A Test Case for the Kinsey Male

Max Eastman ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Irmscher
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
World War ◽  
Martha's Vineyard ◽  
Martha’S Vineyard ◽  
New Association ◽  
Love Life

Max Eastman’s increasing conservatism does not lead to self-imposed restrictions on his love life. Among his lovers the young Creigh Collins, an aspiring poet and fellow devotee to physical pleasure, stands out. The Hitler-Stalin pact seals Max’s rejection of communist ideas and drives his advocacy for American involvement in World War II. In the protagonist of his long poem, Lot’s Wife (1942), heavily criticized by Edmund Wilson, Max paints a picture of the archetypal tyrant, Hitler and Stalin rolled into one terrifying package. To the consternation of his former leftist friends, Max joins Reader’s Digest as a “roving editor,” celebrating his new association with an essay on why socialism does not “jibe” with human nature. Buoyed by this new source of income, Max and Eliena build a home on Martha’s Vineyard.

Leaning on Legionnaires: Why Modern States Recruit Foreign Soldiers

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-195
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M.F. Grasmeder
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Test Case ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Multimethod Approach

Abstract Why do modern states recruit legionnaires—foreigners who are neither citizens nor subjects of the country whose military they serve? Rather than exclusively enlist citizens for soldiers, for the past two centuries states have mobilized legionnaires to help wage offensives, project power abroad, and suppress dissent. A supply-and-demand argument explains why states recruit these troops, framing the choice to mobilize legionnaires as a function of political factors that constrain the government's leeway to recruit domestically and its perceptions about the territorial threats it faces externally. A multimethod approach evaluates these claims, first by examining an original dataset of legionnaire recruitment from 1815 to 2020, then by employing congruence tests across World War II participants, and finally by conducting a detailed review of a hard test case for the argument—Nazi Germany. The prevalence of states’ recruitment of legionnaires calls for a reevaluation of existing narratives about the development of modern militaries and provides new insights into how states balance among the competing imperatives of identity, norms, and security. Legionnaire recruitment also underscores the need to recalibrate existing methods of calculating net assessments and preparing for strategic surprise. Far from being bound to a state's citizenry or borders, the theory and evidence show how governments use legionnaires to buttress their military power and to engineer rapid changes in the quality and quantity of the soldiers that they field.

The German Military Occupation of Italy and the War against Civilians

Modern Italy ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Pezzino
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Research Group ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Military Occupation ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
World War ◽  
Italian Regions ◽  
Cultural Conditioning

The article presents the results of a research group which has, over the last few years, carried out a careful contextualization of the massacres of civilians in four Italian regions (Apulia, Campania, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna) during World War II. The research enables us to go beyond references to the irrationality of evil, the unchangeable core of violence in human nature or terror as an end in itself, which do not contribute much to an analytical interpretation. The aim has been to place these massacres in a more precise historical context by reconstructing the power structures, the logic and the cultural conditioning which made them possible, the behaviour and aims of the various protagonists, the complex evolution of the survivors’ memories and the ways in which the community memory has been taken up, or expelled, by the anti-Fascist paradigm of Republican Italy.

Prisoner of War, 1941–1944

2020 ◽  
pp. 39-64
Author(s):  
Louis R. Caplan
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Learning Experiences ◽  
Medical Officer ◽  
Later Life ◽  
World War ◽  
Prisoner Of War ◽  
Medical Facilities ◽  
Material Goods

Abstract: This chapter deals entirely with Fisher’s experience as a medical officer in a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. Medical facilities and care, recreation, learning experiences, and German behavior in the prisoner-of-war camp are discussed, as is his liberation. Undoubtedly, Fisher’s wartime experiences had a profound effect on his later life and career. He did not pay much attention to material goods, money, or finances. He believed so much time in his life had been wasted as a prisoner that he was determined to make each subsequent day meaningful. With regard to his career, he was determined to contribute to knowledge and to dedicate himself to the optimum care of patients. He also developed a wide interest in people and human nature, probably at least kindled by the variety of individuals he came in contact with during the war years.

