Are Students Expected to Critically Engage with Textbook Perspectives of the Second World War? A Comparative and International Study

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Nicholls
Keyword(s):  
International Study ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
World War ◽  
School History ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World ◽  
Contemporary School

This article is a comparative study of perspectives of the Second World War in contemporary school history textbooks from England, Japan, Sweden, Italy and the United States. In the article the author examines the extent to which interpretations of the Second World War differ in the textbooks of each nation as well as the relationship between perspectives and contemporary political agendas. Research on developments in Germany is used as an anchor against which to compare developments in the five countries. Having described and analysed differences the author then investigates the extent to which students in the five countries may be expected to engage with perspectives offered. To construct alternative interpretations of the conflict the author supports an interpretative understanding of the discipline of history based in a neo-hermeneutic reading of the subject.

A Study of Bias in British and American History Textbooks

1965 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 31-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. L. Mowat
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
World War ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Second World

The examination of historical works, and especially school textbooks on history, for evidence of national bias, is nothing new. Between the wars the focus was on British and German histories, which were an object of concern to the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. Since the Second World War the subject of national bias in historical works has been taken up by the Council of Europe and UNESCO. A recent study has been concerned with current British and American textbooks, which have been examined for evidences of bias against the United States and Britain respectively.

Narrating the Second World War

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-57
Author(s):  
Lina Klymenko
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
History Textbook ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
School History ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Second World

This article explores the theoretical understanding of the relation between school history textbooks and the state-led construction of national identity. It does this by conceptualizing a history textbook as an assembly of historical narratives that provide young readers with an opportunity to identify with the national community in which they live. By focusing on narrative techniques, including plot, concepts of time and space, and the categorization of characters as in- and out-groups, this article shows how narratives of the Second World War in Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian textbooks contribute to nation-building.

ROOSEVELT'S MAN IN EUROPE

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-59
Author(s):  
Kenneth Weisbrode
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Writing Style ◽  
World War ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

Lewis Einstein (1877–1967) was a little-known diplomat who became one of Theodore Roosevelt's closest advisers on European affairs. Roosevelt's attraction to Einstein derived not only from a keen writing style and considerable fluency in European history, literature and politics, but also from his instinct for anticipating the future of European rivalries and for the important role the United States could play there in preserving peace. The two men shared a perspective on the twentieth century that saw the United States as a central arbiter and enforcer of international order—a position the majority of Americans would accept and promote only after the Second World War. The relationship between Roosevelt and Einstein sheds light on the rising status of American diplomacy and diplomats and their self-image vis-à-vis Europe at the turn of the twentieth century.

Bringing It All Back HomeorAnother Side of Bob Dylan: Midwestern Isolationist

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tor Egil Førland
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Bob Dylan ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

The subject of this article is the foreign policy views of singer and songwriter Bob Dylan: a personality whose footprints during the 1960s were so impressive that a whole generation followed his lead. Today, after thirty years of recording, the number of devoted Dylan disciples is reduced but he is still very much present on the rock scene. His political influence having been considerable, his policy views deserve scrutiny. My thesis is that Dylan'sforeign policyviews are best characterized as “isolationist.’ More specifically: Dylan's foreign policy message is what so-called progressive isolationists from the Midwest would have advocated, had they been transferred into the United States of the 1960s or later. I shall argue that Bob Dylan is just that kind of personified anachronism, seeing the contemporary world through a set of cognitive lenses made in the Midwest before the Second World War – to a large extent even before the First (or, indeed, before the American Civil War).

Censorship, Propaganda and Public Opinion: The case of the Katyn Graves, 1943

1989 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 63-83
Author(s):  
P. M. H. Bell
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

THE SUBJECT of this paper is not the sombre story of the mass graves at Katyn, filled with the corpses of murdered Polish officers; nor will it deal directly with the question of who killed those officers. I approach these events in the course of research on the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy in Britain during the Second World War, and on the closely related matters of censorship and propaganda as practised by the British government in that period. The diplomatic crisis produced by the affair of the Katyn graves was one in which publicity was freely used as an instrument of policy—indeed sometimes policy and publicity were indistinguishable. Those who controlled British censorship and propaganda, and attempted to guide public opinion, were faced with acute and wideranging problems. It is the object of this paper to analyse those problems, to see how the government tried to cope with them, and to trace the reactions of the press and public opinion, as a case study in the extent and limitations of government influence in such matters.

