The Myth of the Innocent Nation

2018 ◽  
pp. 198-238
Author(s):  
Richard T. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
American People ◽  
World War ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
American Myths ◽  
To Come

While the myth of the Innocent Nation weaves a tale that is objectively false with no redemptive qualities, it is one of the strongest of the American myths in terms of its hold over the American people. That myth, like the nation itself, hangs suspended between the golden age of an innocent past (Nature’s Nation) and a golden age of innocence yet to come (Millennial Nation). Suspended in that vacuous state, Americans imagine that history is irrelevant. How could it be otherwise? Nothing destroys a sense of innocence like the terrors of history taken seriously. Anchored by the pillars that stand at the beginning and end of time, the myth of the Innocent Nation flourished during every modern conflict beginning with World War I, but especially when the nation faced enemies like Nazi Germany in World War II or Isis during the War on Terror. The irony was obvious, for even as the nation proclaimed its innocence, black soldiers, for example, returned from World War II only to face brutality and segregation in their own nation. Countless blacks from Muhammed Ali to Toni Morrison to James Baldwin to Ta-Nehisi Coates have protested that irony in the American myth of Innocence.

From the Great War to White Christmas

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-114
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Magee
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Great War

Irving Berlin’s all-soldier World War I revue, Yip Yip Yaphank, made a unique impact on Broadway in 1918 and in Berlin’s work for decades to come. The show forged a compelling and comic connection between theatrical conventions and military protocols, using elements from minstrelsy, the Ziegfeld Follies, and Berlin’s distinctive songs. Featuring such Berlin standards as “Sterling Silver Moon” (later revised as “Mandy”) and “Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning,” it was revised for World War II as This Is the Army, and scenes from it reappear, transformed, in Berlin’s films Alexander’s Ragtime Band and White Christmas.

Is There a Future for New Communist States?

2021 ◽  
pp. 315-318
Author(s):  
George W. Breslauer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Historical Imagination ◽  
World War ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
To Come

Communism was the offspring of wars: World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. Are such wars likely in the coming decades? If not, new communist regimes on the Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist models are unlikely to come to power in the name of Marxism-Leninism. Whether that ideological heritage becomes again a beacon for revolution may depend on whether, in the future, the historical imagination comes to view communism as having been an achievement or a tragedy.

International Migration and One World

Unwanted ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 98-124
Author(s):  
Maddalena Marinari
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
World War ◽  
Immigration Laws ◽  
Jewish Immigration ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Cold War

Chapter 4 chronicles how Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates appealed to internationalism, humanitarianism, and civil rights rhetoric to fight for refugee legislation first and comprehensive immigration reform later. Unlike World War I, World War II represented an opportunity for reform for many groups who had long fought for less discriminatory immigration laws because of the new geopolitical position of the United States. The Cold War also provided an opening for a broad coalition of ethnic, religious, and civic organizations to come together during the debate over the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. Although the most diverse interethnic alliance fighting for immigration reform to date fell apart over ideological disagreements and under pressure from entrenched restrictionist politicians, the experience of the early 1950s left a mark for the rest of the decade and shaped their approach to immigration reform until the early 1960s.

Worlds Apart: The Swabian Expulsion from Hungary after World War II

1985 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Spira
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
The Third ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
To Come ◽  
Dual Capacity

The German expulsion is a sad chapter of post-World War II Hungrian history. After 1945, hundreds of thousands of Hungary's German-speaking citizens (popularly known as Swabians) were expelled as traitors. They were accused of having joined the Nazi-oriented Volksbund, or of having “volunteered” in the Third Reich's SS forces. The legality, morality, and rationality of the Hungarian government's action will be disputed for many years to come. More useful, however, might be an exploration of this apparently arbitrary and cruel expulsion of German-speaking Hungarian citizens. This essay surveys the troubled relationship that bound the Swabians and Hungarians together in ceaseless controversy from 1918 until the end of World War II. Their misunderstandings were basic and defied solution through dialogue, mutual concessions, or compromise.Prior to World War I, Hungary's German citizens considered themselves relatively secure in their adopted Magyar-dominated homeland. As Hungarian citizens, they owed allegiance to Franz Josef I in his dual capacity as king of Hungary and as emperor of the supra-national Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Despite some assimilationist efforts by the Magyars after the Ausgleich of 1868, the Swabians felt protected by the presence of a German king-emperor, and by the fact that the empire was largely Germandominated.