Choosing to Collaborate: Yi Kwang-su and the Moral Subject in Colonial Korea

2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Whittier Treat
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Test Case ◽  
World War ◽  
Colonial Korea ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
First Order ◽  
German Reich

Today historians hesitate to judge collaborators with the Axis powers in World War II, citing the impossibility of putting oneself in the often untenable position collaborators found themselves. Nonetheless, contemporary moral philosophy continues to ponder the ethical choice of complicity versus resistance. Yi Kwang-su (1892–1950?), Korea's most distinguished modern novelist as well as one of its more notorious pro-Japanese partisans during the colonial period, offers a compelling test case for how we might attempt to not only understand, but also morally adjudicate, his support of Japan's occupation of his country. With the ongoing debate over collaboration with the German Reich in mind, I contend that the case of colonial Korea presents us with important first-order ethical issues to resolve.

The United States, Italy, and the Opening to the Left, 1953–1963

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 36-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leopoldo Nuti
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Test Case ◽  
World War ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cold War

Drawing on newly declassified U.S. and Italian documentation, this article as-sesses U.S. policy toward Italy under the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations and uses this test case to draw some general conclusions about the nature of U.S. -Italian relations during the Cold War. The first part of the article focuses on issues that have been neglected or misinterpreted in the existing literature on the subject, and the second part presents some of the lessons that can be learned from the study of U.S. -Italian relations in the 1950s and 1960s. The aim is to cast broader light on the current debate about the role and influence of the United States in Western Europe after World War II.

Louis MacNeice and ‘The Paragons of Hellas’: Ancient Greece as Radio Propaganda

2018 ◽  
pp. 44-63
Author(s):  
Peter Golphin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
World War ◽  
Louis Macneice ◽  
Transmission Of Information ◽  
Dramatic Writing ◽  
The Military

With television shut down for the duration of World War II, BBC radio became an essential medium for the transmission of information and propaganda. This chapter surveys the wartime radio features of the poet and scriptwriter-producer, Louis MacNeice, analysing a series of broadcasts (including The March of the 10,000, The Four Freedoms and The Sacred Band) designed to maintain public awareness of and sympathy for the plight of Nazi-occupied Greece. MacNeice develops themes and incidents drawn from the country’s ancient history which are analogous to the contemporary situation. The ironic phrase ‘paragons of Hellas’, from his long poem Autumn Journal (1939), implies a scepticism over the use of ancient allusions. Even so, drawing important parallels in his radio-dramatic writing between the famed glories of Greece’s ancient civilisation – including Xenophon, Periclean democracy, the Sacred Band, and the military victories at Salamis, Thermopylae, Chaeronea – MacNeice seeks to underline ancient echoes of the resistance and resilience modern Greeks were finding was necessary in attempts to withstand Nazi brutality.

Kovner vs. Kovner: “A Parting from the South” vs. “Combat Page”

AJS Review ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-242
Author(s):  
Reuven Shoham
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
Hebrew Poetry ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Hebrew ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Freedom Fighter

The poet Abba Kovner was a partisan and freedom fighter during World War II (1942–1945), made aliyah in 1945, and published his first long poem, ‘Ad lo ’or (“Until There Was No Light”), in 1947. At the outbreak of the Israeli War of Independence he fought on the Egyptian front (1947–48), serving as a cultural officer, or politruk in the Giv'ati Brigade. Preda me-ha-darom (“A Parting from the South”), his second long poem and one of the pivotal works by a modern Hebrew poet, was written against the background of the War of Independence. However, critics have not yet been able to find a fitting place for it in the canon of Hebrew poetry and culture, although several serious attempts have been made. The present study does not refer to every aspect of this complex poem but focuses on one particular point. I contend that “A Parting from the South” implies an attempt by the visionary speaker of the poem to compel the young country, soon after the war, to part from the world of death, from cultic memories of the dead and guilt feelings toward them (the dead in the 1948 war in Israel and the dead in the ghettos of Nazi Europe in World War II). Abba Kovner tries to detach himself, and his readers, from death, to liberate them from the old perspectives.

