapter explains the challenges inherent in financing health in impoverished countries and how user fees became standard practice.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-487
Author(s):  
John A. Askin ◽  
Kurt Glaser

IN SPITE of a short period of sovereignty— less than 7 years—the State of Israel is playing an important role in matters pertaining not only to the Middle East but, in some respects, in matters of importance to the whole world. In medicine the advances in Israel have been no less striking than the progress made in other fields. It is felt that the pediatricians of our country might be interested to learn about Israel's medical status, particularly pertaining to pediatrics. Palestine, of which the present Israel is a part, was in Old Testament times known as Canaan or Philistia because of the tribes which lived there. Palestine was the home of the Jewish people from the time Joshua conquered the land, about 1400 B.C., until the Romans destroyed the Jewish State in the year 70 A.D. Around 630 A.D. the country came under Moslem power. From 1516 to the end of World War I Palestine was a part of the Turkish Empire. In 1917, the British Government issued the famous Balfour Declaration which promised the Jews of the world that they could build a national homeland in Palestine. The League of Nations made the land a British mandate in 1920. From then until World War II Palestine was at several occasions plunged into violent civil war between the Jews and the Arabs. After World War II in 1947 Great Britain announced a decision to give up the Mandate.


Author(s):  
Dr Rose Fazli ◽  
Dr Anahita Seifi

The present article is an attempt to offer the concept of political development from a novel perspective and perceive the Afghan Women image in accordance with the aforementioned viewpoint. To do so, first many efforts have been made to elucidate the author’s outlook as it contrasts with the classic stance of the concept of power and political development by reviewing the literature in development and particularly political development during the previous decades. For example Post-World War II approaches to political development which consider political development, from the Hobbesian perspective toward power, as one of the functions of government. However in a different view of power, political development found another place when it has been understood via postmodern approaches, it means power in a network of relationships, not limited to the one-way relationship between ruler and obedient. Therefore newer concept and forces find their way on political development likewise “image” as a considerable social, political and cultural concept and women as the new force. Then, the meaning of “image” as a symbolic one portraying the common universal aspect is explained. The Afghan woman image emphasizing the historic period of 2001 till now is scrutinized both formally and informally and finally the relationship between this reproduced image of Afghan women and Afghanistan political development from a novel perspective of understanding is represented.


1975 ◽  
Vol 157 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Throne

Studies by investigators at the University of Iowa Child Welfare Station before World War II demonstrated that the intelligence levels of the mentally retarded could be raised, often up to and beyond normalcy (IQ 100). Yet, the implications were never seriously followed up on anything approaching a broad-gauged scale. The juridical climate now supports the position that, because the evidence is that all the retarded can learn under proper conditions, they are all entitled to public schooling. It is suggested that the public schools may soon be confronted with an even more far-reaching educo-legal thrust based on the kind of evidence first reported by the Iowa investigators; that is, the public schools have a responsibility not only to educate or train the retarded to achieve their retarded potentialities, but to increase those potentialities, i.e., raise their intelligence levels.


Author(s):  
MILAN KOLJANIN ◽  
DRAGICA KOLJANIN

There are various doubts and ambiguities regarding the dispatch of the memorandum by the Government of the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) to the Western Allies asking for military intervention in early May 1945, giving rise to different interpretations in historiography. These varying interpretations are related to the circumstances of the dispatch of the memorandum, its text, the actions of prominent representatives of the Ustasha government, relations between the new Yugoslav authorities and Western allies, especially the British and the role of Archbishop Stepinac and the Holy See in the ISC. In order to understand the memorandum, it is necessary to consider the most important political and military circumstances at the end of World War II in Yugoslavia, especially the politics of the new Yugoslavia and the Western powers, primarily the British. The representatives of the Holy See in the ISC and the Archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac, played an important role in efforts to preserve the Ustasha state. This paper was written based on unpublished and published archival sources and relevant historiographical literature.


2013 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 55-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niklas Foxeus

The achievement of independence in 1948 was in many ways a watershed in Burma’s history. At this time, a variety of Buddhist movements emerged that were part not only of a ‘Burmese Buddhist revival’, in which even the government was involved, but also a general re-enchantment of Asia. In the period following World War II, projects of nation-building and further modernization were implemented in many newly independent Asian nation states. The theories of modernization adopted by the rulers had presupposed that a new, rationalized and secularized order that had set them on the path of ‘progress’ would entail a decline of religion. However, instead there was a widespread resurgence of religion, and a variety of new, eclectic religious movements emerged in Southeast Asia. In the thriving religious field of postcolonial Burma, two lay Buddhist movements associated with two different meditation techniques emerged, viz.; the insight meditation movement and the concentration meditation movement. The latter consisted of a variety of esoteric congregations combining concentration meditation with esoteric lore, and some of these were characterized by fundamentalist trends. At the same time, the supermundane form of Buddhism became increasingly influential in the entire field of religion. The aim of the present article is to discuss how this supermundane dimension has reshaped the complex religious field in Burma, with particular emphasis on the esoteric congregations; to present the Burmese form of esoteric Theravāda Buddhism, and to situate the fundamentalist trends which are present in these contexts.


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