8. Security

2018 ◽  
pp. 108-122
Author(s):  
David J. Bodenhamer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
World War ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Imminent Threat ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

Armed conflict poses an imminent threat to the nation’s existence, but so does suspension of the nation’s fundamental laws. The framers wrestled with how to grant government the power to defend the nation without providing it the means to threaten liberty. The question it raises—does war suspend the Constitution or does the Constitution control the conduct of the war—has rarely been absent from American history. ‘Security’ describes the impact of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, as well as the recent ‘war on terror’ on the nation’s laws, the executive presidential power, and the roles of the Supreme Court and Congress.

The Golden Age of American Skating

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Hines
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Competition ◽  
Figure Skating ◽  
World War ◽  
North Americans

This chapter discusses the evolution of figure skating after World War II. World War II was more devastating to the skating community than was World War I, primarily because figure skating between the wars had become more widespread. The seven-year lapse in international competition retested figure skating's resilience. However, it not only survived but developed into a greater sport than it was before. Before the war, North Americans did not win any European, World, or Olympic titles. When the European and World Championships were reestablished in 1947, Barbara Ann Scott of Canada won gold medals. The following year Scott and Dick Button of the United States won gold medals at those competitions and at the Olympic Games as well. From 1947 through 1960 North American skaters were gold medalists in at least one discipline every year, and they dominated the sport in singles skating, changing it dramatically through expanded athleticism. The leader in what has been called the golden age of American skating was Dick Button.

Income and Consumption in Egypt, 1886/1887 to 1937

1979 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bent Hansen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Capita Income ◽  
National Income ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Per Capita Income ◽  
World War ◽  
British Occupation ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
To Come

The attempt to estimate per capita income for Egypt from 1886/1887 to 1937, presented in this paper, is part of an effort to evaluate British colonial economic policyduring the period of the British occupation of Egypt. For such an evaluation national income estimates covering the whole period would be very helpful. National income estimates worth the name, however, go back only to 1935–1939, and for years earlier than the 1950s they are of very poor quality. Compared with so many other lessdeveloped countries, Egypt has relatively rich statistics extending backward to the decades before World War I; but they do not really suffice for building up a national income series from either the production or the expenditure side, and from the income side there is hardly any information. In this situation, which both development economists and economic historians know only too well, the problem is how to make maximal use of existing production and expenditure indicators in order to come out with some idea of what per capita income developments may have looked like. Apart from gauging per capita income in Egypt during half a century before World War II, the paper serves more generally to illustrate a methodology that may find application for other countries.

Cinema's Military Industrial Complex

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
World War ◽  
Film Exhibition ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
The Military

Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex examines how the American military has used cinema and related visual, sonic, and mobile technologies to further its varied aims. The essays in this book address the way cinema was put to work for purposes of training, orientation, record keeping, internal and external communication, propaganda, research and development, tactical analysis, surveillance, physical and mental health, recreation, and morale. The contributors examine the technologies and types of films that were produced and used in collaboration among the military, film industry, and technology manufacturers. The essays also explore the goals of the American state, which deployed the military and its unique modes of filmmaking, film exhibition, and film viewing to various ends. Together, the essays reveal the military’s deep investment in cinema, which began around World War I, expanded during World War II, continued during the Cold War (including wars in Korea and Vietnam), and still continues in the ongoing War on Terror.

The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Franko
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
World War ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
Critical Discourses

This book is an examination of neoclassical ballet initially in the French context before and after World War I (circa 1905–1944) with close attention to dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar. Since the critical discourses analyzed indulged in flights of poetic fancy a distinction is made between the Lifar-image (the dancer on stage and object of discussion by critics), the Lifar-discourse (the writings on Lifar as well as his own discourse), and the Lifar-person (the historical actor). This topic is further developed in the final chapter into a discussion of the so-called baroque dance both as a historical object and as a motif of contemporary experimentation as it emerged in the aftermath of World War II (circa 1947–1991) in France. Using Lifar as a through-line, the book explores the development of critical ideas of neoclassicism in relation to his work and his drift toward a fascist position that can be traced to the influence of Nietzsche on his critical reception. Lifar’s collaborationism during the Occupation confirms this analysis. The discussion of neoclassicism begins in the final years of the nineteenth-century and carries us through the Occupation; then track the baroque in its gradual development from the early 1950s through the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda L. Tyler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
World War ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
The World ◽  
Enemy Combatant

The Introduction begins by exploring modern examples sanctioning the concept of the citizen enemy combatant, such as the War on Terror cases of José Padilla and Yaser Hamdi. It then suggests that the roots of this concept may be found in the World War II detention of Japanese Americans, including over 70,000 U.S. citizens. The Introduction continues by arguing that this modern conception of the citizen enemy combatant is impossible to reconcile with the historic understanding of the Suspension Clause and the habeas privilege that trace their origins to English legal tradition, an understanding that remained consistent well through Reconstruction. The Introduction concludes with an overview of the book.

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