“Apocalyptic Sectarianism”: The Theology at Work in Critiques of Catholic Radicals

Horizons ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-229
Author(s):  
Benjamin Peters
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
World War ◽  
American Life ◽  
Dorothy Day ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Outright Rejection ◽  
American Society ◽  
American Catholic

ABSTRACTThis article examines contemporary critiques of Dorothy Day and other Catholic radicals that portray them as world-denying sectarians. Such critiques are then traced back to earlier ones made against American Catholic radicals during the years surrounding World War II, suggesting that all of these critiques stem from important shared theological claims held by both contemporary critics and their neo-Thomists predecessors. But such depictions are a caricature of the radical Christianity put forth by Day and others. I argue that far from denigrating human nature and history, Day and other radicals sought engagement with American society and culture that was neither an outright rejection nor a blanket affirmation. Rather, it was a form of ongoing and critical engagement in light of one's ultimate destiny. Thus Catholic radicals present an approach to social engagement which seeks to discern what is holy in American life and to perfect or abandon what is not.

Controlling Nature, Disciplining Human Nature: Floods in Singapore and Metro Manila, 1945–1980s

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kah Seng Loh ◽  
Michael D. Pante
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
World War ◽  
Socially Responsible ◽  
Urban Floods ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
Metro Manila ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Technical Measures

A history of urban floods underlines the state's efforts to discipline people as well as to control floodwaters. We focus on two big cities in Southeast Asia—Singapore and Metro Manila—in the period from after World War II until the 1980s. During this period, both cities traversed similar paths of demographic and socioeconomic change that had an adverse impact on the incidence of flooding. Official responses to floods in Singapore and Manila, too, shared the common pursuit of two objectives. The first was to tame nature by reducing the risk of flooding through drainage and other technical measures, as implemented by a modern bureaucracy. The second was to discipline human nature by eradicating “bad” attitudes and habits deemed to contribute to flooding, while nurturing behavior considered civic-minded and socially responsible. While Singapore's technocratic responses were more effective overall than those in Metro Manila, the return of floodwaters to Orchard Road in recent years has highlighted the shortcomings of high modernist responses to environmental hazards. This article argues that in controlling floods—that is, when nature is deemed hazardous—the state needs to accommodate sources of authority and expertise other than its own.

scholarly journals Stolica Apostolska w polskiej polityce zagranicznej na uchodźstwie (Wrzesień 1939 – czerwiec 1940)

2018 ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Marek Kornat
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Criminal Policy ◽  
Test Case ◽  
World War ◽  
Holy See ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
Polish Question ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Government ◽  
Polish Government

The Holy See In Polish Foreign Policy of the Government on exile (September 1939 — June 1940) The article is devoted to the reexamining of the policy of Polish Government on exile toward the Holy See after Poland’s defeat in September 1939 and the reestablishment of the legal authorities of Poland in France, under President Raczkiewicz and General Sikorski as Prime Minister. Terminus ad quem of the narration is the collapse of France and transfer of the Government of Poland to London in June 1940. Problems of Vatican’s perception of Polish Question is discussed on the basis of Polish archival documents, especially those of Polish Embassy to the Holy See. Vatican-Polish relations at the beginning of the World War II require special attention because the last treatment of this highly debatable problem was made in historiography by Zofia Waszkiewicz more than thirty five years ago in her monograph Polityka Watykanu wobec Polski 1939–1945 [Policy of the Vatican toward Poland 1939—1945] (Warsaw 1980). How much Polish diplomacy achieved fighting for the Holy See’s support against Nazi Germany? Two things must be said. Firstly, the Holy See recognized the legal continuity of Polish State after the German-Soviet occupation of Poland’s territory in September 1939, but did not sent the papal nuncio to Angers, when Polish Government resided. Secondly, Polish thesis on the special significance of Polish Question as the test-case of international justice received the positive response of the Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Summi Pontificatus published on October 20 1939, but the guidelines of Vatican’s policy were based on the doctrine of strict neutrality of the Papacy in the international relations. It did not permit for Papal condemnation ex officio of the Nazi crimes and criminal policy of extermination in Poland. 

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