Civil-Military Relations in Europe and the United States: A Bibliographical Note

1961 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-116
Author(s):  
Michael Howard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Bibliographical Note ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Second World

The interest in civil-military relations which has arisen since the Second World War stems from a wide variety of national experiences; and these have moulded the subject in different ways in different countries.

Colonial Collisions, 1938–1941

Armed Guests ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 84-105
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Stepping Stone ◽  
Territorial Sovereignty ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This chapter begins the exploration of the origins of contemporary basing practices with a close look at the 1941 Leased Bases Agreement between the United States and Britain and the developments from which it emerged. Concerned only with colonial territory, the agreement can now be seen, in hindsight, as a stepping stone to contemporary practices. The focus is on how policymakers wrestled with the issue of territorial sovereignty in the context of a rapidly evolving and deteriorating security situation immediately prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Negotiators on both sides worked within the traditional understandings of the relationship between military presence and territorial authority, which made it extremely difficult to come to terms with a foreign military presence. American policymakers expected to retain broad authority in the territories hosting US bases—authority that had significant continuities with colonial governance—while British policymakers feared the loss of British sovereignty.

Public Diplomacy Ascendant

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Diplomacy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This chapter traces the Pilgrims Society’s contribution to the history of public diplomacy across the later 1920s, the 1930s, and the early 1940s. It does so in part by analysing the content of a speech given to the Society in 1925 by the new US Ambassador in London, Alanson Houghton. This speech paved the way for the Locarno Conference and provides evidence of a senior diplomat using a Pilgrims’ event to make a major intervention in European diplomacy. In addition, the chapter examines how further developments in American nativism continued to impact upon the Society. The chapter also analyses other significant Pilgrims’ events at which diplomats used the Society as a vehicle for public diplomacy, including Ambassador Charles Dawes’ speech in 1929 about naval disarmament, and a number of events during the Second World War at which figures including Winston Churchill sought to manage the relationship between Britain and the United States during the tense period leading up to the latter’s entry into the conflict. The chapter also demonstrates how the US Pilgrims sought to mobilise American sentiment in favour of the Allied cause and that it did so alongside the Committee to Defend America and the Century Group.

From Lawn Tennis to Eugenics: A History of Women and Sneakers

Costume ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-109
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Semmelhack
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

Since the invention of sneakers in the middle of the nineteenth century, women have been significant in both their production and consumption. 1 Despite this long history, women's relationship with sneakers has been complicated by larger issues ranging from dissonance between female athleticism and ideals of female desirability to issues of exclusion related to the overt hyper-masculinity embedded in modern sneaker culture. This article will focus on the sociological forces at play in the relationship between women and sneakers, predominantly in the United States and Britain, from the popularization of lawn tennis in the 1870s through to the start of the Second World War, a period in which exercise, morality and ideal femininity became redefined through the lens of ‘fitness’, by which was often meant preparedness for motherhood or attractiveness to men.

American Catholics and the Second World War

1944 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-150
Author(s):  
Thomas T. McAvoy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Church ◽  
Pope Pius Xii

Catholic activity in the United States since our entry into the war has been the subject of much writing. The singular position of Pope Pius XII, the head of the Church, now in the path of the fighting armies in Italy, Catholic opposition to Communism and Fascism, the multiple national origins of the Catholic group, together with the unquestionable generosity of Catholic men and women in the service of the country, have raised some interesting questions about the position of American Catholics on the war. It is too soon to write a definitive account even of what is now history, but the picture of the manifold activity of Catholics in America is an enticing, if difficult, picture to draw.

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